We did a B2B, Eastern & Western Caribbean on the Nieuw Amsterdam and loved it!. We have done a couple of Carnival, Celebrity and 5 Princess cruises so we were anxious to see how HAL stood up. We were not disappointed. The ship is nicely decorated. Our cabin was an "obstructed balcony" which has a metal front, not plexiglass but we were fine with that. The balcony consisted of a wicker arm chair and footstool, very small table and another wicker chair. It was an okay size and you could move the furniture around and it was not crowded. We had a small couch with storage cupboards overhead, vanity with mini fridge on one side, shelves on the other. Night tables on either side of the Queen bed. Lots of cupboards with lots and lots of wooden hangers both for pants and shirts. I have never seen so many hangers on a ship before....a very nice thing to see. There were shelves and bars for hanging things. A good deal of storage available with a safe to. The bathroom had small shelves on one side of the mirror and a large shelf running along under the counter. A bathtub with a curved out shower rod helped keep the shower curtain away from the body lol. A shower that you could take off and hold and it also had an adjustable nozzle head with wonderful pressure.

Staff were always smiling and saying good morning, etc. I never saw any staff person that was rude or surly. We had anytime dining and went into the dining room around 7:30pm and requested the same table and enjoyed our 2 waiters very much. The food was great and being a picky eater, I always managed to find something to eat.

Pizza up by the aft pool was really good. The buffet had different stations such as "sandwich" "pasta", etc. and it seemed to flow really well. Lots of fresh fruit which was really nice. A really good buffet and they didn't scrimp on anything by what I saw. Read more