In all my years of travel, this was as close to a perfect vacation as I've had.

About 12 years ago, my sister and I had the Cruise-From-Hell (fortunately only 3 days of hell) on Royal Caribbean, so I was reluctant. My husband has back issues and is often a grumpy traveller. However, by mid-cruise, we were already planning on where to go next on the Noordam and/or HAL.

We were looking for a quiet ship and HAL was a good match. I'm guessing the age distribution was 40's on up. Not a rowdy crowd. There were a few children but we didn't see them often. We specifically selected a September cruise hoping that most of the rugrats would be in school, and that seemed to work. We were amazed at how many REALLY elderly people were on board--a lot of people with canes and wheelchairs. Several who were blind. Even though we are mid-40s, we felt right at home. :} Even though there were nearly 2000 people on the ship, it never felt crowded (except the buffet) and we never had problems finding a place to sit or getting into the spa--or really, to do anything. It was all very very comfortable. Read more