This cruise was included in our package tour of the Rockies which my husband and I had undertaken to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Our tour group was told that it may take a couple of hours to get through the embarkation process at Vancouver and onto the ship but we would be in time for lunch on board. Sadly US Customs decided to make this process as difficult and lengthy as possible and it took over four hours. We were disgusted, have been on many cruises but never been treated so poorly. We will never take out a cruise out of Vancouver again because of this experience. By the time we arrived on board we had missed lunch and the life boat muster so were expected to attend another drill at 6pm. We declined as we had a dinner booking at that time. They then requested we attend another drill the next day. The lady that turned up to do that drill was late and a big group of people were left waiting on the cold deck for her appearance. Very poor form I thought.

It was our first cruise with Holland America and I was impressed with the ship, it has a lot of old world charm. We found the food in all dining rooms very nice. We loved having room service for breakfast! We had dinner at the Pinnacle Grill to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary and it was really nice, the service was superb and the food wonderful.

We chose to spoil ourselves with a signature suite. We had a bath and a shower and two basins. The extra room in the cabin and balcony was great, we loved it. Read more