Good port choices, dining room dinners and breakfasts. Lots of lunch options but on the heavy side. Lido deck burgers and pizza were good along with the salad. Courteous and helpful staff in dining areas and cabins. As per HAL's reputation, the dinners were first class and beautifully served. However, in cost cutting moves, HAL has shorted the number of servers and it was very difficult to develop a good relationship with them as they were totally on the move throughout the entire dinner. We really missed that part of the dining experience. It was always an enjoyable, integral part of our previous cruises. We chose the seven bottle Navigatior wine package, for dining, and out of the 7 or 8 bottle on the list 2 were out of stock.

Cruise director, Michael, was a bit stuffy and aloof. Jan the evening pub trivia guy was delightful. However, the activities presented onboard, for the days at sea, were boring and unimaginative. Sixteen days of trivia, costly Bingo and Microsoft workshops don't provide for those cruisers looking for more action and involvement.

Evening entertainment was the usual HAL - C level performances with the exception of the evening show put on by the BB King band. They livened up the ship with their entertainment. Read more