Westerdam Review
Rating by category
Additional details
HAL Westerdam 10-25 / 11-1 Pre-cruise A little background information on us - this is my 17th cruise, first on HAL and we're celebrating our third wedding anniversary tomorrow and live in Columbia, SC. We booked this cruise 19 months ago and paid for upgrades twice when they were offered.
Suzi and I had packed the previous evening, so when I wake up at 4:00AM, all I have left is to close up the suit cases and put them in the car. We have a leisure morning, trying our best not to get our dog 'Little Bit' to excited as he has anxiety when he sees the suitcases out and he knows he is heading to 'doggy camp'.
After loading up the car, we drive over to Westcot Acres at 7:45am and check Little Bit in for the next 8 days. His suite is being prepared (his room is called the Charleston Suite, which includes a sliding glass door that looks over the outside play area, his own bed, TV and plenty of room for him to be comfortable in). After a long good bye (in which he refuses to say good bye to us), we're off on the highway for the next 90 minutes to Charlotte, NC airport on a rainy/drizzly/foggy morning.
Cabin Review
It is hard to put in words how magnificent this cabin is. Suite 7081 was going to be our home for the week and it had enough space I think we could have stored enough clothes for a world cruise. The bathroom has a double sink, separate tub and shower. Just outside of the bathroom it has a sit sown area with mirrors and 3 closets on the other side. We also had more closet space by the door which included a built in-safe and storage area for our life jackets. King sized bed (6 pillows on it - 2 each: soft, med, firm) with small dressers on both side, a huge couch, table and 2 chairs, a long desk area, small LCD TV (above this we had some shelf space that included binoculars for use during the week), 2 phones, mini-fridge with drinks in it (which I emptied) and another area that had several glasses in the cabinet, another cabinet next to the couch that had blankets in the drawers and finally the door leading to the veranda. We walked out the veranda to find 2 comfortable cushioned bamboo chairs (with foot stools) separated by a small table. It also had 3 more chairs around a regular sized table in case you wanted to eat outside. Layout was great; once again, plenty of space and it was entirely covered. After a few minutes, we located our room steward and asked for a couple of ash trays and talked for a few seconds. I told him we were eating at main dining and that I had rented a tux for the week (on all my previous cruises, this was already in the room upon arrival). To be 100% honest, our room stewards were pretty much non-existent the entire week. They were efficient, nothing else. In comparison, our previous Princess room stewards were far superior in every way.