I chose this ship as I had heard good reviews and as it was a "holiday of a lifetime" we thought we would pay a bit more. It turned out to be the worst experience of a holiday we had ever had. There was nobody at the airport to meet us in Canada after a nine hour flight which was in itself very stressful. There was no help or guidance as to where to go with any of the organised excursions which I had booked online through Holland and America with us being put on the wrong bus at one time which the tour guide found funny!. One of the excursions was changed without our consent which would have meant us missing the next one so we went and changed it back and noticed a $10 fee each for it being charged on our statement so we had to go and get it refunded, for which we were made to feel an inconvenience and the staff were very rude. We were treated worse than cattle when queuing to get on board which took us over 5 hours with no seats for disabled people and one person passed out in the queue which was very distressful. A lot of the entertainment on board involved an extra fee and there was not much choice of entertainment even the films shown in the cinema were available to watch on TV in your room. Staff were unhelpful and if anything ran out they were not willing to go and get more until the next day. It is the only cruise where food was not available most of the time when we asked if there was anything to eat we were told there were burgers and hotdogs in the lido but as a vegetarian that did not offer a solution to us. We discovered to our horror that Holland America had accepted additional money from someone to hire a large portion of the ship for a private function which meant that after waiting for an hour and a half for a good seat to watch wildlife I was told I had to move out of that section!!! We were dropped at the airport to go home at 10.30am with 8 hours to wait at the airport before our flight, both ill with the flu. Sanitisation on board was very poor with just a hand cleaner before entry to the restaurants which about 50% of people noticed or used. We held off writing a bad review because we wanted Holland America to have a chance to reply. They agreed we had been treated badly and offered to pay us £500 compensation which was a very small percentage of the price we paid but we agreed to accept as we were pretty annoyed by this time with the whole thing and wanted to forget it. HOWEVER over 3 months later we have still not received any compensation despite several e-mail chases and an e-mail from the travel agent. My opinion is that if you are looking to book a holiday of a lifetime to Alaska then avoid Holland America.