On Friday November 20, I completed a 14 day southern Caribbean/Panama Canal cruise on my beloved Maasdam. It has been over 13 years since I last sailed on this vessel, so I was anxious to see how the old lady was holding up over the years. I liked the improvements made since my last sailing. The soft goods look much better than the original. The dining room chairs seem more comfortable. Having the room numbers on a paper holder was a great idea. It's much better than the old shove them under the door method used on my first cruise. The new beds are great! I didn't find a good opportunity to use the new spa, but I did tour it and it looked great. Although, I miss not having a steam bath in the men's locker room.

On the morning of November 6, 2009, after checking out of our hotel we flew by the Port Everglades complex to see our ship while it was unloading the previous cruise passengers. It's one of the fleet's small ships, but it still looked big enough to my eyes. As the cruise went on and we encountered other mega ships at our ports of call, I was glad to be getting back on our own little yacht. After we did our pre-cruise errands, we dropped off our rental car right at the gate of the Cruise Terminal and they drove us to our ship.

We were met at the curb by HAL baggage handlers at around 11 AM who took our bags for us. We decided to let them take our carry on bags too so we didn't have to carry anything with us while our cabin was getting made ready. Since we were there pretty early, the lines were very short. I had saved my Mariner buttons from my last cruise, so everywhere I went in the terminal, I was greeted with a "welcome back, sir" each time I encountered another employee. We only had to wait about 5 minutes in the picture queue before getting on the ship. Read more