I found an amazing deal for this Western Caribbean cruise online around Thanksgiving and I had never sailed on HAL (7 cruises on other lines) so I thought I'd give them a try. I'm so glad I that I booked this ship - I had a fantastic time. As many others have pointed out, this is not a "party till you drop" cruise line; the average age was around 70 with about 12 kids on board. If you want a relaxing, calm environment with fantastic service I would definitely go with HAL.

Embarkation: Embarkation was a breeze, I got to the ship around 2pm and I checked in with no lines and walked right onboard.

Stateroom: My stateroom was a fully obstructed outside cabin on deck 4 and the room looked to be at least 30% larger than my last cruise (inside cabin on RCCL). My stateroom attendants kept the room spotless and left some adorable towel creatures. Dining: The food was very good to excellent - I wish HAL would build some Dive in burger places on land, I'm really missing those fries:) The pizza restaurant by the aft pool was not as good as Dive In, pizza was somewhat soggy in the middle. The Lido buffet was great as well, I liked the cooked to order station and that it was not self serve ( I work in virology and this is a good practice to cut down on the spread of norovirus). Lido did get somewhat crowded on sea days at peak times, but I everyone was willing to share tables and I met lot of interesting, nice people. The dinners I ate in the main dining room were very good, service was a little slow at times, but I think that the servers have too many tables. Read more