This was our second cruise. Our first cruise was with NCL's Pearl to Alaska so I will constantly be making comparisons.

There was a long line to check in at the SD Harbor as two ships were loading passengers. However, the line moved pretty quickly. We were quite unimpressed with the staff (not sure if they were cruise ship staff or port staff) because they directed us, with our luggage, to the wrong place at first but things got sorted out pretty soon and we were soon on our ship and being directed to have lunch at the Lido Buffet as our staterooms were not ready.

We were not very impressed with the buffet. My husband and I eat mostly vegetables, fruits and fish. I occasionally eat chicken or other meat so we found the Asian section pretty quickly and helped ourselves to sushi. There were about 8-10 types of fish and vegie sushi rolls. They were ok. Modest sizes, nothing to rave about. There were two meat dishes cooking in the skillet that we did not help ourselves to. I helped myself to some curried Asian noodles, which I liked very much. We would find out that the HAL NEVER changes the lunch menu at the Lido buffet so you see the same thing day in and day out. When we were on the NCL, we noticed that they changed the buffet menu every single day, which was nice. We got to try different dishes even though we have a limited diet and we never got tired of eating the same thing. Read more