We traveled on the Holland Americal Line (HAL) Maasdam during the week of July 1 from Boston to Montreal, me, my wife, and our seven-year old daughter. It was our first cruise with Holland America. Reading prior reviews gave me some concern about the age/condition of the ship, as did my fear of having enough too few families on board for my daughter to interact with, since HAL has the reputation of catering to older cruisers.

PROs:

Our room steward was outstanding, and did a great job every day, despite our creating disarray in our room virtually every day. As for bar service and dining room service, there were certainly many that were excellent as well. We were really pleasantly surprised to see a very nice number of families, including many girls our daughter’s age to interact with, and she made many good friends over the course of the week, to the point where a few of her friend’s parents exchanged information with us, intending to connect after the cruise. In short, the distribution of ages and families on this cruise was very accommodating to our interests, such as having plenty of swim time in the pool, without a huge crowd, no drunkenness/offensive behavior, or any unruly bunch of kids. There was also no difficulties in getting a lounge chair at any time, and with the retractable roof over the pool, any weather did not preclude swimming. Read more