Because of this cruise, I am no longer feeling the love I used to feel as a 3 star mariner on HAL. We had a very spacious cabin 2555, but in the 16 days we were in it, the air conditioning never worked and the toilet never flushed properly. This is an inside wheelchair cabin, so in the hot Caribbean temperatures, a non-working toilet plus no a/c was a living hell. I of course complained multiple times daily, but the only option was a desk fan which simply circulated the foul-smelling air. The guest services office gave us a free dinner at Cannaletto, but then insisted that the temp of our cabin was 18 degrees celcius. Maybe it was if you hold the meter up at the a/c vent, but that doesn't help that there was no air blowing into the 80 degree F cabin! We laid in the wet bedsheets every night, sweating like pigs in the sewage-smelling inside air. Sickening!

Enbarcation was smooth, disembarcation was also smooth. The impressionist Robbie Howard was fantastic! The Jersey Boys and the FlyRight trio were exceptionally great. The food in the MDR was delicious, and they never made any mistakes regarding the accommodation of my tomato food allergy. Our MDR waiters, Awan and GeDe were fantastic. Our room stewards on deck 2 were great!

Our southern Caribbean ports of call were fantastic, all of them. Now we have been on 30 cruises, not all with HAL, and 74 foreign countries total. With a manual wheelchair I might add. The best meal I had was the filet mignon/ lobster tail entree with chocolate souffle dessert. Just wonderful! The service in the LIDO was hit or miss, depending on who was the staff in that section. If we sat in the Cannaletto area for breakfast, the staff came around with hot, delicious coffee every 5 minutes. Anything you wanted. The further we sat away from that section, we got less to no service whatsoever. I had to clean my own table and fetch my own coffee twice. Once in the MDR breakfast I requested scrambled eggs and got some terrible tasting powdered eggs instead. I refused them and it took 30 minutes to receive hot, real chicken eggs. Not good! Again in the MDR if we were seated far away from other larger tables, we got no service at all. Read more