We had never cruised before. This was a new experience for us and every person we spoke to stated how wonderful it was. The room was small we had an interior on deck 7. Food was very good. We did not have issue at onboarding but tip for newbies, if it says you can board at 1pm don't wait that long we got there at 11am and it was full on its way to boarding. We got Verify done but the Arrive Can was something we didn't know of and was confusing. A small line wait but not too bad. Problem is people who didn't complete Verifly ie. Tests not done were going in line anyway which slowed things. The ones without Verifly waited hours. Service inside port entry was slow too so if you didn't open app while outside it may not open. Much of wait times were people who didn't do Verifly or did it incorrectly. We enjoyed our trip and excursions though we purchased deals outside of HAL. I feel we could have spent more time in Ketchikan we got about 4 or 5 hrs., and skipped Victoria because at 8pm at night and a 20 minute walk to town it was not worth the effort. Probably if you could see in daylight it might have been worth paying for carriage ride or something. We probably would have done high tea but our arrival was too late.

On board ship staff was impeccable service was on point. They were amazing remembered names, we didn't wait more than 5 minutes before were had someone asking if we needed anything. Dining room was excellent we ate every night I have an allergy so they took my order the night before. Very good about making sure you didn't get anything you couldn't have. The night at Victoria was the only night where service was slower seemed dining room staffing level was greatly reduced with anticipation of people eating ashore but they didn't do so. Genesis was an amazing hostess who took very good care of us. The events were all sales pitches. We enjoyed dancers and Lincoln stage. I didn't care for Casino or Billboard bar singer didn't sound great. BB King's female singer is amazing too bad her male counterpart is off key. Games were fun. Talks were great and enjoyed seeing Raptor center come. Poor girl was defiantly nervous. Naturalist was a bit intense and kinda rude. Only Staff who we encountered who was. Also café was very busy almost always. Disembarking the girl in port was straight nasty. Only 1 customs agent doing whole line to start so very slow when we left they had bumped up to 3 not HAL's fault but agonizing either way.