Noordam Review
Rating by category
Additional details
I am in the middle of a 67 day HAL cruise from the states all around Australia. This is a bucket list cruise, until HAL put holes in my bucket. No on-board passengers while sailing from the states were allowed to book any excursions in future ports of AU until we reached Sydney. Meanwhile close to 1500 passengers boarding in Sydney had been booking excursions from home, resulting in all good excursions being sold out by the time on-board passengers were allowed to book. So, we can sail to Broome, Darwin, etc. but are left to finding our own ways to reach places we wanted to go. So much for our trip of a lifetime. The entertainment from USA to AU was poor except for CANTARE, a HAL quartet who are outstanding. Since AU things have improved. It seems HAL considered this two separate cruises which we were not told when we booked. We miss the shipboard troop of dancers and singers who are not featured now. We miss the crew cultural show. The BillBoard on Board piano/singers are great, Sidney and Nick. Wait staff and stewards are outstanding. I am close to 4 star Mariner status (200 sea nights). I have already booked my next cruise...with Royal Caribbean. I suggest you do the same.
Cabin Review
Nice cabin on deck 1 with a window view. Only down side is that its below the kitchen and there is a far amount of noise which did not bother us.
Port Reviews
Brisbane
We went to Australia Zoo and our tour guide, Ben, was a former employee who worked with Steve Irwin. He made the whole tour come alive with personal remembrances. This was booked through HAL when I first booked the cruise from home.
Sydney (Australia)
We went to Taronga Zoo, booked through HAL. Our guide was Carol. She was not familiar with the current situation at the zoo including on-going construction. While guiding us in the zoo, she became confused and ended up walking away from the group leaving us to find our location, and stumble around looking for various exhibits. Some of the shows were not available due to construction but we didn't know that until we finally found their location. We didn't find the posted signage in the zoo very easy to follow using their maps. One positive note, they have great gift shops!