This was my first cruise on Holland America. All my other cruises have been Royal Caribbean or one of it's subsidiaries. The best thing about Holland America was it's expedited disembarkation. If you take your own bags, get off early and don't have transportation arranged by the cruise line, you can get off early without sitting around waiting for your group to be called, and don't have to put your bags out the night before. We really, really liked that. We also liked the tour of the ship's kitchen that was open to everyone, not just the privileged few. The ship had self-service laundry facilities on three decks. For an Alaska cruise, it was nice that there is a cover over the pool that could be closed. It made the pool area much more useful. They had a demonstration kitchen with a guest chef that prepared four different dishes on the trip. The items in the gift shop were moderately priced, but that might have been because it was toward the end of the season. The buffet was well done with nice wrap options for lunch and made to order omelets for breakfast.

The bad points were beverage choices, over-amplification, endless sales pitches, limited ports, entertainment and dining. There were only two choices in diet sodas, plus fountain iced tea from syrup rather than fresh brewed. You need to bring earplugs because sound was way over-amplified--almost to the point of pain--in the showroom, the bar, and virtually anywhere a microphone was used. Every time you turned around, someone was trying to sell you something, but this really isn't unique to HAL but endemic in the cruise industry. We had done an Alaska cruise previously on Celebrity. This cruise had much less time in port. It was rarely more than half a day in any port, and we missed Victoria completely due to weather conditions. I know, that isn't the cruise line's fault.

The entertainment was not very good. Trying to do Vegas style seems to be a losing proposition on cruises. We really liked the cabaret format on the Azamara Quest. The option seating option in the dining room didn't really work all that well. Unless you made a reservation ahead of time, you often had to wait for a table. Once we were even given a pager and had to wait in the lounge upstairs. The food and desserts for the most part were just good. While a dessert might look spectacular, the taste was just OK. Read more