It is safe to say that this cruise did not live up to expectations. We have cruised 40 times and taken several voyages with HAL, so we consider ourselves to be experienced cruisers. We are two adults and a 9 year old daughter. We took this cruise for the holiday at sea experience and because it was a convenient drive from our house. We did not take this trip for the ports, as we have been to Mexico many times before. We cruised to Hawaii last Christmas on the Golden Princess and hoped to have a similar fun experience on the Rotterdam this time. We booked a verandah suite on Deck 6, the last cabin at the back on the starboard side, which we were told was the last remaining triple occupancy cabin on the ship. We booked direct with HAL Reservations.

We got off to a very bad start when we arrived in San Diego and checked in only to find we no longer had an assigned cabin, despite having checked in online and printed baggage tags out successfully. It took a while before anyone could tell us anything and the best they could do was that there was something wrong with our cabin, they didn't know what and we would find out when we got on the ship. Getting on the ship without an assigned cabin is not easy. Our cruise cards set off siren alerts at the security check on the ship and we had to be escorted to the front desk area where we sat for half an hour with absolutely no idea what was going on. Finally, someone emerged to tell us that our cabin had apparently been "flooded" by rain during the stormy arrival in San Diego that morning. Somehow enough rain had come under the 6 foot deep covered balcony and managed to penetrate four feet inside the cabin door, soaking the floor. Quite how this could happen is beyond me. We were escorted to the cabin where we found a large fan roaring away drying the floor out, which was still very damp. The HAL girl insisted the cabin was in rentable condition.

It was quite obvious from the uneven floor by the balcony door and the pitted, rusted threshold that this cabin has been "flooded" on many previous occasions and probably will be again in the future. It is hard to believe a rainstorm could do this and even harder to believe that ours was the only cabin affected. Clearly, this cabin has water issues. There was also a large crack in the side window panel glass and wallpaper that has been improperly applied in large areas by the cabin door. Read more