We took a family cruise which consisted of 6 adults and 2 children on July 3 - 10 to Bermuda. After checking out many different cruise lines we choose Holland America because of the itinerary (4 days in Bermuda). My husband and I sailed with Holland America 10 years ago on a 14 day holiday cruise and were very impressed with the cruise line, so we were very excited about this cruise and having the family see this wonderful ship. We arrived in New York on Sunday morning at approx. 10:00a.m. We parked our vehicles and unloaded our luggage, went to the terminal and was greeted by someone who took our luggage right away, we than proceeded through security and to check in. This took all of about 15 - 20 minutes for us all to check in, which was very smooth. We were than given a number which we would use to get on the ship. At 11:30 a.m. they started embarkation and within 20 minutes we were on the ship and able to go straight to our room.

My husband and I had a Lanai stateroom which is on deck six with the walk around deck. We had a door that took us right out to the deck with two lounge chairs that were reserved for our stateroom. This was wonderful it was like having a balcony, but bigger. After checking out our rooms we went to the Lido deck for lunch, they had a buffet set up and it was pretty good, the only problem was you were not able to serve yourself, the crew served you and they were very skimpy on the portions.

After eating our lunch we went to check out the rest of the ship, it is a small ship, but in pretty good shape. It only has 1 small pool, but it has 5 hot tubes. The pool was not open when we got on ship which was a disappointment because we had two kids who would have liked to get in the pool. We walked the ship some more and when it was time to leave we went to our deck and watched as we sailed past New York and the Statue of Liberty. After passing the Statue of Liberty we all decided to go to the Lido restaurant for diner. This is the casual dining which on the website states that it has tableside waiter service, not true. This is a buffet style meal that has servers put the food on your plate and again the portions are very skimpy and when you ask for more they look at you like you are crazy. Service in the Lido Restaurant is next to nothing. We had 8 people at our table and no one ever came to clear any of our plates away so we had to eat with piles of plates stacked up on the table. Read more