Recently traveled on the NY to Bermuda cruise from 8/21/2011 to 8/28/2011 and while many aspects of the cruise were very nice I do feel for online review websites such as this one it is more helpful learn about the negative points. Not to vent, but in many ways the operations of the Veendam were completely befuddling. For starters, a major problem is the smoke. Smoking was allowed on the crows nest, outside decks and in the casino and it just took one smoker to pollute the air for everybody else. The smoke from the casino was especially bad as it leaked out into the library and other neighboring rooms, and because of how the ship is designed you frequently had to walk though the casino to get to where you wanted to go. Smoke from the rooms would also leak out into the hallways and make you nauseas. This was not the only problem odor as the ship diesel and exhaust smells really got under the doors and into the aft rooms on the ship. My bag reeked of exhaust when I got off the ship. Many of the bathrooms all over the ship had an identical unpleasant mystery biological smell to them. The Veendam has a nice tennis court, basketball court and shuffleboard area...but...could only be used during the proper hours of during the day, minus lunch/dinner time and minus time when the weather was 'rough' outside. Due to the front-desk's version of rough weather which is seriously exaggerated, I and many others had no chance to use the sports facilities which remained pretty much vacant during the week long cruise. For a swimming pool...they had this tiny thing in the middle of a noisy lido deck that looked like no fun. They frequently had it roped off due to 'bad weather'. 'Hurricane' Irene was a major factor on this cruise...however just like the politicians in NY, the captain/corporate overreacted and made a bad situation worse. Faced with the prospect of traveling a return trip through the hurricane, the captain decided to cut short the stay at Bermuda by one day. This made no sense because if Irene was as bad as CNN/Fox news kept saying, then the Veendam would be harbored in the eye of a very dangerous storm surrounded by broken infrastructure and millions without electricity/transportation/sewage/water/food. Plus the Veendam would not have been able to disembark on Sunday anyways. So staying in Bermuda an extra day (which had great weather) to travel behind the storm while the logical thing to do was not what Holland of America did (probably because of the port cost and corporate wanting to meet their next embarkation schedule). For those who had scheduled plans for the day that the Veendam was supposed to officialy depart (like a family wedding scheduled more than six months in advance) they were out-of-luck. For leaving Bermuda a day early...HAL only offered a 15% discount on a future cruise. So to get a 'refund' you had to give them more money. Yes, I'm sure that was in the small print, but the cruise forms we feels out are detailed and complicated, and I and many cruise guests had no idea we would get such a bad deal in case of 'weather' issues/cancellations. For the most part the food was very good. The vegetarian options were somewhat limited and could have been better (especially on the dinner menu where often there was only one token vegetarian en-tree to choose from). Would be nice to see more natural ingredients used by the Veendam. Lots of fake sugar is used (which is toxic) and my mouth was very dry after a number of dishes which is usually a red flag that MSG was used. Would be nice to see ingredients posted. Self-service options were somewhat limited for the buffets...thought it was kind of stupid to wait in a huge line just to get a glass of water because only an official drink waiter could give you a drink. Yes, I know disease was a concern but this seemed exaggerated IMO. Seemed also silly waiting in front of a buffet table for a server when you should just be able to scoop your own food. The service (served almost exclusively by Indonesians and Philippines to the point of reverse discrimination/reverse racism) was good in a robotic way. Most of the staff smiled and constantly greeted you like they were programmed to do. In many cases their 'service' became very formulaic and annoying. HAL needs to understand the importance of being left alone and not pestered to constantly return a greeting or to have staff members constantly trying to steal your plates during lunch/breakfast (dinner was the opposite problem as dinners ran way too long...maybe it's a European thing). Wasn't comfortable with the 'hotel staff' going into my room ~6,7 times a day just rearrange my clothes or make the bed for the umpteenth time or to constantly throw away my drinks. This is not to suggest that the staff was unfriendly...most seemed like nice friendly people...just think they have been trained incorrectly. One of the most important aspects of good service (which HAL prides itself on) is communication...and unfortunately many of the staff don't speak great English. It varies...but on the Veendam you'll find yourself repeating yourself a lot, giving up communication with some as a lost cause, and getting at least one incorrect dinner request due to language barriers. For this service, HAL gets quite sneaky and charges you an auto-tip every day on your credit card. Very sneaky...very rude of HAL and totally is contrary to the logic of how tips are supposed to work. Many passengers were very upset when they found these bonus charges on their bill and spent a lot of time complaining in the front desk about them. The shore excursions from HAL are way overpriced. For example Crystal Caves in Bermuda cost less than half of what it does to purchase through HAL. My advice it purchase shore excursions on your own and to do research on them before departing. HAL doesn't provide great information on things to do outside of their limited shore excursion program. Would have been nice to have more practical information from shore excursions such as how to use the Bermuda bus system and providing free bus route maps (difficult to get even on Bermuda). For entertainment this was kind of hit and miss. Some singers just were difficult to listen to and had an awful amateurish 'American Idol' feel to them. Some were quite good (the musicians that had a more clean/classical feel to them were much better). The last show was called encore which was quite good and had very good music selection...unfortunately most shows were not like this. The speaker music on the ship (mostly near lido) was quite awful and constituted noise pollution. It was mostly bang-bang music with an exaggerated syncopated beat...not relaxing vacation music. When returning, obviously most passengers were very concerned about logistics like transportation/flights but this info was very difficult to get. HAL charged outrageous prices for phone service and internet service. For internet service, even if you did pay, the connections were super slow and frequently timed out...the payment timer did not time out which was very dishonest of HAL. This was a huge deal as many on board were very desperate the day we were returning to figure out what was going on once we returned to NY a day early with no idea what HAL would do with us if we could get our flight or even escape Manhattan. Some information was conveyed over the PA but much practical information like the flight boards for the major three airports was not communicated. Big deal as HAL gave us a deadline of 8:00 PM while returning Friday whether we would be getting off the ship Saturday or Sunday...yet you had no idea how flights were doing. Useful information on rental cars/hotels filling up would have been good to know since we didn't know how long we could stay on the ship...should have been very easy to post as a scrolling marque on one of the ships channels. The dates/times that the Veendam gave us frequently changed. From the departure time off of Hamilton to when we could get off the ship. Once HAL realized the hurricane wasn't a big deal, they started kicking people off of the ship Sunday (the 'big' hurricane day) to make room for the next wave of passengers contrary to what they stated earlier. Passengers who had canceled flights could stay until Monday...but they had to have their baggage packed by around 1:00 for room re-assignment. We (100's of us) were then evicted from our rooms and herded into a very small half-moon room for new-rooms. In a very confusing process passengers were assigned new rooms (which frequently already had people in them or arriving shortly thereafter) which took probably an average of six hours to complete. I'm not sure if many people even got new rooms by bed time. Because many of us didn't have convinent access to clean clothes/showers/changing facilities we were told we could go to dinner without abiding by the dress code. But despite this declaration, some were still rejected from dinner for not wearing business clothes and had to eat popcorn in the half-moon room. Earlier in the trip I knew others who had been kicked out as well from the dining room for minor 'dress code violations' and just feel the dining room staff doesn't get it. We were then told we could leave the ship by 7-9:30am on Monday. Good thing I ate breakfast really early as they changed their mind and completely booted us the ship by 7 before I could take a shower and many others probably either didn't get a chance to eat breakfast or had to leave in the middle of their breakfast. Being trapped in NYC Sat/Sun would have been a great time to site-see...but the Veendam didn't let us off the ship to sight-see except for a mandatory customs exercise a brief time window early Saturday. In fact the Veendam frequently didn't even let us go out on the outside decks (best part of the ship) and frequently had the doors tied up and even the crows nest locked up due to 'bad weather'. Not that the crows nest was a usable lounge with its awful cigarette smoke. Contradictory information was relayed concerning baggage. Coming aboard different people told me I had to/did not have to part with my baggage (which wasn't that big) for the staff to carry aboard. Would have been nice to be able to stay with my luggage at all times during embarkation. Many confusing things were conveyed over the PA system and during information meetings about whether you had to put your baggage outside of your door at night. Unless you are disabled, most of prefer to stay with our luggage, so not being told this was an option until late and not telling us that people without 'checked' luggage could get off the ship first was annoying. Like many other reviewers on earlier Veendam cruises, I saw many passengers affected by ineffective AC systems and even another broken elevator incident that trapped an individual between decks and who had to be rescued. As far as information goes...the activity directory frequently told us to just go to the information desk...which everybody did and huge lines/waits resulted. The staff at these desks were not properly informed by the superiors and frequently could not pass meaningful information onto to the (very frequently quite upset) guests which wasn't their fault, but that of their hierarchy. The feedback forms you got to fill out at the end of the cruise were a complete joke and funneled your responses using preset categories that created a incorrect impression of what your opinion was of the cruise.