Zuiderdam 11/27/04 Sailing Review

[snipboy]

I'll start off by saying that this board was tremendously helpful and reassuring about taking this ship and HAL in general. So many thanks! I'll do little summaries and then an overall summary at the end with my final thoughts:

 

Docs: Awesome. Very impressed.

 

Phone communications with HAL: Very impressed.

 

Embarkation: Impressed. We arrived around noon and while the line was long, we got through in less than a half hour. It wasn't the circus and disorganized mess RCCL was.

 

First Impression on the Ship: Poor. I was barraged by people trying to sell drink stickers. IT was RELENTLESS. My wife lost her patience at one point and demanded we lower our tip based on that (which we did). The ship itself was impressive to us. Classier than RCCL, yet with a style all its own, it seemed.

 

The Cabin: Oh man. What a disappointment. We got a BC on the upper verandah deck. It was dirty. And not just dirty, but gross dirty. And what made it worse was that it was obvious that the room had towels stocked and the bed made and nothing else was checked or cleaned (I want to emphasize that we only went to the room after we were cleared to at 1:30 PM).

Here is a list of dirty gross things, so pass over it if you are squimish: