Boring Food, Boring Entertainment, Boring Ship

The Good: The crew was fantastic.  Truly 5 stars.  Can't say enough about the cabin staff, food staff, restaurant staff.  They were all to a person extremely polite.  They put on a Christmas Eve show comprised of all the crew from all over the world - Indonesia, Philippines, Asia, Africa, Europe - and it was really wonderful.  Apparently this is a 144-year tradition of Holland America.  All these people were so far away from their families around the world on Christmas Eve, and they were great.  The B.B. King Blues Band was AMAZING!  What an extremely talented band!  I have no idea what they're doing playing a cruise ship.  These folks should be in Memphis.  They were that good.  The violinist/pianist combination (Adagio) were great as well.

Our room was a Signature Suite, and it was very roomy, with a large balcony, which came in handy for storing our dive gear.  We had breakfast delivered to our room each day but one.  

The Mediocre: The food was nothing special, with the exception of the prime rib which was excellent.  The rest of the food was very ordinary.  I expected much more from their chef, and was left disappointed.  We even tried the Pinnacle Grill (you pay extra for this), and I had a rib-eye that was really 2 stars.  I personally make a better rib-eye at home.  Their Lido Dining Room food lines (pizza, etc.) were way too small for the amount of people that it served.  There were 2,199 people on board, and a lot of people would catch a quick something to eat here; the lines were way too long - the reason for this was they only offered a couple of things to eat here, so unless you wanted bread sticks or cold slices of pizza, you had to wait in quite a line to get it.  We normally had breakfast served in our room, but one night I forgot to hang the ticket on the door so we had to go up to the Lido Room (the main dining room was only open for breakfast ONE HOUR!  Needless to say, the Lido Room was a mad house trying to get breakfast.

The Bad: Sooooo disappointed in the watered-down drinks they served!  Truly an embarrassment.  They offered a "Pub Crawl" one night; $20 got you a drink in 4 bars on the ship.  Everyone was complaining about how what a rip-off the mixed drinks were.  You know you're going to pay extremely high prices for drinks on board a ship - but you should at least get a good drink.  These were terrible.  This appeared to be a systemic problem everywhere on board.  It was NOT limited to one or two bars.

For a 7-night cruise, there really wasn't a lot to do.  There was an indoor/outdoor pool (supposedly the top was on tracks that could roll open or closed, but it always seemed to be 3/4 closed) but it was like a steam room in that pool.  There was one other small "family" pool and that was it.  No water slides or anything interesting.

Don't plan on cruising with Holland America again.  Celebrity, Norwegian, and Royal Caribbean blow these guys away.