alexisaboard

I don’t have a solution for that nor was that the focus of my post. We are in our 30s and were not among those griping about the evacs - despite our age we have the good sense to know that it could be any of us who got sick, broke a bone, etc., and needed serious medical intervention and we would have been grateful to the ship for taking good care of us. But such a preponderance of evacs does color the experience a bit. I was conservative in my post, other friends we made on the trip said they counted 6 total evacuations. As I stated, I developed a sinus infection - on the night I spent in medical, they had 3 emergencies. The doctor said she had spent every cruise on her contract so far in a constant state of triage. And our fellow passengers were not behaving responsibly in my opinion. There was a constant chorus of unmasked coughs (not just people clearing their throats) each of the 3 times we sat in the theater waiting for excursions, and then we sat on buses with people with productive coughs. We were masked and I feel lucky to have walked away with a simple sinus infection. (We wound up isolated and tested 3x times before being “released”, for anyone curious)

I’m surprised not to see mention of the dozens of buckets spread throughout the ship, across all decks, collecting dripping water from the ceiling. I work in hospitality - we would be terribly embarrassed if this were our guests’ experience. It seemed as though every other person I spoke with either had a toilet fail or AC break, or both. In our case, it was both. My husband got food poisoning, I got an ear infection. As far as shipwide experiences go: Significantly delayed embarkation, 2 cancelled ports (leaving a total of 4 ports for a 14 day cruise), 3 medical evacuations (not counting the two ambulances that met us at Port Everglades), 1/2 pools open for the first 5 days, menus on the app/TV never quite seemed to match up with the offerings in the lido. The crew was phenomenal, but the Zuiderdam is on her last legs. It’s really rather appalling that HAL does not have more shame. The buckets collecting dripping water really say it all. And that was across all decks, from deck 1 to deck 10. We made wonderful friends and had a great time overall. We have a good attitude and are easy-going, pretty easy to please. But these issues, on paper, paint a pretty grim picture. As one of our new friends said, it felt like we were on the holodeck or an episode of the Twilight Zone. Something was just off on this voyage.