A couple of months ago I posted a message about reading scary reviews about the Maasdam. I was on the verge of cancelling our cruise. Well, we just returned from 13 days onboard (Dec 22-Jan4) and I have to say that we loved the ship! My husband and I have been on over 20 cruises in the past, but have not sailed HAL in about 20 years. We have been mostly sailing with Celebrity and RCCL in the past few years on large ships. While I think Celebrity is great, the Maasdam just blew the doors off of the Infinity and Millenium. First of all, the dinners in the main dinning room were constanly excellent, and always of high quality. My husband, who is a chef, could not make one negative comment about the dinners. The ship was incredibly clean and well maintained. Yes, we did experience the famous toilet not flushing problem once, but that was quickly resolved and really did not inconvenience us for more than 5 minutes. The ship is about half the size of what we are used to, so it rocked a bit more than the others, and my 15 year old daughter was sea sick a couple of days, but we got used to the motion pretty quickly. The main advantages of this ship are the crew (fantastic) and the small size makes for a more friendly environment amoungst the passengers. I have to say that we made many new friends on this ship, which is something that does not happen on the big ships. We throughly enjoyed our new "neighborhood" on the Maasdam, and had a blast.
I owe the Maasdam a fantastic review!
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