Greetings All, We had the pleasure to sail on the Maasdam on the 11 day Southern Caribbean itinerary from Norfolk on the November 8th sailing. As I have not sailed with Holland America since 1995, I was looking forward to this cruise and to experience their Signature of Excellence upgrades. In a few words, I really enjoyed the upgrades, the Maasdam and the Holland America experience.

The Maasdam though a smaller ship, just under 56,000 tons and came into service in 1993 is looking fabulous. This ship and it's staff was wonderful. The public rooms are classy and the expanded Explorer's lounge and library was a wonderful place to mingle, play board games (scrabble in particular), to jigsaw puzzles, check emails, etc. They also have a specialty coffee shop there also. By the way, you still can get cappuccino's and espresso in the dinning room free.

It's been a long while since I booked an inside cabin, but was very pleased with the spaciousness. We had four in our cabin and had plenty of cabin and drawer space. The stateroom had two lower beds, a couch which made into a bed and a bed that recessed out of the ceiling. The bathroom was typical size and during the ships refurbishment must have been re-tiled. It was clean and actually two people could use the mirror area at the same time. We were on Deck 5 main deck. The cabin had a 20-in flat screen TV and DVD player which they had an entire library of DVD rentals or you could play the one's you may have brought with you. Cost on the DVD rentals was $3.00 and I believe you could keep them two days, we were too busy to rent DVD's, but a nice offering. The upgraded bed, linens and bath linens and amenities were welcomed. It was one of the most comfortable beds I have slept in on a cruise ship ever. Our cabin steward and staff was very efficient. We never left the cabin not to have the cabin made up or turned down for the evening completed. Read more