holland vs carnival

[sassyredhat]

OK here is my two cents. :D

 

We are in our mid-60's and have sailed both. HAL is our line of choice, but they don't have the golf packages DH likes. CCL does a great job with that.

 

We have never had bad food on CCL but HAL is more elegant. There are never a million kids running around, or 20-30 something's with loud behavior on any HAL cruise I have been on.

 

CCL has the edge for the night life, but HAL does have nice music.

 

We sail for relaxation, and that's what we get with HAL. I'm normally awake at 5:30 AM, but during sea days on HAL, DH has to wake me up at 10:30. :)

 

As you can see, we have 2 CCL cruises scheduled, but 2012 belongs to HAL !!!

 

Pat

[msbr]

Could not have asked for better timing on this thread. We are looking at our annual cruise and thinking about jumping ship from Carnival or RCCL and trying HAL. Our only hesitation is that we do have DDs~ 15 & 13. They have never been crazy in love with the programs for kids on board and typically spend their vacation as each others best buddies. My question: is HAL family friendly in that my DDs will be welcome or is it more like Regent, and catering to a target audience of adults and couples?

[airlink diva]

We have cruised quite a few times on Carnival and a few times on HAL. We have also cruised on Celebrity and NCL. We enjoyed them all. But we seem to always come back to Carnival or HAL. The prices on the Carnival ships we enjoy..usually the bigger, newer ones are not that much, in any, less than HAL. So that is not the main factor.

Carnival..Better CD's. Better Activities that we enjoy..Trivia, Sports Trivia, Tri-bon, Scattergories. Casinos are bigger. We like the food better on Carnival..we usually eat in the MDR and think their breakfasts there cannot be beat. Ditto lunch. We like the atmosphere...People are excited to be on the ship, many for their first cruise, everything is new..and their enjoyment is contagious.

HAL..while we don't use the pool (live in Fl), they are nice, uncrowded, few children, those there seem supervised. We find Few, if any lines, on the Lido deck Restaurants and grills. There is never a crowd. At times, it is almost like you and your DH are on the ship with just the crew. A huge yacht. Food is good. The Casinos we have seen..small, old slots, very tight...crowding causes sharp words sometimes. Not much but still...Few veteran cruisers who seem to resent anyone who has not cruised 100 times with HAL even being on the ship.

SAME--service is excellent on both, both ships are clean, both ships have, I thought, very good song and dance productions

We are sailing next on the Dream..because we really had fun with the Activities staff on the Freedom..Hello, James and we understand they are on the Dream. Sports Trivia Daily..please James. His lovely wife was the lead singer..and we both think she should be on American IdoL. Carnival is like that....easy, staff is accessible, fun...But I must say the CD on the HAL Westerdam..was good too. We would enjoy sailing with an activities staff under him again too..But that Crew with James...Just delightful.

I am being very honest. I like the lady who said take the top..take the low..throw them out..the truth is in the middle. Well Said.

 

So well said!!!

I primary sail on Carnival and Holland America and find some things on each that I love.

The one thing that Holland America have an edge is ports and days of the cruise. I love the longer cruises and the ports that are offered.

To me, both are a great choice

[JesterPlaying]

To be honest I don't think I would of ever sailed HAL if it wasn't for a quilting cruise my wife wanted to take. Before that we had only sailed Carnival, primarily for the price but also I like the activity aboard. Sure there is partying but I always found that if I needed peace and quiet I can always get away from it. The ships are big enough to.

 

On that quilting cruise I learned that some of the old style cruising was still available. Something I experienced as a kid with my Grandparents. HAL offers more port intensive trips and I got to say they tired me out more than any other cruise. I even stopped considering HAL a relaxing cruise because of so many places to see. It was nice to come home to a elegant dinner and not feeling like I had to stay up and see all the action.

 

So to sum it up, for me Carnival has the life and HAL has the experiences. Each has a place in my vacation plans. This year we booked HAL because of where it went. Is it a little too old? Yes it is. It wouldn't kill them to consider not all of us onboard grew up with Big Bands and Lawrence Welk. But old and classy has its place.

[baby]

thanks for all the responses

 

i saw pictures of the carnival glory and valor - and well - could not picture myself on those ships, so

 

we shall see

 

thanks

[FrankNJ]

Why do I constantly see these posts about Hal that everyone was great "except the front office" ? My experience with the front desk / office on Eurodam last year almost made me give up Hal for good ! And we loved everything else about the Eurodam !

We sail on the Noordam March 15 and I really hope not too many have had bad experiences with that front desk . If we do , I'll just assume that those people go through some different training than the rest of the crew , which in our experience is always great on Hal.

[mmlrml]

Could not have asked for better timing on this thread. We are looking at our annual cruise and thinking about jumping ship from Carnival or RCCL and trying HAL. Our only hesitation is that we do have DDs~ 15 & 13. They have never been crazy in love with the programs for kids on board and typically spend their vacation as each others best buddies. My question: is HAL family friendly in that my DDs will be welcome or is it more like Regent, and catering to a target audience of adults and couples?

 

We did a 20 day HAL Mediterranean cruise in July/Aug 2008 with our then 16, 14 and 11 year old sons. Since it was summer vacation there were lots of kids aboard and my sons all made great friends. We felt the kids were very welcome on the cruise and all three of them had a great time! If you are traveling during school vacation then you will find that HAL cruises have a lot of families with children aboard. There were lots of activities and programs geared towards kids throughout our cruise. HAL has a teen hangout called the Loft which my 16 year old really enjoyed. And the Disco is teens only until 11 pm.

[twinkletoes4445]

Why do I constantly see these posts about Hal that everyone was great "except the front office" ? My experience with the front desk / office on Eurodam last year almost made me give up Hal for good ! And we loved everything else about the Eurodam !

We sail on the Noordam March 15 and I really hope not too many have had bad experiences with that front desk . If we do , I'll just assume that those people go through some different training than the rest of the crew , which in our experience is always great on Hal.

 

We've never had a problem with the front desk. The ones working there were always friendly and courteous to us. :)

 

We were on the Noordam in Feb. 2009 and had no complaints ... about anything. It was a perfect cruise. The cruise prior to that was on the Zuiderdam and it was also perfect. We were worried that the Noordam cruise wouldn't stack up to the Zuiderdam cruise, but it did. We loved the Noordam (10 days is perfect for us) that we booked it again. :)

 

I am sure a lot has changed since our 2009 cruise, but here's info from our Noordam cruise (menus, daily papers, prices, movies, photos, and other things). Scroll down to post #6. :)

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=22506707&posted=1#post22506707

 

This is our sailing of the Noordam leaving FLL. It's cool because I found hubby and myself in the video. We're at the back of the ship near the stairs.

 

 

Happy cruising...