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Holland America Line

MS Noordam

Your Rating:
Leslie Mansur
# previous cruises: 1
Date of Trip: December 18, 2000
Itinerary: Caribbean

I will NEVER travel on HAL line again. My sister and I were traveling with our disabled grandmother and we were treated poorly by the staff. The handicap facilities were non-existent, even though my grandmother reserved a handicap room. If anyone is considering going on a HAL cruise and you will need assistance, please reconsider and research the facilities on another line.

With the exception of the dining room tables, the only other place we found on board the ship where my grandmother could pull her wheelchair up to a table was in the card room. The staff in the card room treated us rudely, because we were writing post cards during their bridge seminar, but we had no place else to go.

The staff in the dining room were the only ones who paid any attention to us on the whole trip. It seemed like the rest of the staff chose to ignore us completely rather than deal with someone with a disability. The food and service in the dining room was excellent. Room service was also good.

The handicap room my grandmother was in was not handicap accessible. It appeared they had taken a regular bathroom and added bars on one wall to help with the toilet. The toilet was not sitting up any higher, so my grandmother still needed assistance to get up from the toilet. When she showered, the entire bathroom floor got wet, because there was nothing to keep the water in the shower. In fact, if the boat was rocking, the water ran out the bathroom door and onto the carpet in the room.

The shows were good, although we had "stake out" our seats a few hours early in order for my grandmother to be able to see from her wheelchair. And again, the staff chose to ignore us when it came to taking drink orders and such. We had to get up to find someone to wait on us.

Although the HAL information book stated that they would be responsible for embarking and disembarking of disabled passengers, my grandmother was treated so roughly when embarking (she slid out of her wheelchair and lost a shoe) that she was afraid to get off the ship any other time. My sister and I were afraid to go off and leave her for too long, but the ports we did see were fun. And of course the Panama Canal was amazing.

My sister and I are in our late twenties and early thirties. We were some of the younger crowd. We only saw a couple of children. I would say this was mostly a 50+ crowd.