Cruising Rob's Blog: Eurodam Coastal Trip Review

Activities on board adhered the typical HAL guiding principles of daytime enrichment and informal entertainment followed by nighttime performance and music entertainment with the occasional educational skew. Unlike several other cruise lines, you won't find an army of cruise director foot soldiers; I only ever really heard from the main Cruise Director once per day.

Specifically, the big headliners during the day time were enrichment talks branded as part of the EXC program which were informative and generally enjoyable to go to, although not greatly attended. That could have been more of a reflection on the itinerary than anything else. I'm not a huge fan of the Microsoft courses as they seem to be relatively basic and a bit of a sales gimmick to get folks to see how much the new version of Windows can do. I didn't get much out of the one I attended on photo editing as I'm already fairly well versed with Microsoft products. For some it's probably great. I wish they would have some "advanced" courses maybe in programming or advanced photo and video editing. The partnership between HAL and Microsoft seems to be getting a bit long in the tooth and I'm not sure either partner sees the program as a benefit anymore.

America's Test Kitchen cooking demos were refreshing and informative They serve as less of a cooking class and more of a cooking optimization course with the focus on really perfecting staple cooking techniques and helping aspiring home chefs find shortcuts and hacks to save time and money in the kitchen. I highly recommend these courses. Additionally, the on-demand TV system in cabins have several seasons of the America's Test Kitchen show in a DVR format that can be watched at anytime.

The big 3 evening entertainment aspects were comprised of orchestrated chamber performances in the Lincoln Center Stage venue, rock and roll and blues in either the Billboard Onboard area or the Queen's Lounge/America's Test Kitchen venue, and showcases or entertainers in the Mainstage lounge. Everything was quite good, although I really liked the live music and dueling pianos (they looked like twins!), and the whole setup adjacent to the Casino really activated the space.

Eggs Benedict - a HAL classic

East meets west late night snack?

A delicious breakfast

Food is so subjective but the buffet food was always good, lines weren't bad, however there seemed to be limited variety with an asian/exotic station, a carving station, a desert station, and a salad bar pretty much every day for lunch and dinner. The DiveIn burger bar was efficient and good. I didn't try the NY slice pizza bar since you received a whole pizza and had to wait - I suppose other lines have spoiled me with the instant slice always hot and ready.

Drinks seemed to be a bit expensive however there were buy one, get one for $2 specials. On the last day I could have sworn I heard a waiter advertising "buy 3 beers, get 3 free" which seemed to be too good to be true.