Cruise ship review: Holland America's Zaandam

What's it like to sail on a Holland America ship? USA TODAY's cruise review site, VacationCruisesInfo.com, offers a glimpse this week in an in-depth review of the line's Zaandam.

At 53 pages, it's the most extensive appraisal ever of the 1,432-passenger Zaandam to be posted online, and it includes more than 1,000 photos showing nearly every interior and exterior space of the ship.

Overall, the reviewer found the Zaandam to be just average in its offerings.

"Though we wouldn't recommend against sailing on Zaandam, we also didn't find much to get excited about,' the reviewer writes, noting an "uneven" dining experience and "depressingly old-school" entertainment.

The reviewer also criticizes the smoky smell on one of the vessel's main public decks near the casino, where smoking is allowed, noting that "it was usually impossible to pass through mid-ship on this deck without inhaling a stiff dose of smoke."

Still, the Zaandam "didn't try to get in the way of the destination," the reviewer writes, and "for us, letting the destination shine was a good thing ... it made our cruise an enjoyable one in the end."

Visit VacationCruisesInfo.com to view the full Zaandam review, which was written by one of the site's in-house, anonymous reviewers. As with all VacationCruisesInfo.com reviews, the reviewer traveled on the vessel incognito and at USA TODAY's expense.

Launched in October 2011, VacationCruisesInfo.com was designed in collaboration with Reviewed.com, a network of online review publications recently acquired by USA TODAY, and it's devoted to helping would-be cruisers find the perfect ship.

VacationCruisesInfo.com is the first cruise review site to use anonymous reviewers. Unlike reviewers at other sites, VacationCruisesInfo.com reviewers never will travel on free cruises provided by cruise lines, nor will they base their reviews on cruise line-arranged "preview" or "press" cruises for travel writers or any other sailing where their presence on a ship is known.