POH Review/long detailed version-5/28-6/4 2007

Back from our POH trip 5/28/07-6/4/07. Summary: AWESOME TRIP!

We usually go to San Diego or LA for our vacations. We heard so many mixed reviews about the NCLA cruises. We were a little concerned cuz of all the bad reviews especially regarding service. FYI – we usually put a do not disturb card on our hotel door when we vacation cuz we don’t want maids in our room going thru our stuff as we know many do. Since we heard so many people complain about the lack of service I made a decision from the start to tip our room steward in advance and believe me, we had terrific service. I’ll explain more in detail as you read. Our friends on the ship weren’t so lucky. They never even met their steward for several days then when they did see him, he was snotty so they weren’t happy campers at all. We overheard many people in the halls complaining about lack of service. About halfway thru the trip, we saw a girl in an elevator heading to the pool area to get towels cuz they hadn’t received clean towels since they arrived.

They are extremely short handed. They have the same staff doing everything from running the karaoke equipment late at night to getting people off the ship early the next morning. They run their butts off. Even though it may seem like you aren’t getting good service, a lot of it has to do with only 2 hands & a ton of work to do. It is NCLA fault, not necessarily the workers. I think it will help when they reflag the POH ship for Europe & only have the 2 ships in Hawaii. Many of the workers from POH may be on the other ships to help with the lack of employees.

I kept a daily diary of everything we experienced so here goes:

Monday, Memorial day in Honolulu, 5/28/07. Flight to HNL delayed out of LAX 1 hr. Got to the ship at 1:30pm. Embarkation went fast considering the long line. We thought it would take hours but it didn’t. Only about 30-40 minutes. Be aware that they will snap a picture of you against a green back drop when you first arrive. We weren’t prepared so I would have liked to clean up a little & straighten my shirt & hair for it. I’m telling you this cuz it is a great picture opportunity so take it seriously. We got a really nice 5x7 photo with the ship in the background and Pride of Hawaii across the bottom. We also received a another postcard with the same photo, our itinerary and date with the islands around it with a note on it that says “Wish you were here. Setting sail on the beautiful Pride of Hawaii. Hang loose!” It only cost us $15 so take that photo seriously as it will be a great memory of your trip.

When we arrived, our deck wasn’t ready so we were walking around the ship with our carry-on’s and it was a pain. They wouldn’t allow you onto deck 8 and a crew member was rude to us when we wanted to go up the stairs. But they announced deck 8 was ready about 10 minutes or so later. Some decks weren’t ready until late afternoon. We found our room after a maze of trying to find the section. Walking up & down many stairs carrying our bags with us trying to find our section. Many areas you have to find a different set of stairs & elevators to access the area. You can’t just walk across one entire deck from front to back. Once we found our room, it was very easy to find from that point on although I got turned around on the ship a lot. Thought I was walking toward the bow when I wasn’t. lol. Our luggage wasn’t in our room when we got there. In fact, it didn’t show up until about 9:45:mad: . One piece at a time the first arriving about 9pm. We had our luggage in our hand at the airport & we had to turn it over to NCL when we got the transfer to the ship on a bus. At least we knew it made it to Hawaii so if it didn’t show up, it was NCL’s fault, not the airline. We had an inside cabin right in the middle of the ship near the atrium. Directly above at deck 12 was the buffet so we were in a good spot.

We went to eat at the buffet in Aloha Nui café. We ate there a lot. Our first meal consisted of fresh sliced roast beef, BBQ ribs, baked potatoe, corn on the cob, coleslaw, & ice cream. Yummy. We went back to our room after a little touring of the ship. There was a letter on our door from the anniversary package confirmation. Still no chocolate covered strawberries & champagne but since we received the confirmation, we knew it was coming.

Water was on the sidewalk on deck 12 by the shuffleboard so I slipped & fell on my hip, video camera in hand. Caution, be aware of slippery flip flops near the water. I wasn’t hurt thank God. First day getting hurt would have been bad. I’m 44 so it hurts when you fall, lol!

Our room was nice & roomy for a basic cabin. Beds are really comfortable with 4 pillows. Bed was put together for us already & the TV had a personalized welcome greeting for us. Room was larger than I imagined so I was happy. We had bought pillows at Walmart & packed them with those vacuum bags cuz we weren’t sure if they would have good pillows. We never used them & left them behind. Their bedding was wonderful. I slept very well. There were 3 single outlets in the cabin. One for our alarm clock, one for video camera charger, and one for cell phone charger. Shower is really nice & spacious. Great water flow. There was a clothesline across the top of the shower but nothing would dry on it cuz of the moisture in the air & no air flow in the bathroom. There are supposed to be 3 self serve laundry’s on the ship but we never saw them. Room safe in the closet was neat. You make up your own 4 digit access code when you arrive & clear it when you leave. I had brought a shoe rack as recommended on CC but really didn't need it. In fact, I brought a lot of stuff that wasn't necessary at all. If I ever go again, I won't pack nearly as many things. I even overpacked clothes believe it or not.

We watched the sail away from deck 13 near the bow. Video taped our sail away from Honolulu & the ship let off a loud horn that sounded like a very loud tuba. They were passing out leis near the pool during sail away but since we weren’t near the pool, they were all gone by the time we got down to the pool on deck 12. Spinnaker would have been a good place to watch sail away but you probably wouldn’t have heard the horn. Windows all around the room with a bar to get drinks. We didn’t know it was there or we would have got out of the wind & gone inside & had a drink. Although the mai tais were getting to us already, lol. We watched the Na Pali coast from the Spinnaker lounge.

Cagney would not allow t-shirts, tanks or shorts even though luggage hadn’t arrived yet. They were turning people away. I was surprised.

Tuesday, Hilo - 5/29/07: Took Hilo Hatties free shuttle & got lots of souvenirs. They give you a shell lei too when you take their shuttle. Walmart was across the street so we made a Pepsi & water run for the ship. We hung out by the pool. We were on a “KIIM FM Country Cruise” through our radio station in Tucson so we got to attend special concerts for the group from Tucson. There were 348 people from Tucson on this trip so it was a blast. Craig Morgan was our performer on the ship & did special concerts for our group on Wednesday & Friday nights. Excellent concerts and I became a huge fan of Craig Morgan during this trip. His voice gave me chills in the Stardust Theatre. His whole family was with him. We had reservations for Cagneys Tuesday night. This turned out to be our only specialty restaurant reservation that was at a good time (6:30pm). Arrived at 6:20 & they seated us immediately. Best prime rib I’ve ever had. Melted in my mouth. Table next to us had dessert “Banana’s foster” I believe. It looked so good but I was stuffed & had no room for it so we skipped dessert. We went to the Medusa lounge to sing karaoke. More on karaoke later.

Met our room steward as we were walking out on day 2. I saw her in the hall with her cart and asked if she was our steward & she said yes. So I pulled her into the cabin and handed her a $10 bill wrapped around a kit kat bar and asked her to remove the contents in the fridge so we could make room for our soda & water. Fridge was full of expensive liquor & sods's with no room for our stuff. When we returned that night, our fridge was empty & our bed was turned down with chocolates on our pillows. I never asked for turndown service so I know the tip made a difference in our treatment. Everytime we passed her in the hall, we exchanged our good mornings –she was really nice. Her name was Diane Anderson.

Wednesday, Maui – 5/30/07: Took the shuttle to Thrifty car rental. I’m a blue chip member & they checked you off on the roster when you boarded the shuttle cuz they were sold out. You go to a different counter set aside for blue chip members but it really wasn’t any quicker. Paperwork is supposed to be ready for you so you just sign & go but none of our rentals worked out that way on any of the islands, grrrr. We asked for a GPS to help with our directions. Wasn’t worth the money cuz it kept giving us bad info & our destinations weren’t listed with the access code you have to enter. We never could figure out how to manually enter addresses so the unit was useless to us. Since they were sold out, they gave us a free upgrade to a Lincoln Town Car. I would have preferred a SUV or convertible upgrade. Parking the town car was hard cuz it is so big. The only parking near the Maui pier was good when we returned from Lahaina at 2pm. I read on CC that people park behind cars & trap them in. Thanks to CC pax for their warnings. I parked further down so nobody could block us in cuz we had an early snorkeling excursion the next day & we couldn’t be delayed by cars blocking us in. We saw cars parked illegally the next day so were glad we took precautions. Our spot had the road in front of us so if someone parked in front of us, they were parking in the middle of the road. We had parasailing reservations with UFO. We had a hard time finding them & called them from our cell phone several times trying to find them. They were on the beach – not a building so I thought it was rather diffucult. Next time, I’ll parasail in Kona. Parasailing was a blast. My DH & I got to fly together-tandem. Metal Mike was our captain. The other guy, can’t remember his name took pictures for us with his good camera. $20 for a roll of 12 pictures. They play metal music and an older couple on the boat wasn’t enjoying the music at all. We had fun though. We then stopped at Burgers in Paradise for lunch. Drove back to port to prepare for our luau that was scheduled to leave at 4pm. We went to the Royal Lahaina Luau arranged thru our radio station group. It wasn’t my cup of tea. More like a large wedding reception. 500 people sitting in 8 ft plastic tables with foldable chairs you can rent from parties plus. Hearded like cattle to the buffet lines. Food was pretty good & drinks were pretty strong but the show didn’t seem authentic to me. 3 males in the show. 2 were boys-about 18 and the third was an older guy about 50+. 4 girls in the show, probably early 20’s if I was to guess. Main emcee was a lady that seemed more of a comedian. Fire dancer was awesome and the rest of the group came out to do a fire dance portion. The ride back to the ship was long & tiring. I’m glad I didn’t have to drive back myself cuz I was very tired after a long day.

The breakfast buffet is fabulous on the ship. Pancakes, waffles, omelets, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, spam, fresh fruit, yogurt, cereal, coffee, orange & pinapple juices. Very yummy. Their oatmeal wasn’t good at all the day I tried it. Mushy & overcooked. I tried several times on the cruise to make dinner reservations. You can only book 2 days in advance so I would go down early in the morning to the counter to make reservations for the following night & the soonest I could get in to a restaurant was like 8:45 or 9pm. That is like midnight at home so no way I could do that. Since the buffet was nothing to complain about, I ate there most of the time & you could get in & out quickly too. We had a Le Bistro free dinner to use for our anniversary package & we could never get in early. I finally made reservations for the last night at 8:45pm. Craig Morgans concert that night then we went to Medusa to do karaoke.

Karaoke was disappointing. Me & my friends sing a lot of karaoke. I own over 100 cd’s of my own and I had brought all my favorite songs to sing as did my friends. They use a computer system so they couldn’t play any of our cd’s. We even asked them to hook up a cd player & we wouldn’t need the words on the screen cuz we have them memorized but they said no. Their song selections weren’t very good. I sing a wide variety of songs from classic rock to country & some pop. Very few of our favorites were on the list. Plus, they only have a song list by title. None by artist so you had to look thru the entire book to find a song to sing. They had about 30 songs by Backstreet Boys but not one song by the Wreckers, Lorrie Morgan, Sara Evans, Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks. They had one song & not the best choice of star artists like Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, etc. Then they would tear up your song sheet after you sang so the next time you go in, you have to look up the songs again in the book. Their staff was horrible too. Since they also do other jobs on the ship, they didn’t have any specialty. In fact, they started my song before announcing me. By the time I got up to the stage the song was partway through & they couldn’t figure out how to restart it. I finally started singing about ¾ thru the song since they couldn't figure out how to stop it then they replayed it thru the entire song after it finished. Hokey operation. The first night, there wasn’t anybody singing but me & my 2 friends. It got more popular throughout the cruise & people started putting their names in. They started to get a full house & everyone was having fun then they would quit at 10pm cuz they had another show to do in another lounge. It didn’t matter that everyone was having fun & wanted to continue. Everyone was spending money on drinks but they had to quit cuz the staff had to leave for another venture. Any other business would have continued cuz they are raking in the bucks with everyone buying drinks but they stopped the show.

Thursday, Maui – 5/31/07: Our car wasn’t trapped so we got to Maalea Bay at 7 am for our Molokini snorkel excursion on the Pride of Maui. I booked this particular excursion because it said they have a slide & glass bottom viewing. The glass bottom was one little area about 3’x6’ way down below. You couldn’t really get to it. The slide could only be used by the scuba divers onboard. Snorkeling my first time. It was fun. Very clear water. I didn’t think the coral was very pretty. Wasn’t colorful like you see on tv. Next stop was turtle town which had more coral & lots of big sea turtles. Water was murkey so visibility wasn’t the best but still ok for me. I had more fun here than at Molokini. Burgers for lunch & free mai tai’s were great. Returned the rental car & shuttled back to the ship around 2pm. I had left a note for Diane with a $5 bill wrapped around another kit kat bar asking for towel animals so I could take a picture for my kids & ice & water glasses. I got everything I asked for when we returned from snorkeling. She’s awesome. A friend of ours has a balcony down the hall from us & he hasn’t seen his steward & it took 2 days to get more towels. I think the extra tip helps. Everyday, I left a sticky note for our room steward acknowledging her service. I think that goes a long way too. If I didn’t need anything, I would just write “Diane, have a wonderful day, Mahalo for your service” & put a happy face on it. Everyone likes to be appreciated & acknowledged & we got excellent service because of the extra’s I did. It wasn’t like we were in a villa or suite. We just had a basic inside cabin & got better service than most we heard about. I got a towel animal 2 days in a row when I asked for it on one of my notes. The first time she gave me a dog that had a beaded necklace & star sunglasses – really cute. The next time was a swan. I took a picture side by side of them.

Friday, Kona – 6/1/07: What a beautiful place. This is my favorite place. Since it was a tender port, I didn’t plan on getting off the ship that day. It was going to be my rest day. We saw how pretty it was from the ship so we took the tender in. So glad we did. They had separate shuttles for Walmart, Kmart & Hilo Hatties. Lots of shops right by the tender port including an ABC store. They have jetski rentals, parasailing, body glove snorkeling, scuba divers, everything you need right there. They have a nice sandy beach to swim in too. We had shave ice. I wasn’t impressed. Just an expensive sno cone to me. My DH & I paid $8 for 2 sno cones. We thru away most of it. You could say it was a once in a lifetime experience cuz we’ll never do it again. Bought lots of souvenirs in Kona cuz it was really convenient.

Saturday, Kauai – 6/2/07: Got up early & we were able to watch us come into the port of Nawiliwili while eating breakfast at Aloha Nui café. Got off the boat pretty quickly. Lots of people holding excursions signs so there is a lot to do there. We only planned on getting a rental car & driving around so we saw our sign pointing to rental car shuttles & hopped on the Thrifty shuttle. We didn’t get upgraded cuz they weren’t sold out. Again, blue chip didn’t help but lines weren’t long so it didn’t take long anywhere to get a car. We went to Walmart, Kmart & Costco trying to get our film developed from the underwater camera & our parasailing pictures. Walmart equipment was broken & Kmart stopped doing 1 hr developing. Costco to our rescue. We had good maps so we decided against the GPS here. Didn’t need it anyway. We drove to Wailua Falls. Easy to find and a quick drive from Lihue. Continued North to Lydgate beach park. We swam there in their lava rock protected beach. Lots of fish in there and people were snorkeling all around us to see the fish close up. We could see the fish easily cuz the water is clear, sandy & no deeper than my shoulders. If we would have known this, we would have stopped to rent or buy snorkel gear. Wish we had. ABC store had them for sale around $20-$30 & you could rent them for the day too all over the place including Snorkel Bob’s. We continued North toward Princeville. Beautiful island & the drive was fantastic. There are a lot of one lane bridges so caution is needed when going across them. We went all the way to the dead end road which is where Ke’e beach is. We ran into our friends by surprise that had been scuba diving there that day. They showed us where to stand to see the NaPali coastline. We also walked to the lavatube that we had passed on the way up the road. Headed back toward Lihue & stopped at the Opaaeka falls for some photo shots. Picked up our pictures at Costco & returned rental car. Went to buffet for dinner cuz restaurants were full. Went to karaoke again in the Medusa. They were calling me the karaoke queen. First night that Diane didn’t give us turn down service. Although, we never asked for it and never turned our dial on the doorway asking for it either.

Sunday, Kauai – 6/3/07: Walked to local port shops in Kauai. Bought lots more souvenirs. Walked along the beachfront along the Marriott beach resort. If I ever come to Kauai & need a place to stay, this is it. So pretty. Their pool is really cool. Big pool with fountains & bridge to cross over to the other side cuz it is so large. Lion statues spitting out water over the pool was neat. Back to the ship to start packing. Our bags had to be out before we went to bed and we had another Craig Morgan party to attend. We got a picture with Craig Morgan and got autographs too. Watched the sail by NaPali coast while we partied with Craig Morgan and our radio morning crew. Lots of fun but the party was almost over…sigh. We bought Craig Morgan a drink. Ate dinner at Le Bistro. Our reservations were for 8:45 but we went there at 7:45 to see if they could take us early and they said of course & seated us by the large window that overlooked the ocean. We clearly saw the water/wake beside us from this massive ship moving along really fast. Once she starts going, she hauls butt, lol. We had signed up for EZ fly so we put our checked bags out in the hall. It took awhile to get our EZ fly baggage tags & boarding passes. It came later in the evening & we only had 3 out of 4 boarding passes. Went to the desk & they said to mention it at the airport to get another boarding pass but that was a pain cuz there were lots of people standing in line trying to change seating assignments. I would recommend booking your own flights even if it costs more $. The cost is worth avoiding the headache of going thru NCL. Even Craig Morgans wife had to sit by herself at the back of the plane. They couldn’t even sit together as a family. Ridiculous. Many people were upset that they couldn’t sit with their loved ones especially on an overnight flight. double:mad:

Monday, final day in Honolulu/Oahu – 6/4/07: Only day it rained on us but it was only spitting off & on throughout the day. We could see rain in the distance in Kona & Maui but we never got rained on until Oahu. But even in Oahu it wasn't pouring down. Just spotty rain. Debarkation was smooth & easy. We ate breakfast at the buffet & showered for the final time. Put our remaining stuff in the carryon bags & got off the ship at about 7:40am. We rented a car from Thrifty airport location & we had a prepaid transfer from the ship to the airport so I thought it would be easier to transfer to the airport then shuttle over to Thrifty. Turns out some people we knew took the thrifty shuttle from the pier to the airport & got there just after us. We weren't sure if the Thrifty shuttle would take us to the airport as they told us to call the airport location to request a shuttle. If we had known the airport was sending a shuttle, we would have done that. We had a hard time getting a shuttle from the airport over to the rental place. Signs all over for Avis, Hertz, National, Budget but nothing for Thrifty. We just had to flag a thrifty bus down when saw it. Either way, you get a car. Went to Pearl Harbor. Got to the ticket counter at 9:45 and our tour was at noon so we had quite a wait. After the PH tour, we headed to punchbowl cemetery then drove to University of Hawaii at Manoa. Our daughter is considering going to college there. We got a GPS unit this time cuz we had places we had to go see and again it got us all messed up. It helped at times but still got us turned around & lost several times. We headed to Red Lobster near the Ala Moana mall. The GPS unit would tell us to turn right when we should have turned left, then it would say recalculating position and say make a u turn when safe. Geez. What a pain in the butt. We turned it off & started driving by my maps. I tried to find Red Lobster & we passed it then because of all the oneway streets, we got lost & couldn’t find our way back to Ala Moana blvd. I got confused on which direction we were heading and had to plug the GPS unit back in. We entered the code for Ala Moana mall & we parked at the mall and walked to Red Lobster. It wasn’t very far from there. Maybe ¼ mile. We returned the rental car & went to the airport to wait for our 10pm flight. Flight home was horrible. Flight left at 10pm and arrived at Denver airport at 8:15am the next day. We had a 5 hour layover in Denver & we were so tired. Couldn’t sleep on the plane cuz people put their seats back & cram your knees, you can’t move:mad: . My feet swelled up like elephant legs cuz of no circulation. I will not put my seat back on an airplane because I’m not a selfish person. I know I don’t like it when people do it to me so I won’t do it to the people behind me. Just my opinion. Denver kept changing our departure gate everyone from Tucson was moving from gate to gate playing musical chairs. Finally arrived at Tucson airport at 2:15pm and boy were we tired. Only sleep I got was laying on the floor in the Denver airport & that wasn’t good sleep. About an hour of hearing the announcements but I found a darker spot upstairs away from the crowds & could at least rest a little on the floor.

Note, lots of photo opportunities in the atrium. Take advantage of it & get your photo’s taken. We had photographer take our freestyle pictures so my DH could wear his baseball cap & shorts so he didn’t complain about getting his picture taken, lol . We got a photo of us surfing together and another with a sunset behind us. We took a black & white picture another night with a piano & we didn’t like those too much so we didn't waste the $ on it. Considering the 8x10’s were $25 each, we just bought the 2 freestyle photo’s. Make sure to look at your pictures that were taken throughout the cruise including the ones you take with the costume guys as you exit the ship (one with a shark & another with a dolphin). Those pictures are only about $15. They have all your pictures on display in the photo area near the atrium. Excellent memories.

Does anyone have any questions or did I cover everything? See lots of people reading the review but no comments yet so just wondering.

Since we heard so many people complain about the lack of service I made a decision from the start to tip our room steward in advance and believe me, we had terrific service.

I parked further down so nobody could block us in cuz we had an early snorkeling excursion the next day & we couldn’t be delayed by cars blocking us in. We saw cars parked illegally the next day so were glad we took precautions. Our spot had the road in front of us so if someone parked in front of us, they were parking in the middle of the road.

Karaoke was disappointing.

I would recommend booking your own flights even if it costs more $. The cost is worth avoiding the headache of going thru NCL.

Well despite a few glitches, it sounds like you had a great time. Did you not do anything in Hilo though?

Nice review thanks for posting.

Good review! I was there too and had a great time.

I found the crew to be the friendliest I've ever had on a NCL ship!

My cabin steward, was invisible, never turned down my bed, never left me a mint, but she did make me one towel animal. On the other hand... she never disturbed me, always left my room spotless and well stocked. The one time I had laundry coming (and forgot about it, having my do not disturb sign out) she took the time to call and ask if I wanted now or later. I told her to come on down... with in minutes she was at my door with a big smile, and presented my clean clothing nicely folded wrapped in tissue and laid in a nice basket.

I think if I had asked for turn down she would have, but it didn't make that big of a difference to me... and I think she was in one of the hot crew cabins.

Room service was a bit slow at times, but they did have a great sense of humor. The first night I called down for cheesecake and coffee, and a very fearful voice responded... You know about the air problem? Well we can't keep the cheesecake cool either. Would you like something else?" That's OK I probably didn't need all those calories either, just surprise me.

Ten minutes later a had a BIG pot of hot coffee and a plate full of cookies. Best of all he thanked me for not being upset about the cheesecake.

Each night I ordered the cookies, then the last night.... "We have cheesecake!" He remembered the first night's order. Trust me the cookies were much better than the cheesecake. ;-)

The internet was slow... however I think it is on every ship. What was different was the young guy running the internet cafe. He was there most of the time, willing to help folks and just darn right friendly.

The photo dept. does have a weak link. One of the guys really knows his stuff, however there would appear to be a rookie in the mix. One of my photos was out of focus, a mother and daughter were upset when they saw theirs... lens flare on the mother. This may now be taken care of... I showed my picture to the experienced one, and told them about the other one I had seen.

Over all as far as NCL goes... I would give the service crew a 9.5 and NCL a 5. The real problem was not because of the service staff, but the higher ups. They knew there were air problems, and should have addressed the problem head on.

My family and I were with you for the first day but then had to abandon the ship in Hilo due to a medical emergency.

I'm glad that you had such a great time and I'm totally jealous that you got to complete the cruise. We did, however, manage to enjoy the 18 hours that we actually were on board. As a result, I'll just read your review and relive it vicariously!:D

Service I'm kind of surprised that your group didn't arrange for the karaoke when they booked -- especially since it was a music-oriented group.

Karaoke wasn't part of our arrangements and I'm only aware of a couple of us on the "Country Cruise" that sang karaoke.

Did you not do anything in Hilo though? We didn't make plans for Hilo and figured we needed rest. I'm not much of a volcano (VNP) fan so we just took the Hilo Hatties shuttle to shop a little & relax at the pool. Pretty tired since we didn't have a pre-cruise stay planned due to work commitments.

My cabin steward, was invisible.....

Invisible is fine as long as you got decent service. Others on the cruise had to get towels from pool deck so they weren't even taken care of at all so that would make me mad. At least we were taken care of lol:p .

 

... You know about the air problem? Well we can't keep the cheesecake cool either. Wow, first I heard about cooling/air problems.

The real problem was not because of the service staff, but the higher ups. Definately leadership needs to make some changes. Service staff was short handed which isn't their fault.

My family and I were with you for the first day but then had to abandon the ship in Hilo due to a medical emergency. OMG, I hope everyone is okay now:eek:

Even with a few glitches, our trip was great and I'd do it again if I could afford it. I didn't want to come home!

Thanks for the very informative review. I will be on the Diamond Princess to Hawaii in December and can't wait. Your review gave me many ideas and I appreciate your sharing your cruise with us.

Yukon111-

Thanks for you concern. Yes, everyone is fine now (with the exception of my 6-year old nephew who is still heartbroken). Thank God for travel insurance!!

Yukon, I was on your cruise, and you couldn't go 5 feet without meeting somebody from Arizona. :)

How many people were in your party? And did you or people you know use the dial outside your room for service? I ask the first question because for reservations, we got exactly what we wanted, when we wanted (between 5 and 7:30 usually), every single day, with no problems - but we were a party of two. And about that dial, we used it and had spectacular service, including non-bribed turn-down service with chocolates and towel animals. I think on three nights we arrived back at our room relatively early and were there right before our steward was about to turn us down, she offered to do it right away but we didn't care, just needed new towels (we were quite active, thus showered a lot). Every time, she gave us our towels and handfuls of mints. Seriously I had so many Andes mints I couldn't eat them all and ultimately left at least 12 in the room (that I wish I had right now). But the dial is key to great service.

I loved the concept of the karaoke rooms on that ship, my wife and I went multiple times. Unfortunately the selection is twisted (the complete works of the Beatles next to the complete works of N'Sync?) and the lyrics are horribly translated, but it's still fun to lock yourself in a private room, even if the remotes are 90% unworkable. :)

Thanks for the great review ... I'll make sure to bring some bribe money and kit-kats. ;)

My wife and I, along with our 2 and a half year old daughter, will be going on the POH in July, and are trying to gain some info. Did you happen to hear from any of your fellow passengers about how they enjoyed any of the excursions listed below? We generally intend to rent a car and do our own thing, but we'd like to also mix in a few excursions.

The excursions we're considering are:

- Atlantis Submarine

- Sunset Cocktail Cruise (obviously, no cocktails for the little one)

- Kailua Glass Bottom Boat

- Kona Nature Cruise and Dolphins

- Magical seahorse Discovery

- Jungle Falls

- Luau Kalamaku

Any others that you heard were great?

Thanks so much!

Yukon, I was on your cruise, and you couldn't go 5 feet without meeting somebody from Arizona. :)

 

How many people were in your party? And did you or people you know use the dial outside your room for service? I ask the first question because for reservations, we got exactly what we wanted, when we wanted (between 5 and 7:30 usually), every single day, with no problems - but we were a party of two. And about that dial, we used it and had spectacular service, including non-bribed turn-down service with chocolates and towel animals. I think on three nights we arrived back at our room relatively early and were there right before our steward was about to turn us down, she offered to do it right away but we didn't care, just needed new towels (we were quite active, thus showered a lot). Every time, she gave us our towels and handfuls of mints. Seriously I had so many Andes mints I couldn't eat them all and ultimately left at least 12 in the room (that I wish I had right now). But the dial is key to great service.

 

I loved the concept of the karaoke rooms on that ship, my wife and I went multiple times. Unfortunately the selection is twisted (the complete works of the Beatles next to the complete works of N'Sync?) and the lyrics are horribly translated, but it's still fun to lock yourself in a private room, even if the remotes are 90% unworkable. :)

There were 348 of us from Tucson on the cruise however, we weren't all together doing things. When I booked dinner reservations it was just for the 2 of us. Earliest I could get in was 8:45pm and that was when I tried to reserve for the next day. Various times I would go to the reservation desk cuz the telephone line would be busy. I rarely went down first thing in the morning so that could be the reason. Usually early afternoon when I'd try to reserve for the following evening dinner. We were successful at Cagneys on day 2 and that was about it. We had an anniversary package for a dinner & wine at Le Bistro and every time I tried to make reservations, it was a late reservation. They even said all restaurants were sold out at times. We really only wanted to try Cagneys & Le Bistro & maybe the mexican place. We were quite content with the buffet but I really wanted to use the free dinner at Le Bistro. I ended up making a reservation for 8:45 on the last night of our cruise. I stopped at the restaurant at 7:45 to see if they could squeeze us in early and they were more than happy to accomodate us and put us at the best table in the house. I think my mistake was going thru the reservation desk.

As for service, I never had any issues. My cabin steward was awesome. I was just reporting what other people experienced. Even though our group was a large one, we arranged independently with the travel agent and were spread out all over the ship. Not everyone that complained were from our group so it had nothing to do with our group. It is NCL's fault for being understaffed. It was a luck of the draw as to whether you got decent service or not. My friends had gone with their boss from work. The boss had a garden villa and could not get service to save their life. My friends were in a balcony cabin & couldn't get service on the same deck as me. It just depends on who was your room steward & if they were a good worker or not. I might mention that NCL has a program to reward their best called STYLE and I was sure to report all the good things that my steward did for us.

Did you happen to hear from any of your fellow passengers about how they enjoyed any of the excursions listed below? We generally intend to rent a car and do our own thing, but we'd like to also mix in a few excursions.

 

The excursions we're considering are:

- Atlantis Submarine

- Sunset Cocktail Cruise (obviously, no cocktails for the little one)

- Kailua Glass Bottom Boat

- Kona Nature Cruise and Dolphins

- Magical seahorse Discovery

- Jungle Falls

- Luau Kalamaku

 

Any others that you heard were great?

 

Thanks so much!

I didn't hear about any of the excursions you mentioned except the Kona dolphin cruise & heard it was awesome. Everyone I was with did the luau thru our travel agent in Maui so we never heard anything about the Kauai luau thru NCL. Other excursions are just a matter of opinion I guess. I heard great things about the road to hana but I didn't want to do it. VNP feedback was great too but I'm not personally into volcanos. I enjoyed snorkeling at Molokini & Turtle Town but if I was to do it again, I think I would try the Body Glove in Kona as I heard that is good. Hope that helps.

Regarding the seating problems on the plane, I'm assuming that no one bothered to contact the airline in advance to arrange seating? I have NCL airfare for our cruise next week (from NJ) and I got the record locator from my TA and was able to pull it up on United's site and got our seats arranged. They had put us next to each other, but we have 2 cabins (w/kids) so I was able to get our airplane seats closer.

Also, when getting air from NCL, both the cruise and airfare got a lot cheaper, certainly cheaper than I could have bought it myself.

I still can't see what seats we have been assigned! The reservation ONLY shows up. :confused: