Hawaii Cruise Reviews

The cruise was really nice and we enjoyed getting around to the other islands in a convenient way. However, the population of guests was mostly older and the boat didn't have a lot for young people. I was also very upset that the boat and staff did nothing for us since we were on our honeymoon. We paid $5,000 to be on this boat for one week and they didn't upgrade us, give us a bottle of champagne or even a little cake. They gave cakes to people with birthdays and celebrating anniversaries, but nothing for our honeymoon? It was honestly kind of rude.

We enjoyed our Hawaiian cruise. It was great to see so many islands on one trip! The food on the cruise ship was ok. I was disappointed with the special (extra) dining. The food was not worth the price. We should have just gone to the complimentary restaurants. Otherwise, it was a great experience!

Again, great itinerary but poor cruise experience. Norwegian needs to get a more updated, modern ship and find a way to hire happier crew overall. If this were my first cruise experience, it may have been my last!

I strongly recommend the POA Hawaiian cruise with Norwegian.  We left Honolulu on June 24th, 2017 returning on July 1st, 2017.  From start to finish it was a wonderful trip.  The staff were all very helpful and professional. Our cabin was lovely and was very clean.  Our cabin steward, Eston, was always available in case we needed anything.  The ports of call are perfect.  You have plenty of time to go ashore and do so many great activities.  The food was great!  We only ate at the buffet once; we preferred the "sit-down" restaurants.  They were quieter and you get personalized service.  We also upgraded our dining for 3 nights, eating at 3 of the restaurants available.  They were all wonderful.  We could not possibly eat all of the food available to us at the Brazilian restaurant.  The steakhouse was really good; we were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary.  We were pleasantly surprised with a serenade from our wait staff!  The entire trip was great.  We loved the ability to just "walk off" with our luggage the day of disembarkation-no need to wait for colored tags, etc.  There is no "alcohol/beverage" package available, so drinks can be pricey.  We did pre-order bottled water to be delivered to our cabin, so that was a great benefit to us. 

The excursions were very good but a little pricey. Our stateroom was a disappointment as well as the dining experience. I would like to have been told to book the dining earlier in the cruise. We have never had to to go buffet for dinner before

Everything should be improved. Dining experience was horrible. Poor quality food and very repetitious. Lazy workers. Overall a very bad experience. Need more supervision of workers and some were not friendly at all. 

I loved the fact that you could travel to the different Hawaiian Islands in style. We had enough time to explore the islands and enjoy the amenities of the ship. We had two nights that were scheduled for cruises along two coasts. We were able to watch the lava flow and the Na Pali Coast from the ship.

All of the staff on the ship were friendly and eager to help.

The food was delicious and there was a lot of variety.

Overall this was a wonderful way to see Hawaii. I absolutely loved this vacation and would definitely recommend this vacation to anyone.

Generally, cruises from Hawaii cost more than mainland ports. The ports of call are beautiful but food on this cruise did not meet my expectation. I would do it once to see the other islands but i rather fly to other islands and stay there longer to get to do more.  

LOS RESTAURANTES,  las actividades en el barco y  los espectáculos de teatro

Seria grandioso si se preocuparan de hablar español también tendrían mas visitantes .

I was a bit skeptical of this cruise because of some of the reviews that I had read.  I was wrong to be worried.  This was the perfect way to see all of the islands in one week.  The ship is smaller but lovely.  No gambling because Hawaii does not permit it.  The food was OK, we like the specialty restaurants and they are great.  The balcony cabins are small but functional.  We upgraded to a penthouse suite for our anniversary and it was spectacular.  Very large room with butler service.  Only surprise was that the butler service gratuity was not part of the gratuity that you pay.  Not an issue, just a surprise.  The perks that come with a suite are well worth the added cost.  It was a good way to show newbies the Hawaiian Islands in a short amount of time. 

The best part of this cruise for me was the Big Island. Volcano National Park was amazing and had active lava flow while we were there. Kona was incredible. Sea turtles were everywhere while driving and stopping on the side of the road to explore the black lava coast.  Please know that when you get to Kona you will need to be tendered into port so allow extra time. My advice is to get off early and walk over to Lava Java for breakfast. Great food at an open air, on the coast restaurant with a live musician playing a Ukolele. Then head over to Fun in the Sun Rentalz and rent mopeds to cruise Kona. It's pretty inexpensive and great service and they offer military discounts. You can also rent snorkel gear here too for $5. Then moped over to Kahalu'u Beach Park for some excellent snorkeling... for free. My son had curious sea turtles swimming right up to him. 

The cruise ship itself was fine. It's basically a floating hotel. You don't really spend much time aboard. There was one night that we went to a magic show and it was pretty good. The musicians were cruise ship standard. The bartenders at the Waikiki Bar are pretty entertaining and fun. If you are a smoker, you will get to know them well as this is the only place you can smoke aboard. If you are heading to Hawaii on the Pride of America, say hello to Marla from Connecticut and Dave from Hawaii at the Waikiki Bar. 

I truly enjoyed the cruise.   Staff was great.   Enjoyed  seeing the Captain several  times   on board with. his family.   Seeing the lava spill into the pacific at night is  spectacular.     We were able to  enjoy breakfast at Cagney's each morning.  I wish they would change the menu  a little or have a daily  special to change things up. 

I certainly would recommend this cruise.

favorite part was carneys and comedy show.

least favorite was the american workers they were cocky, rude, I'M an american born american however indie not find hospitality, friendliness or even smiles on the american workers , the bartenders were the cockiest, rudest ones and the cleaning americans were also rude, they seemed bothered that you greeted them or Gid forbid ask them a question, one was so rude that he cut in front of us and stated we couldn't have that elevator because he had to clean the mirrors, we were there first, unbelievable! The foreign workers were all excellent! Ernesto in the Cagneys and Teresa were so awesome, they were very hospitable, friendly service with a smile and went above and beyond my expectations! Guzman Cummings(not sure i spelt her first name correctly but last name is Cummings) in East meets West was also very hospitable and went above and beyond helping us out with reservations etc. can't say enough about her, spectacular! Our room steward Edwin also deserves recognition, he works very hard and always went above and beyond to make us comfortable, he works so fast very friendly, polite, kind, always greeting us in hallways and asking if there was anything he could do for us. i would also like to mention Maria Darmas she worked with me from the beginning booking the cruise, she went above and beyond in helping me select the appropriate room that could accommodate my party of 4 comfortably, she was a wealth of information always friendly, helpful and would always return my calls promptly before and after the cruise, she was a joy! overall i enjoyed my cruise but i have had better experiences on previous Norwegian cruises to the Caribbean.

We got to see a great part of all of Hawaii on Pride of America.  You unpack once...your hotel stays with you from Island to Island. Most ports we were at for two days. We packed in a variety of  excursions and saw and learned so much of the Hawaiian culture. We took advantage of the pre-cruise package and had three great days in Honolulu. Loved the scenic route the ship took past the lava flow at night and around the big island on our final day at sea. Our Hawaii trip was spectacular!

The hawaii ports we're wonderful  !!! The rusty ship & poor customers service !!! Entertainment was poor !!!! The balcony door was hard too open  !!! The room attendant pop the sheets!!!! Rust all around the ship  !!! Poor maintenance  !!! Never again will I step on this ship !!!!!

it was a great itinerary but the food and entertainment weren't so good. We still had a great time on our excursions and you make your trip what you want, we chose to have fun and we did! Staff were nice, boat was refurbished in 2016 but not all of it. The shower was very small but balcony room was ok and had enough storage space for 2.

It was a Great Time we went the Cruise before too from Austraila New Zealand Tahiti Moorea Bora Bora a Trip of a lifetime...Ship was Clean Captain was wonderful Staff etc...

My favorite part of the cruise was the islands. I feel that Maui was my favorite and is very beautiful. Their were some disappointments with the trip. The food in the Windjammer was not as good as usual. The entertainment was good but not great and it was hard understanding a lot of the crew, and them understanding me. I have not noticed this before. 

For the most part we absolutely loved this cruise. The ports were great. The on-board dining exceeded expectations. The ship's personnel were terrific. The Royal Caribbean port excursions were a 50/50. Our first excursion( at Hilo) was exceptional. Our guide was an older gentleman - a lifetime resident. He was interesting, personable and informative - a great person to be our guide. Our second Royal Caribbean was the Vancouver Sea to Sky which included airport transfer. This was a disaster. There were three ships in port and the terminal and apparently the whole city as well as our own ship's excursion personnel were overwhelmed. Those of us taking one of the Vancouver excursions were late being escorted off our ship and once we were in the terminal and had retrieved our luggage we were told to wait off to one side with no explanation. We waited for over an hour which meant that our 6 hour tour was starting at least an hour and a half late. Finally someone from our cruise came looking for people taking our excursion. It seemed that there were either no buses or not enough buses for our group and they did not know when or if buses would arrive. I will say that the original schedule was perfect for us - we would have arrived at the airport at 3:00PM for a 6:00PM flight. Obviously this late or never tour was not going to work and we were offered the option to cancel and have our payment returned which we accepted (it is now four days later and we have not yet received our refund.) We wound up waiting in the taxi line for an hour for a ride to the airport.

We did other excursions on our own. The Kailua/Kona Hop-on, Hop-off shuttle was great. On Kauai the Backcountry Adventures Tubing was exceptional and we loved Kalapaki Beach which is a short walk from the ship's dock. On Maui we really enjoyed the Atlantis Submarine - fun, informative and well organized.

Boarding the ship at the Honolulu Hawaii Terminal. We arrived at the terminal to drop off our bags before we returned our rental car and were told that that service was not available. We had to drag our bags back to the rental car agency to return our car. Then we had to drag them back through lines to turn them over to the ship. Then we were required to stand in another line for 3 more hours in a hot terminal to get into the ship. This was very had on us since we are seniors and my husband is a diabetic. We thought we were going to pass out since there was no place to sit and rest. In over 20 years of cruising we have never had this type of problems. This was very unsatisfactory. Dining Room Experience: The first night prior to arriving at the dining room the hostess made our reservations for 5:30 pm every night of the cruise. On the 2nd and 3rd night when approaching the dining room we were stopped and told we did not have reservations but were seated at the same table as the first night. During dinner the 3rd night we explained the troubles we were having to the Matidee and by the 4th day we had reservation without problem. We purchased all of our excursions through the cruise line. We discovered that we paid as much as $50.00 per ticket then if we would have booked just outside the ship at the end of the pier. The first excursion we were to meet at 9:00am in the Aurora theater to meet the tender to go ashore for the excursion. We arrive at 8:40am only to discover the ship guide was leading the excursion group out of the theater without checking to see if all tour passengers were present. The tour didn't start until 10:15am what was the rush??? We almost missed the tour. The first tour was organized onboard the ship, but all others the passengers had to meet the tour on the pier. Our tour in Maui were we were tendered to land, our excursion was not organized onboard. We had to self tender from the ship not as a tour group but along with all other passengers going ashore which made it very had to get ashore on time. Very unpleasant. This was the most disorganized vacation we have ever had.