Hawaii Cruise Reviews

We enjoyed the ship and it's staff, however, we only ate in the main dining room once because the servers never checked on us or for got to bring what we asked for. In the future, I would like to see more professional type shows at night. Other than that, our experience was good. We enjoyed the variety of speciality dinning and the ship was contantly being maintained.

The Pride of Hawaii is brand new with beautiful common areas and staterooms. The atrium has a stained glass ceiling with restaurants on either side looking down on an inviting lounge below.

This newest addition to the NCL Hawaiian fleet is bright, beautiful, and nicely appointed with Hawaiian art and memorabilia. Of special beauty is the art glass work in the atrium and lounges.

The ship is new and well maintained. There were ample public areas (pool area, main theater...).

This was a new, bright, clean ship that was the appropriate size for the islands. However, the majority of the staff needed major attitude adjustments and pride in their positions.

The Pride of Aloha is a great ship. For the most part all the staff was friendly and helpful. The Palace, one of two main dining rooms, was excellent. The servers did an excellent job making you feel at home and the food was just outstanding. I loved the Freestyle Cruising, it allowed us to participate in all the excursions and activites that we wanted and still be able to eat in a restaurant on the ship. We had an outside stateroom with a balcony. The view could have not been any better. The stateroom was kept clean and the bed was turned down. One disappointing thing was we never received any towel animals! Overall, we had a wonderful time and would recommend the Pride of Aloha to anybody that wanted a fun and relaxing cruise.

This was supposed to be a 10 yr anniversary celebration - but ended up being the worst cruise experience ever. We had a party of 12 people with us with this being my husbands and mine 4th NCL cruise and definitely our last NCL cruise. The cruise started off on a wrong note and only got worse. When we got to or stateroom we were told to put the third person bed in front of the door blocking our entrance to get out in the event of an emergency or even to go to the bathroom. The first sofa bed they gave us would not even open up. The room was dirty beyond belief - coffee had been spilled inside the desk and never cleaned and the staterooms literature was covered in makeup. The floor was covered with hair and sand. We only had towels for two people (we paid for three people). When we complained to the customer relations desk that this was unacceptable (especially the bed blocking the door - since they even admit fire is the biggest cruise ship threat) - we asked for a room change. This was Sunday - on Wednesday we finally got a note back that no other rooms were available. After I personally cleaned the room we stayed and tried to make the best of it, unfortunately the room service was awful the rest of the week. We never did get turn down service and we only got three towels one day. The sheets were only changed twice with the room steward just making the beds. Despite having a child with us we never did get to experience the towels being made into animals like on other cruises. The dining room experience was just as awful. The first night we had to ask for our steak three times before it came out close to what we ordered. By this point we had lost our appetite and gave up. The second night after two hours in the dining room and still no dinner we left and went up to the buffet. The service continued to be awful in the dining room all week. No refills on drinks and dinners that lasted an average of 3 hours which meant we were unable to see any shows. The buffet lines were the most unorganized traffic flow I had ever seen. They had the bathroom right by the food line. They had everyone pile up in the ice cream line even if you only wanted cake for dessert. The soft ice-cream machine never worked the whole week. By Wednesday they ran out of skim milk and we never saw it the rest of the cruise. I found this odd since we were in the United States the whole time. The food was probably overall the worse we had on any cruise ship. Luckily we were in port so we could buy our own. The ship had very few activities if you decided to stay on board. On Friday we were told about the Easy Fly program for luggage - we paid the 20 dollars and after two weeks - still have not seen our luggage. We are pursuing this further. NCL customer service has not helped us at all. They keep telling us if they find it they will call. Overall I would never recommend this cruise to anyone and after the lack of customer support with our luggage I will never recommend NCL to anyone.

After reading the other reviews, we had average expectations for this cruise. We have cruised over 15 times on this and other...better...cruise lines. My husband and I and our teenage kids were equally impressed! From beginning to end, our trip was top-notch....read on for specifics!

My family of five just returned from cruising The Pride of America. I have been on seven cruises and have travelled with my family on three cruises. The check in process in Honolulu was very effecient. The ship appeared to be clean throughout the cruise. This is a great way to see the islands of Hawaii. There are so many excursions to choose from on the ship. But we are quite independent travellers and ended up picking up a car rental on each of the islands thru Thrifty. If you decide to do this be prepared for a little wait to catch the shuttle back and forth to the ship and also picking up the actual car. It was not only Thrifty that had this challenge it appeared to be all of the agencies. Also, the parking at Kahului pier in Maui was inadequate. We ended up parking in an industrial area. I was worried about theft but never heard about any incidences. The service on board was ok. We have always experienced attentive international staff on other ships and found the staff on Pride a little lacking. I just felt that the staff was not intuitive as to needs like you would find on some ships that the staff remains for a year or two. Alot of the staff seemed to be new or not intending to sign up for another tour of duty. I'm not completely sold on the freestyle dining yet. If you didn't want to wait you needed to make reservations. It was just another thing I really didn't want to have to think about. However, it was nice to have different choices as to cuisine. We went to the Lazy J twice. The first time was fantastic. The filet was probably the best I have ever had. The service was great. But the second time was not the same experience for service and taste. We had a outside stateroom with a balcony. (We will never cruise again without a balcony, well worth the additional cost) It was ok as far as storage and space. The highlight of the trip for us was seeing the volcano flowing at night and cruising pass the Napali Coast. Something you just can't see from land. It was awesome.

The ship had a very bad smell. The food was not good. The food was always cold when you did receive the food from the Buffet and the Skyland Restaurant.

The ship looked very good. However, there was a bad smell on the ship. The Food was not good at all. Why did we have to pay a cover charge to eat at the other Restaurants? This is unheard of on a Cruise. I was told that I could put down my $10.oo per day on the bill to deduct from my on board credit. However when I received my bill I was told that I could not do that or buy anyting on board as my bill had been delivered. Then I was told to go see the Credit Department on Board. I was then told I could buy something from the Shop, however, all the sales were over. This is unheard of on other ships, they explain what your options are to received a credit. It does not go un noticed until you receive a final bill.

the ship was fairly clean. The cleaniness of the rooms were poor. The food was lousy and often cold. The entertainment was lousy. I should get a refund. This was the worst cruise.

My family recently sailed on the Pride of America for the first time. The ship was very nice and we were all very impressed with how clean the ship was and how beautiful Hawaii is. The food was disappointing at the Aloha cafe when we first got on the ship but this improved greatly by the next morning and the rest of the cruise. All the other restaurants that we ate at had good food. My wife and I especially liked the fish at the Cadillac restaurant and I liked their hot wings and ice cream as well. The shows were mediocore compared to Royal Caribbean's entertainment. Our balcony room was cozy and we had plenty of room under the bed to store all of our luggage out of the way. I must say however that the room attendant never introduced herself to us and our room was not made up until late in the afternoon. NCL must either hire more people or people with a better service attitude in the future if they want me to cruise with them again. Furthermore I was not impressed to find that all the restaurants close at a certain time of day and we find that after coming back from an excursion one day that we had to wait for about 1/2 hour before being able to eat. This is not acceptable to me.

We sailed on the island princess to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversity to Hawaii for 15 days. This was our second cruise the first one we went on the Holland Ship to Alaska. Both trips were equally wonderful. The ocean is so nice to hear the waves it puts you in dream land at night. The food is great, you can go to a buffet or dress up and be waited on. We did both. The stage shows were very entertaining and the staff was very professtional. We will do it again sometime.

The ship was nice, but the crew is in major need of training very spotty service in all levels

My overall impression is that this was a fabulous cruise. The staff was great. The ship was impeccable. Our cabin was great. The food was excellent. Cagney's Steakhouse is a must, even for the extra charge. It was worth it.

The customer service on this ship was very poor. The food is merely ok. The airlines lost our baggage, and NCL did very little to help us get 2 of our 3 bags back (one is still missing.) Our flight was cancelled and we missed the first night of the cruise. We were never contacted by the ship personnel. We had to spend two hours on our phone to get them to provide somewhere for us to stay the first night and they flew us to Hilo at 5am to meet the boat. The entertainment was poor and lacked any kind of style. The illusionist was terrible. You could see him pull things out of his sleeve. Very low budget. Be prepared if you eat in any of the restuarants on the ship, that the meal will take two hours because the service is so slow. I didn't meet one person on this cruise who was satisfied. The tipping is already included on your cabin bill, so the staff doesn't feel the need to work hard at all. The ship itself is beautiful. It is less than a year old. There are two pools and four hot tubs. The adults only hot tub is filled with kids and teenagers. No one on the staff even cared.

we loved the overall experience and plan on sending our kids next year!

Nice ship but not set-up for free-style dining on deck 11. Always very crowded and the lines were always long. Can't have all the buffet lines on one side of the ship - area to small. #2. My cabin also had a stale, musty smell. I contacted house keeping but they could not fix the problem. #3 Entertainment was average at best. On the good side - the staff was excellent, always courteous and willing to serve. The cruise offered a large varitey of excursions - something to suit everyone. The organization of the cruise was outstanding. Tickets, reservations, luggage, golf excursion all went off with absolutely no problems. Overall I did enjoy the cruise and hope to go again soon - just not on this particular ship.

Especially for the family or budget minded, this is a great way to get a taste of the islands. If you have cruised before, you may be disappointed with the level of service, and the overall quality of the food and ship itself. However, if you are less interested in the nuiances of 'haute cruising' this is a fabulous trip/ship.