A wonderful week in paradise!
Pride of America Cruise Review to Hawaii
7 Night Hawaii (Honolulu Roundtrip)
Sail date: June 16, 2007
Ship: Pride of America
Cabin type: Balcony
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 14 years ago
Review summary
From the beginning, we went on this cruise with a tiny bit of apprehension because of some of the negative reviews we read. However, the ship and staff far exceeded our expectations. Everyone we came in contact with on this ship went out of their way to please us. We particularly enjoyed the opportunity to visit several different restaurants over the course of the week. Our favorite was Jefferson's Bistro, followed by Lazy J's Steakhouse; they're more than worth the extra charge. We took advantage of a "wine tour" as soon as we got on board, so we were able to make reservations for several restaurants and order wine for our meals before we even set sail. We didn't care for the crowds at the Aloha Buffet, but found that if you arrive early it's not too bad. We also didn't appreciate the "tip" space on our dinner checks; it implies that we should be leaving extra gratuities when in fact we're already being charged $10 per day per person for that very purpose. We gave our waiters a tip just because they were so wonderful, but we didn't like feeling like we "had" to. The shore excursions were a bit pricey but we took advantage of the Molokini Snorkel which was awesome. We rented a car the other days and hit all the top spots on our own, plus had time to shop, all for the cost of one day's car rental; that worked best for us. The entertainment on the ship was pretty good, there were two comedy shows that were hilarious. We found the main pools to be crowded and the pool area in general was very noisy. We ventured over to the Oasis Pool and Hot Tub in the ship's aft and it was much quieter and more relaxing. We only had a couple of complaints about this trip: 1) Our room was tiny and the shower was worse; it was similar to what showering in an airline bathroom would be like; very, very, cramped. It's a good thing we got a balcony room, we could not have survived in a regular outside cabin or heaven forbid an inside cabin; we can't imagine feeling any more confined. 2) The Aloha Cafe (buffet) was billed as being open 24 hours, yet we went there three different times and found it to be closed, usually when we were in port, and 3) We were celebrating our 25th Wedding Anniversary and notified the staff upon embarkation; we received a card that instructed us to give that card to the Maitre D on our anniversary and we would receive a "special treat", unfortunately we were unaware that the special treat would be absolutely nothing, go figure? Anyway, that was not significant enough to ruin our beautiful vacation. We loved it and as we stated before, the staff on the Pride of America is outstanding. We hope to bring our children back with us soon so they too can enjoy Hawaii the way we did. If you've never been to Hawaii before, this is the way to see it all in one trip.Ports of call
Pros: We really enjoyed the freedom of choosing what, when and where to eat: Freestyle is the way to go!
Cons: Our biggest complaint about the ship was the size of our cabin & shower, too small even for average size people.
Recommends Pride of America? Yes!
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