If you can drive: Rent cars and drive yourself on each island

We loved this cruise. Advice:

1.  Best room location is Starboard side, mid to aft ship.  Everything except the 2 theaters are mid and aft ship.  All the good viewing is on the Starboard side.  Deck does not matter.

2.  Before you go watch the TV documentary "Conquered" a history of the islands.

3.  If you can drive and follow a tour book (we like the "Revealed" series for the islands), it is better to rent from Enterprise (either a short walk or will pick you up at every port) and drive yourself.  Smart phone GPS works great.  You can use the itinerary from the bus tours to set your agenda and then add or subtract as you want.  Renting is much cheaper and you will spend much more time site seeing.  You can easily find places to get lunch. Plus you can go to places (such as Hosmer Grove on Maui; one of our favorite places) that the tours cannot go to because of no bus access.  You can also stay as long as you want at the places you like and leave the ones you do not rather than 20 to 30 minutes at each place. You will miss the bus drivers commentary but that can be good or not.

4.  If you are going to do bus tours use NCL.  They have it all set-up and you will have the same service staff that you met on board.  And, if any problems the tour director is on board to take care of you.  The only unhappy people we met were ones who had used other tours!

5.  On the first day make dinner reservations for every night.  The popular restaurants and times fill up fast; so plan ahead before you get on board.

6.  Read the daily activity sheet CAREFULLY every day.  There are drink specials and new things each day that are sometimes only listed on the bottom of the daily sheet.  We missed one or two because we did not read the whole thing carefully.

7. If you want to see Oahu stay AFTER the cruise not before because it is much easier to rent a car and drop it off at the airport than at the port.  So have Enterprise pick you up from the ship on the last day and stay where you want which could be outside of Honolulu and then drive the island for a few days and drop the car at the airport when you leave. It is worth it to spend a day at the Polynesian Cultural Center and see their show.