A disappointing cruise

Pride of Hawaii Cruise Review to Hawaii

SharonC12

Contributor Level: Deck Hand

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 36

Overall rating:

1 out of 5

Verified Review

7 Night Hawaii (Honolulu Roundtrip)

Sail date: September 25, 2006

Ship: Pride of Hawaii

Cabin type: Oceanview

Traveled as: Family (older children)

Reviewed: 14 years ago

Review summary

Having sailed to Alaska with Norwegian, we were really looking forward to this trip on a brand new ship. Sadly, Pride of Hawaii falls short of a great freestyle cruising experience. The cabin steward was wonderful and gave us exceptional service. Everyone should have a "Jeffer". The Birthday package I had ordered for my daughter was done on the day before her birthday, spoiling my planned surprise and did not include the things I had paid for. When I spoke to the service desk, they assured me it would be done on her birthday while we were off the ship. Two days later they finally decorated the stateroom as requested. On her birthday, we had dinner in the main dining room and the service took two and a half hours for our meal. The server could not explain any of the listed entrees and our bottle of wine arrived with dessert. We tried again the next day with the same slow service and disappointing food. It seems like NCLA is trying to get people to use the specialty restaurants and pay the extra charge by making the food choices and service in the dining rooms unacceptable. After our last horrible lunch in the Alizar dining room, I went to the service desk and asked to talk to someone about the service charge. My intention was to ask that it all be given to the housekeeping staff and not to the waitstaff as they had not given the kind of service that deserved any additional money. A very rude agent would not let me express my intent but said "I don't want to hear it, how much do you want off?" "All of it?" At that point I said "yes, take it all off and we will compensate the room staff ourselves. I said to him (very politely) how can you fix the problems for future cruisers if you don't listen to us?. His reply was to say again, "I don't want to hear it" My daughter who is a meeting planner and in the hospitality business said "Mom, no one in customer service should ever talk to a customer like that and she was totally shocked at his attitude and rudeness. While having breakfast several mornings I had the opportunity to meet fellow cruisers (some first time) who expressed their disappointment with the ship and the service. I tried to reassure them that this cruise was not a typical one and it should not keep them from trying other cruises or cruise lines. Sadly, I think the biggest problem is the fact that the ships are required to be staffed by Americans and their work ethic and attitude is very different from the people on the foreign flagged ships. They are happy to have their jobs , give wonderful service and are usually found singing and laughing as the go about their jobs.