Cruise Ship: Pride of America
Cruise Destination: Hawaii
Cruise Dates: September 2 - September 9, 2006
Guest Contributor: Russ
We cruise every year in September after school starts with various cruise lines. On a scale of 1 to 10, NCL's score for this cruise was a 2. By the way, this was the most expensive 7 day cruise we've been on.
The Positives: The itinerary was wonderful [2 days on Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island], the cabin with a balcony was large and well appointed, the soups in all of the restaurants were excellent, embarkation/de-embarkation was smooth and among the easiest we've seen, and the weather was exceptionally good.
The Negatives: The food staff was inexperienced and good service was not given, with few exceptions; dinner took 3 to 3 ½ hours in the main dinning rooms (we missed all of our showroom reservations), nothing arrived hot at the table (except at the teppanyaki), the menus were unexceptionable; the buffet items were unlabeled after the first day, they ran out of orange juice on the 5th day; and the reservation system allowed all of the specialty restaurants to operate ½ full while refusing service to others. As one of many examples of how ridiculously bad the service was, the whole wait staff rushed to a window with full trays to look for dolphins for 10 minutes in Hilo harbor while the guests waited for their food.
We had no hot water for showers on the 5th or 6th day. The ship was an hour late twice in docking, which meant our Hilo volcano trip was cut from 3 sites to 1 and our Kona snorkeling was cut from 3 to 2 hrs. Our cabin electricity was out for only 2 hrs (fast response), but the aft of the ship lost electricity for ½ a day. We had reserved a conference room for 4 A/V presentations with our group and the equipment operated intermittently and an outside door whistled in the wind.
"Freestyle Dining" and the automatic $10 service charges are front office mistakes by NCL. People who do not want to dress and participated in the ambiance and social aspects of traditional shipboard dining should use any of the other food options. The lack of 1st and 2nd seatings is a nightmare. The relationship between lackluster service and automatic service fees is apparent (if I did not vacate my room by 8 am, it was not cleaned that day).
I would avoid NCL if possible and avoid this boat at all cost and go find much better service on Royal Caribbean or Crystal somewhere. See ya crusing.
