Cruise Ship: Pride of America
Cruise Destination: Hawaii
Cruise Dates: July 30 -- August 6, 2005
Guest Contributor: Patti
Hawaii is a beautiful and romantic place to visit. I have not been to Hawaii in 16 years, my husband and children have never been there. After doing what I thought was ample research on the Pride of America we all agreed that cruising the Hawaiian Islands was the way to go. We booked 4 balcony cabins and 1 interior -- there were 11 of us total. NCL booked our flights and what a joke that was. It seemed as though we traveled 24 hours to get to Hawaii, leaving our house at 3 am for the airport, and the return flight was an even bigger joke, we docked at 7 am and didn't fly out until 9:30 pm where me and my son were not assigned any seats on the flight.
The Pride of America is a beautiful ship; however, the cabins are extremely small. When we got to our cabin there was old stale coffee in the coffee pot, cigarette butts all over the ground on the balcony (all 4 of our balcony cabins had this problem), food crumbs all over the sofa, & the bathroom was dirty. Worst of all we traveled 2800 miles to Cruise, we all dressed at 2 am to fly to Hawaii and had to miss the Bon Voyage party because we did not get our luggage until about 11 pm the night we boarded (we boarded at 1 pm).
The staff was not well trained about this ship, it seemed that when we asked where something was the answer was always the same "I am not sure", "On deck #11 or 12". It almost seemed as though we were asking another passenger for the information. My husband and I decided to go to one of the Specialty Restaurants only to be told they were booked for the duration of the cruise, and they weren't. They could have sat quite a few parties that night.
The pool bars close at 7 pm and when asked why, we were told that they open at 8 am and they do not make the schedule. There is no midnight buffet. The buffet closes at least 3 times during the day and after 9 pm you can't even get dessert. The food was not very good, and neither were the drinks. The famous Chocolate sculptures that normally take place in the evening on other cruises took place at 2:30 pm while we were at a port. We were told that it would end at 4 pm and when we got there at 3:45 pm we were told it closed at 3:30 pm.
The reception desk could not get our bill right. It seemed that the entire time we were on this ship the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. The itinerary that we recieved from NCL stated that we were in Kauai until 6 pm and unbenounced to my group we were told to back on the ship at 3 pm for 3:30 sailing, and when questioned we were told that the first sail voted to see the Napali Coast at sunset, which was fine but we should have been notified of the change and we were not.
It is a real shame that such a beautiful ship has so many problems. This was my dream vacation and I will never Cruise with NCL again. Hopefully they do not get a total monopoly of the Islands so people can enjoy the beauty of Hawaii without all the aggravation.
