I lived in Hawaii for 4 years and have visited since so I know the islands well. Decided I wanted to do an in-Hawaii cruise to revisit old places and do a few things we had missed.

We have cruised about 20 times and have been on NCL twice before never, of course, on an American flagged ship. We had read the bad reviews and were somewhat leery. We never had a problem. Since there had been many negative comments about the main dining room, we booked specialty restaurants every night (Little Italy, LJ Steakhouse, and Jefferson Bistro twice each and East meets West once). Of course, we booked as soon as we boarded because they do fill up - we also find restaurants book up at home so we try to make reservations early.

We also dined in the buffet several times and in the dining rooms for breakfast and lunch a couple of times. The food was comparable to the last cruise we took on RCL and better than the previous cruise (also RCL). As always, some dishes we liked a lot and some left something to be desired. The staff was uniformly polite and friendly. Service was usually prompt. Read more