Pride of America Review

Pride of America - Hawaii

Review for Hawaii Cruise on Pride of America

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Sail Date: Mar 2006
Cabin: Inside

I and my family have just returned from a 7-day cruise around the Hawaiian Islands on the Pride of America. Before we went on this trip, I thought it would be a good idea to get some background information on the ship and its crew. Imagine my horror when I found so many bad reviews. Good God, I've spent a ton of money on this vacation, and people are not going to even clean my stateroom - and I have to automatically tip them for bad service? I shared the reviews on this website with my family. After they found some reviews that were better than the earlier ones I read, I found that we would have to just approach this optimistically, and be prepared for anything. Now that it's over, I've found that I agree with some of the comments, and others are just not so.

FLIGHTS -- Service at the Honolulu airport was perfect. Some of the critics on this site have massacred this process, but we didn't see any evidence of that. A representative met us right at the gate, collected our gate-to-hotel tickets, took us to baggage claim, and loaded our suitcases into the bus. We easily checked into the hotel, received a gorgeous orchid lei, and our suitcases were taken to our room by the hotel staff. Simply impeccable, and very welcome after the long flight.

Speaking about the flights, though, Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) books some crazy flights in order to save you money, so I would suggest making your own flight plans, if you can. Our outgoing flight left Washington Dulles Airport at 6:30am, which meant we had to be at the airport at 4:30am. . .so our tour group left our hometown at 3:30am, making us get up at 2:30am. The choice was either go to bed at 7:00pm or not at all. If you can't sleep on a plane - like me - this made for a very long day. The plus of the outbound flight was that it was divided up perfectly - 5 hours to Los Angeles, and then 5 hours to Honolulu. However, the return flight was hideous: Honolulu to ATLANTA, and then to Washington Dulles. That's a 9.5 hour flight. I know there's people out there who have been on a plane for 24 hours, and I don't know how you do it. But several people in our tour group had back problems, arthritis, etc. - I think something better could have been arranged.

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