Our trip was planned with a hotel stay at The Marriott on Waikiki beach two days before the cruise and two days after the cruise. I had booked some shore excursions on the internet from home. Upon our arrival at the hotel we received a package from NCL informing us of a Continental breakfast, tour briefing and ship orientation on March 10. At this briefing we were told that if we had prebooked any shore excursions we should immediately upon boarding the ship go to the shore excursion desk and cancel them because he, a representative of NCL, wanting to see us have the best trip ever, was about to go over the best shore excursions, and because we were attending this briefing we would have priority booking. I had a question about the Pearl Harbor excursion. There was one on the day of embarkation and one on the day we arrived back to Honolulu. The one on embarkation day would pick you up at the hotel and bring you to the ship at the end. Where we were going to stay two more days at the end of the cruise I asked if the Pearl Harbor and Polynesian Cultural Center excursion would take us to the hotel instead of the airport at the end of the tour. He did not know the answer so he made a phone call. The person he called also did not know, so we decided to take the one on embarkation day. At this time we planned our shore excursions for each day.
When we boarded the ship we canceled our prebooked excursions. Later that afternoon we received a shore excursion notice stating that two of our choices were sold out, so now we have two days without shore excursions. When we tried to rebook the ones we had canceled they were sold out too. I did receive four tickets for the same excursion. I did not know why my wife and I would need four tickets for the same excursion, so I took them back to the desk only to find out that that excursion was canceled for mechanical problems with the boat.
In some ports, direction assistance for our shore excursions was minimal. Princess cruise line shore excursions had people with signs indicating tour numbers in highly visible positions. NCL had people but no signs - they just yelled. In one port, we had to tendered in. Neither the daily newspaper nor the announcements over the public address system indicated we should arrive in the theater a full hour before our tour to pick up our tender tickets. We knew we had to go to the theater, but the only place the one hour prior was mentioned was on a poster in the theater! Fortunately, we didnt miss our excursion as a result.