My wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary in Hawaii on the Pride of America and in a rental house on Oahu. We flew into Honolulu on a Wednesday, rented a car and drove Northeast to Punalu'u where some friends of our had already got settled into the rental house. This gave us a few days to chill-out and acclimate ourselves to the time-zone change, etc. We flew out of Detroit so it was a pretty long flight. I would highly recommend (as other here also did) booking rental cars through Thrifty and joining their free Blue Chip program. We were in and out fast! All the paperwork is filled-out and waiting with the cars keys and you're out of there in 3-5 minutes. However, waiting for the shuttle to get to the pier can take 5-15 minutes depending on the port. Hint: when you book your car and they ask you what time you'll pick it up, give them a slightly earlier time than you anticipate getting there. I found out if you tell them you want a car at say, 9:30 and you arrive at port at 8:00 and are ready to go at 8:15 if no one else booked any earlier they may not show-up until much later. It always worked out fine for us, but I did hear of shuttle drivers telling people they didn't have anyone booked until such-and-such a time and hadn't intended on stopping by the port until later.

So...Pride of America (POA). We've cruised twice before- once on the Holland America Veendam and once on Royal Caribbean's Serenade of the Seas, both of these to the east and south caribbean respectively.

Embarkation took about 30 minutes. We arrived at 11:30 and were roaming around the ship by noon. I think had we waited for the initial rush to subside we would have gotten through a little quicker. No complaints here. Read more