My Husband, Daughter and myself cruise at least two times per year. We consistently sail Royal Caribbean and Disney and have also sailed Princess, Carnival and NCL. We decided to go to Hawaii for spring break this year and thought a cruise would be the best way to see all of the islands. We know the history of older, smaller cruiseships that used to sail Hawaii but were encouraged by NCL's newer larger ships so we booked Price of America. We were well aware of Pride of America's bad reputation for lack of service, poorly trained staff and other customer service issues but hoped those were in her past. Unfortunately, their issues still exist.
We arrived in Honolulu and stayed at the Marriott Waikiki Beach (our own booking) for two nights prior to our cruise. The hotel is located just across the street from the beach. Our room had a view of Diamondhead and the beach so the street noise was not bad at all. I would imagine streetside rooms would be noisy. We opted out of NCL's hotel to ship transfer (as NCL has an office at our hotel and books pre-cruise stays there) because they charged $20.00 per person and a taxi for the three of us was only $27.00.
We were met at the pier by baggage handlers and embarked very smoothly. We arrived at the pier at 1:00 and had no wait time at all. We went to our cabin which was fine. It was a big smaller than we were used to but it was bright and had a balcony so it appeared larger. The Queen bed took up most of the cabin and when we opened our daughter's bed next to the sliding glass door we really had no space to walk around at all. But, we were in Hawaii and not planning to spend a lot of time in the cabin anyway.