Like everyone we read alot of reviews about this ship, most of them unfortunately bad, yet we had a fantastic time. This was my husband and my first major holiday in about 10 years (we are self-employed) and our first cruise and first visit to Hawaii. We chose to cruise as we believed it to be the best way to see all the Islands. We also choose freestyle cruising as we liked the idea of choosing what we wanted to do, when we wanted to do it....
We flew from Sydney Australia, to Honolulu. A good flight, yet very long. We arrived on the same day as sailing, and if I had my time again I would arrive a day earlier to recover.
Embarkation was fantastic. We arrived at the port at about 12.30pm, and got straight onto the ship. We attended a sort lecture about the cruise and as our cabin was not as yet ready we went to lunch. A lovely buffet lunch. This was served by the crew, but that was fine by us. We purchased two soda cards, this, for us was a fantastic deal, we are not big 'drinkers'and got our monies worth with the soda cards. $52.50 + tip each. During lunch it was announced that our cabin was ready, so we made our way down to our cabin. 8th floor, midship, porthole window.