Pride of America Review
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We aren't ready to be home yet. We were so sad to go. This was the best vacation we've ever had. Being our 4th cruise, we really don't understand all the bad reports we've read before going. We've been on Royal Caribbean Splendour of the Seas to W. Caribbean and Sovereign of the Seas to Bahamas and Celebrity Horizon to Bermuda and the cruise portion of this trip was very comparable. The food was just as good. The cleanliness of the ship just as good. The diligence of our personal room steward was inferior, but still good. The friendliness of the staff was probably superior on POAm above the others. Since they were older, small ships in there respective fleets, the Pride of America (POAm) was superior to them all.
Our Background: DH and I are 40 and 38. MIL and FIL are 57 and 68 (both somewhat disabled) and DS is 21. We were celebrating DH's 40th Bday.
Day One: Traveling and Arriving We flew United from Dulles to Los Angeles - just a one hour touchdown, then on to Honolulu. Both of our flights were delayed and we were 2.5 hours late arriving. I had arranged for a lei greeting with Honolulu Lei Greetings. The leis were beautiful. I kept wearing mine throughout the week - the plumeria smelled so beautiful. I'm really glad I found out that a lei greeting is not automatic anymore. We all would have been disappointed if we'd arrived without one. The lady who met us with the Lei said that people were always coming up to receive leis thinking that everyone gets one - then they were crushed to find out you had to preorder them. We got our bags almost immediately and went to find the Thrifty courtesy phone. We never found it, and there were no signs indicating where the thrifty shuttle would pull up. We asked someone for assistance and they told us to just stand on the rental car shuttle pick up curb and waive one down when they drove up. Blue chip status didn't help us here as there was only one person working the counter and the couple in front us got to the desk first. We had reserved a minivan with GPS. Once it was our turn we were in our van pretty quickly. We punched in the code to our hotel with the one touch feature of the gps, but we altered the directions to follow the ones in the revealed guide. Take exit 24a - not 22 or 23 - you'll skip a lot of Waikiki traffic that way.