My husband and I recently returned from a 13-day cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii on the Sun. We were accompanied by my parents and 2 aunts, all of whom are aged 80 to 89—my husband and I are in our mid 50s—and all of whom are experienced cruisers. This was our 2nd cruise on Norwegian, the first was on the Dreamward some 12 years ago. We have also cruised with Carnival (3 times), Princess (3 times), Royal Caribbean (once), and MSC (once). Our very first cruise was with Norwegian and because the experience was so absolutely wonderful, cruising has become our favored vacation method. Given our warm memories, we quickly agreed to accompany family taking the 13-day Hawaii cruise for my Mother's 80th birthday which coincided with my parent's 55th wedding anniversary.

In Vancouver we lined up for quite some time to get through security only to join another long line so that we could be directed to chairs in which we were required to sit until there was space at the check-in desk. It is a more awkward system than that of, for example Princess, which uses the same terminal (we'd gone from Vancouver to Alaska in August 2006) and took considerably more time. NCL had water and cookies on hand for the wait, although they ran out of cookies quite quickly.

Our inside deluxe cabin turned out to be much larger than we had expected, the luggage arrived very quickly, the room was very clean, and the stewards were both extremely friendly and competent. Read more