We drove over from Fort Mohave, AZ on 12/17 and stayed the night at the Double Tree Inn in San Pedro. Their package included free parking, breakfast, a bottle of Champagne, free shuttle to and from the cruise terminal and of course their great warm chocolate cookie upon check-in. We had a lovely king room overlooking the marina and L/A Yacht Club. All of this was for $194 which was less then parking at the cruise terminal for fifteen days. We shuttled to the terminal shortly after 11:00, a porter took our bags immediately and while we were processed quickly, we had about a 45 min. wait until we could board. My wife has MS and had requested a wheelchair to board, she had to wait considerable time until the terminal staff could produce a chair from the ship. Our luggage did not arrive at our room until well into the evening which kind of made us think that perhaps first on gets their luggage last and vice versa. Diamond Princess is a gorgeous ship, she is well laid out and wonderfully fitted and appointed for passengers' enjoyment and comfort. Capt. Perrin and his crew were very pleasant and made us all feel very welcome. We had a terrific room steward, Ricardo, who was most of attentive to our needs. Our cabin was always neat and tidy and well stocked with fresh towels, linens, ice and fruit. We were very pleased with our balcony cabin on the Aloha deck. It was well planned out and made to look a lot larger than it really was. Great closet and drawer space for 2 people for 15 days. The balcony furniture was also well sized and made for easy movement on the balcony. The only criticism we would have is the size of the shower, it would probably work better for a big person like myself if there was a shower wand rather than a fixed showerhead. Traditional dining in the International room had been our choice, but did find that 5:45 pm was just a little too early for us but we knew that 8:15 pm was just going to be too late. Our senior waiter always professed that we wanted to do well but never quite measured up and seemed intent on pushing our 4 or 5 course dinner on us in 75 to 85 and having us out the door. His assistant, candidly, was better than him but it was their first trip together and it showed. We found that the food at the beginning was average at best however from Christmas onwards did improve quite markedly, very clever Princess. Lunches were generally good but breakfast in the International was a real adventure. The morning waiters seemed to be mainly Asian and many had real trouble with English. If you ever got exactly what you ordered it was miraculous. Oh, and don't bother ordering the Eggs Benedict, unless you want to be very disappointed. We tried several anytime dinners at both the SantE Fe and Pacific Moon room, had no trouble be seated after 7:00, found the staff to be very good and the meal presentation much improved over the International. You also seem to get different tablemates each evening which tends to make the evening much more stimulating. So on our next cruise it will be goodbye traditional dining and hello anytime dining for us. We had booked tours through Princess and they were all operated by Roberts. We found the buses comfortable, the tours interesting and the guides very good. Unfortunately the wait at the Arizona memorial far exceeded our worst fears. It had been suggested that wait could be about 2 hours, well between lining up for our tickets and then waiting for the start of the program it was closer to 3 ½ hours so by the time we got to the memorial it really was quite anti-climatic. Christmas day coincided with our visit to Kauai and as a consequence, and understandably so, a number of the tours and sites were not operating or closed. After spending a quiet morning by ourselves, opening gifts, having Champaign and making Christmas calls to family and friends at home we ventured ashore and hired a taxi for an 1 ½ hours to show us some of the sights. The driver had lived on the island for many years, was very informative and we quite enjoyed our mini-tour with him. The disembarkation, where there was tendering involved, was really quite tedious. This was particularly so in Lahaina where it seemed that one small concrete quay was shared by any number of tour operators and ferries, all waiting their turn. These circumstances were not Princess's fault but we should have been forewarned. For no particular reason, we decided that we would go ashore at about 10:30 AM for our tour that departed at 1:00 PM. Well fortunately we did as we sat in the Explorers lounge for over an hour waiting for the call for our tender. Finally at about 11:45 I went back to the desk and reminded the people that my wife was disabled and would need extra time to get to the tender platform. They then suggested that we should go right away or we would miss our tour. When we saw the line up for docking at the quay we understood why. Some of the entertainment, particularly the stage productions, the illusionist and the comedian were really quite good. However many of the evenings in the Princess Theatre were rather bland and boring and on more than one evening we got up and left. We had 3 teenage brothers staying alone in the cabin immediately behind us who spent the entire trip completely unsupervised. Their days and particularly nights were spent drinking, doing drugs and playing video games in their cabin. They crashed around in the cabin at all hours, using the "f" word and yelling at the top of their lungs. In the cabin in front of us there was a family who had 2 teenage daughters and when their folks went out for the evening turned the family's cabin into party central. There were the young children who would yell and scream in the hall and one night raced a wheel chair up and down the hall then left it abandoned in the elevator lobby. We did raise two sons who likely in their day did all of the above, they certainly weren't saints, but we didn't pay to hear this night after night. Princess had done a great job decorating for Christmas and New Years and there were certainly lots of activities and events. We thought it was a great venue for families and extended families to enjoy the holidays together, plus there was no cleaning up after the big family dinner. But all too often these same families rather inflicted their rowdy, spoiled and undisciplined children on the rest of us while they enjoyed themselves in their adult activities. The good children were very good but the bad ones were just a little too much to take and we are people who ordinarily love to have children around. Diamond Princess had to travel some great distances on a very tight schedule. For a ship her size and weight we felt that there was far too much motion and suspect that the stabilizers were not deployed or not fully deployed as they tend to slow the ship down. This did have the effect of making things uncomfortable for many of the passengers both those who are subject to motion sickness and those who have mobility problems. With my wife's disability we were directed to muster in the Internet Cafe for disembarkation in LA. We were left waiting there for a good 45 minutes before being escorted ashore. However once ashore, we found a porter and our luggage in short order, called the Double Tree Inn and were picked up promptly. In summary, we generally enjoy ourselves, the stops in the islands were all to brief but we knew that when we bought the package, however that said, it did give us a flavor for each of the islands. We met some very nice people and had a very relaxing time (afternoon naps where a mainstay) particularly with the number of sea days. It should be remembered though, passengers do pay a premium for cruises over the holidays and for us at least, we didn't really feel we got full value for that premium for the reasons noted above and probably would not rush to do a Christmas/New Years cruise soon.