Just returned from the Easter cruise aboard Pride of America.. We are frequent cruisers having sailed all the major main lines except HAL which we want to try in the near future.We are also very familiar with NCLs freestyle product and are fans of it. In fact we prefer freestyle greatly over the traditional cruise experience,so this review is most helpful to other fans of freestyle. Im not going to try to convince others to switch from traditional style cruising,we each have our own taste.. However everyone will love this trip if they view the cruise as a floating hotel to see the Islands and freestyle fans most likely will not find much difference from their normal experience.

The ship My wife and I thought the pride of America was a beautiful ship with a wonderful layout. It was easily the best top deck layout of any NCL ship with the exception of the Spirit. The top decks were wonderfully laid out with multiple levels and tremendous rail space. This made the viewing of the Volcano and Napali sail by a great experience. It would be a great ship for Alaska or Panama canal, but since it only sails Hawaii that's a moot point. Now its true the exterior front of the ship is a little strange looking, but the interior of the ship was down right gorgeous to us. The prettiest lobby we ever saw. Maybe not as Glitzy as some of RCL ships but much more elegant. The interior flow was quite good. It had some areas of redirection like getting to the Liberty dining room, but far better then NCLs newer builds. This ship has more similarity to NCl sun then the jewel class ships. So overall a wonderful and beautiful and simple to navigate ship.

The service Now being an NCL fan I was a little concerned about what a read concerning service of the American crew . All I can say is we loved the American crew. Now they were far from perfect and they made more mistakes in the dinning room then the International crew but they more then made up for this with their friendliness and conversations. The main area of problem seemed to be the main dinning rooms. The service here seemed inconsistent. Sometimes long waits between courses. and a few Skipped desserts to make shows. Now I had similar experiences with other cruise lines And NCls international crew, but it seemed to happen more often then not on Pride of America main dinning rooms. Now I'm almost going to blame the cruise itself for this feeling of slow dinning room service. Now on most cruises you have a short beach day or sea day to relax then return to the ship for a nice relaxing dinner. On POAm you spend every day in port driving all over the Island or snorkeling and sightseeing all day. Then you return exhausted and starving to the ship ,wash-up and hurry to the dinning rooms. Then you may have a line to be seated and you start to get annoyed, especially if your eating with your children like us. Then no matter what ,the service seems slow and you begin to get irritated faster then you normally would. Anyway this was what happened to us. We found the service in the specialty rest. excellent and an option for people who Don't find paying extra for food a problem. Read more