I am a 36 year old frequent traveler, and this cruise was my 10th overall, but first with NCL. For my aunt, this was her 4th cruise overall, and 1st on NCL as well. I had been planning the trip since last year and did most of the research myself. I was so lucky to find the CC website, as it was extremely helpful in the planning process. Based on what I read, I warned my aunt upfront not to have great expectations of this cruise, and to just consider it a means of transportation and a place to eat. I felt a little bad for her, considering that it was her birthday present and there was no guarantee that she would have an enjoyable vacation. Boy was I wrong!!

To cover the basics:

Inbound Flight and PreCruise - We flew from Detroit to Atlanta (go figure) and from Atlanta to Honolulu on the Friday before our 6/26/10 cruise. I had a local travel agent help me with the arrangements, which included a personalized lei greeting, transfers to and from the airport and a one night hotel stay at the Maile Skycourt. We arrived at approximately 2:30 HST and got to the hotel about 4:00 p.m. We were exhausted so after freshening up and grabbing a bite to eat, we decided to go to sleep early. Saturday morning we got up about 8:00 a.m. for the beach and a little bit of shopping before the cruise. My aunt has very sensitive skin, (I told her that she should have chosen Alaska as a destination), so unfortunately we could only spend about 90 minutes at the beach. We bought a few T-Shirts at the International Marketplace, went back to the hotel to gather our things and took the Roberts Shuttle to the cruise ship terminal around 3:00 p.m. Read more