I'm another more-than-satisfied cruiser who wanted to post just to reassure those who feel like they're rolling the dice booking this cruise which has had mixed reviews here. Given how port-intensive the cruise is, I felt that the offerings on board were more than adequate. If your dream cruise is more ship-activities intensive, it may not be ideal. But after being out on excursions for most days, dinner and a brief show was more than enough for us.

Especially if you're flying in from the East coast of the US (or further), I highly recommend spending at least 2-3 days in Oahu before the cruise. This made all the difference in the world to us, since we were quite tired the first two days. Had we hopped off the plane and boarded the cruise the next morning I think we would have still had a great time, but probably returned home more exhausted than rested. Instead, we boarded the ship completely rested and had a balanced week of activity and relaxation, and aside from the usual hassles of flying, returned home feeling like we didn't need a vacation to recover from our vacation.

We stayed at the Marriott Waikiki Beach. We were more than satisfied with our "partial ocean view" room on the 30th floor as it had a picture perfect view of Diamond Head with the ocean beside and behind it. Couldn't have been more picturesque -- certainly prettier than looking straight out at the ocean would have been. An amusing aspect of this view was that it also looked down at the zoo a few blocks away. I knew the zoo was in the general vicinity, but didn't put two and two together until I kept going out on the balcony because I heard what I thought were peculiar birds, then heard an elephant trumpet, only then remembered the zoo in the neighborhood, and realized the "bird" sounds were monkeys squawking. Once I looked I realized I could see the elephants walking around their enclosure. Read more