We have gone on several cruises with different cruise lines and thought this was one of the best we have been on. We had also been to Hawaii a couple of times before although my sisters family who accompanied us had not been. Hawaii is perfect for a cruise, in port every day and travelling at night spending two days on each island gave us an opportunity to really look around. The fact that the ship was in port all day made it easy to rent cars which we did in every port except Kona. The car rental shuttles met us right at the dock.

For the most part we really liked Norwegian, this was our second cruise on that line. We thought the all US crew was especially nice also we really liked that Norwegian did not nickle and dime us as per our two cruises on Princess. The entertainment was ok, but not great and the shore excursions seemed to be well organized we only went on one (Body and Glove snorkel) but my mom (84) went on a couple and enjoyed them all. The buffet where we ate breakfast and lunch had excellent food, the dinners in the main dining rooms were good We did not do any of the specialty dining rooms. The cruise pricing is a little expensive compared to other cruises we have been on but Hawaii is expensive.

Although the ship is fairly new, 2005 it is not very fancy like some other ships we have been on, evidently it was built specifically for cruising the Hawaiian islands. Our balcony cabins were small but very well set up and nicely appointed. The ship holds about 2000 passengers, one thing we really liked was that the there was a lot of public areas for the amount of folks on-board especially compared to the last cruise we took on a Royal Caribbean mega ship.