My husband, mother and cousin sailed on Norwegian Cruise Lines Pride of America, setting sail on August 19th and returning August 26th, 2006. I am prompted to write this review because my experience with Norwegian was not pleasant. I've sailed 3 other lines, a smaller ship called SeaWind, Carnival and Royal Caribbean. This was, by far, the worst line I've been on.

When we first got on the ship, after flying from the east coast to Honolulu for 12 hours, we were told all bars & restaurants were closed for the 1½ hours for the Muster Drill. That was a little annoying since we were thirsty and hungry from traveling so long. It was not a good first impression.

From that point, it was downhill. In my opinion, the Freestyle cruising does not work and just ended up aggravating us. We could only get dinner reservations for 2 of the surcharge restaurants (one at 9:30 at night which we ended up canceling) because everything was booked by the second day. What made that even more aggravating was that when you walked by these booked restaurants, they were always only half full. That being said we spent much of our meal time in the Aloha Cafe (the buffet) since if we wanted to dine in the free main dinning rooms, the wait could be up to an hour. In the two or three reservation-only restaurants, you had to pay an extra $10 or $15 just for the pleasure of eating there and if you want something on the premier menu, that costs extra too.  In addition to the surcharge. Read more