We tried NCL after having been on many cruises with Carnival, Princess and Royal Caribbean.The Hawaii itinerary of island hopping seemed to be the best way to taste Hawaii, never having been there. The itinerary was great. That's where the "great" and NCL parted ways.

For a cruise operation that does the same thing 52 weeks a year at the same terminal,embarkation was chaotic to say the least. It really took the vacation wind out of our sails and aggravated us just getting on the ship.Misinformation provided us by a cruise employee, got us stopped and pulled off the security line because we were carrying what we thought was a permitted wine allotment of a bottle per passenger.Instead we were embarassed and ended up paying a corkage fee of fifteen dollars apiece.That added to aggravation just getting on the ship.When we tried to address the issue with ship's crew,no one had any answers, but all were anxious to give us their best guess, which was true when asking questions about anything throughout the week!

The following were cruise lowlights: Read more