We almost cancelled this cruise, which would have been a crying shame as this was without a doubt the best holiday that my wife and I have ever been on. We are from Perth, Australia and are in our early 50's. This was our 1st cruise, although we holiday every year ,mostly in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia etc and always stay in 1st class hotels and we feel that we are fairly critical of poor service. Those who complained about every little thing on this website made us very nervous about even going on this trip.
In reality, this was the furtherest from the truth and we can only pay the highest compliments to the ship, the crew, service, excursions and dining experiences during our 7 fabulous days on the ship. After an 18 hour flight to Honolulu, we were looking forward to our holidays on board the Pride of America. The sheer size of the ship was impressive enough at 1st glance. We had to wait for a short while before we could embark, but that was more that we were early and not that the ship was not ready to board. Once we were on board we found our cabin quite easily (a balcony cabin on deck 8). We knew from this website that the cabin would be quite compact but were pleasantly surprised that it was well designed and there appeared to be ample room for the 2 of us. Whilst waiting for our bags to be delivered we explored the ship and were most impressed with the style, dEcor and the various restaurants, bars and upper decks.
Our 1st meal was at the Aloha Cafe which served every conceivable variety and nationality of food. It was tasty, hot and the staff were most helpful. We decided to have an early night the 1st night as the long journey had caught up with us. The bed was very comfortable and we both had a good night's sleep. The movement of the ship was unusual to us but gentle and very pleasant. We booked all of our excursions though NCL and even though they were slightly more expensive than Roberts, we found they were all well organized, punctual and friendly. Maui - We thought that we would start off with a low impact excursion as our 1st venture and went to the Ocean Centre and Iao Valley. Our driver was very informative and the scenery was spectacular. That night we dined in the Aloha Cafe again, once again although there were a lot of people, we had no trouble getting our meals or finding seating. The 2nd excursion on Maui was to Molokini Crater snorkeling. This was a fabulous day and we would highly recommend this excursion. That night we dined at the Skyline Restaurant (excellent, more formal but worth trying).