I traveled w/my husband celebrating our 27th anniversary. Let me begin by saying that you should take all of the reviews (positive and especially negative) with an open mind. Every one is different and has different expectations.

That being said we had a great time. I would definitely arrive at least one day before embarkation especially if you are flying from the east coast. We arrived on Friday and stayed at the Westin Moana Surfrider for one night. The hotel was gorgeous - on the beach and centrally located for shopping and restaurants. Everything was within walking distance. We used Roberts Hawaii for our transfers from the airport to the hotel and then from the hotel to the pier the next day. Just buy a round trip ticket ($15 round trip-$9 one-way) when you get on the bus at the airport. I did call them about a week before we left to reserve a time to be taken from the hotel to the pier. You don't need a reservation for the ride from the airport to the hotel. Efficient enough way to get around and much cheaper than a cab but you will have to be patient because they take everyone on a big bus and you have to sit through them dropping everyone else off if your hotel is last on the list.

Embarkation - We got there around 1:30 and there was quite a line. You give them your luggage to be delivered to your stateroom. Fortunately for us, we are Latitudes members and were able to get in that line and our wait was only 5 minutes. We went directly to lunch and then sat by the pool to wait for them to call our floor when the cabin was ready. We took bathing suits out of our suitcases beforehand so we could swim and sit by the pool until our cabin was ready. Not sure what time our cabin ended up being ready as they never called deck #9. We wanted to stay by the pool all day anyway and when we left around 5:30 to go find our cabin, it was ready and 2 of our suitcases were there with a note to go to deck #3 because they were holding our 3rd suitcase. When we got to deck #3, they just said they saw that we had a travel iron in the suitcase and wanted to warn us to be very careful as someone on another cruise line left their iron on and it fell and started a fire that consumed 50 staterooms. I assured them I would be careful and we were on our way w/our suitcase. I will say that although the ship says you can borrow an iron for 1 hour, I heard many people complaining that irons were few and far between and they could never get one. Read more