We and three other couples choose this trip because we like a lot of sea days, wanted to see Hawaii again without the grueling flight, and considered it a great value. We flew in from Pittsburgh on a direct flight to LAX a day early - somewhat surprised how many others on this flight were also on this cruise. We stayed at the Queen Mary, which was fun, historic, and very close (walking distance.). Everyone in our group was retired except for myself. I am 68, my wife 64 and we were in the younger 25% of this cruise. I thought we were on a Holland cruise again.

My wife and I are Diamonds, two other couples got FTTF, and the fourth couple did not think it was worth the money. I have to say that on this cruise, they were probably right. At the Diamond lunch we talked to the Hotel manager, and he said that there were 78 Diamonds, over 700 Plats, and over 250 FTTF. The ship only holds about 2100 people, so if you add in the Suites, about half of the passengers were priority at some level.

We all had the earliest check-in time of 12:30, so we arrived at noon thinking that we would get right on the ship. It was a little disorganized, and they were already into the zones. We got into a LONG priority line, whereas the regular line seemed to be moving very rapidly. We all managed to get on about the same time, with the non-FTTF friends only about 10 minutes after the FTTF friends. We were all able to go right to our cabins because it was after 1:30 by the time we made it on the ship. Read more