We have done six cruises: on Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Paul Gauguin, and Regent Seven Seas (2). We have been to each of the Hawaiian Islands at least once but we’ve never done a cruise of the islands. So with family members who had never cruised before in tow, we signed up for NCL’s Pride of America with a plan to visit relatives on all the islands. We knew it was an older ship, although it had been refurbished in 2016.

One week before the cruise, we were notified that NCL was shortening the length of the cruise from 7 nights to 6 nights due to an unexpected certification inspection that put them in dry dock for the weekend. It also delayed by one day the start of the next cruise the following week. Needless to say, NCL was dealing with over 4,000 unhappy customers over the two weeks from March 3 to March 17. This change in itinerary disrupted everyone’s plans for shore excursions and our plans to visit relatives. If that were all that happened, I probably wouldn’t be writing this review. Rather than making you read a long narrative, I am listing the things that we have never experienced on any of the six previous cruises we’ve taken with other cruise lines. You can decide if you’re OK with this.

• To compensate for the shortened cruise, NCL offered all passengers the choice of a 25% discount on a future cruise (that’s optimism!) or a refund of one day of the cruise. We took the latter because we have no intention of booking NCL again. Our daily stateroom plus taxes and one day’s gratuities (we paid those in advance) and a transfer to the airport at the end of the cruise ($50 for two) came to $891.36. They refunded $784.46, a little short by $106, needless to say. I contacted NCL after the cruise and have yet to receive a response a month later. A great customer oriented company would have done more considering the 7th day on shore was a complete mess. See my next point. Read more