I travel with my mom and brother every summer and we've sailed on the Norwegian Cruise Line approximately 6 times before to Alaska, Italy, the Baltic Sea, the Caribbean, and the East Coast and we've enjoyed our experiences and recommended NCL to our family and friends. We loved the Hawaiian Islands itinerary and the excursions, however, our experience with the Pride of America was the worst we've had so far so that was disappointing and something future cruisers should be aware of.

We purchased the same type of balcony room that we've stayed in in the past (the best balcony room you can get without moving into the private concierge category) and the room and bathroom/shower were the smallest we've ever been in. The balcony was the best one we've had so far - we loved the 2 lounge chairs and 2 regular chairs w/footrests - but the room itself was so small that my mom and I couldn't move around in the room at the same time. This was our first time having a stand-up shower with a shower curtain rather than a shower door. Fortunately, the curtain had rods in it so it didn't get sucked into the shower and cling to us, but the shower was so small, that we could barely turn around in it.

The toilet system was the worst we've ever experienced on Norwegian or any other cruise line. Our toilet stopped working in the middle of 3 different nights where it suddenly stopped flushing. This interrupted much-needed sleep and relaxation each time it happened. The first time it happened, I thought I was doing something wrong even though everything was working earlier. I tried not to wake my mom as I tried to get the toilet to flush, but finally had to turn the light on and call the front desk to let them know about the problem waking my mom in the process. They fixed the problem within 30 min. The same thing happened again another night - that time I realized it wasn't anything I was doing wrong, but my mom still woke up when I called the front desk to let them know about the problem. We waited up about an hour waiting for the system to start working again. I complained to the front desk and was told that someone in our area was putting foreign objects into the toilet which clogged the whole system in our area and resulted in our group of toilets being turned off so the problem could be fixed. The front desk staff were apologetic and thanked us for our patience. On our final night, the toilet stopped working for a 3rd time at 1 AM - again disrupting our sleep as I called the front desk again and waited for the toilet to start working again. This experience not only interrupted our sleep 3 out of the 7 nights of our cruise, but it also made us anxious every time we used the bathroom b/c we didn't know if it was going to actually flush or if it would suddenly stop working and become unavailable (and disgusting) for the next person. Read more