We arrived in Honolulu on Friday before our cruise and found Roberts of Hawaii to be a very fast and easy way to transfer to our hotel. We stayed at the Mariott Courtyard Hotel and were very disappointed. We had what they called a suite which had a microwave, sink and small coffee maker. The room was small and in need of updating and painting. The air conditioner couldn't be controlled and the only way to turn it off was to unplug it. The bathroom on the ship was larger than the bathroom in this hotel and I'm not exaggerating. We didn't eat at the restaurants in the hotel because they were expensive and one of them had pigeons running around inside the restaurant and we didn't think this was very sanitary.(The hotel left the doors open all the time.) We had purchased a round trip ticket from Roberts with the intent of having them transfer us from the hotel to the ship but decided instead to take a taxi and use the transfer after the cruise to have Roberts pick us up at the dock and take us to the airport. This turned out extremely well. The taxi from the hotel to the dock cost the same as using Roberts and it was alot faster since the bus didn't have to stop at other hotels. We arrived at the dock at noon and it was the fastest embarkation we've ever had. The only problem we had was that we missed the table to pick up our luggage tags for our cabin. It wasn't very well marked. Other than that we were on the ship in about 20 minutes. We had lunch at the Aloha Cafe and it was very good. Our cabin was ready about 2:30 but we didn't mind because it gave us a chance to explore the ship.

The ship decor is very bright and colorful and was very clean. It seems that everywhere we went there was a stand with sanitizer; in fact; they sanitized our hands as we came onto the ship. At the time we didn't know that this was the first of hundreds of times they would "spritz" our hands. We didn't mind though; as I'm kind of a germaphobe and I hate touching stair railings and elevator buttons. One thing I noticed that they didn't do (we've seen this done on other cruises)is sanitize the stair railings. We've done two cruises with Royal Carribean and someone was always cleaning the railings and wiping down the elevators.

Our cabin was a balcony cabin on the tenth deck, on the starboard side and what we expected. Alot of people have complained about the size but we think it's about the same size of cabin we had with Royal Caribbean and the bathroom is exactly the same size and configuration. I know people have said that anyone overweight or over six feet tall wouldn't fit in the shower. My husband and I had no problem. He's 6'4 and I'm not slim and we had lots of room. We have a travel trailer; if you want to see a small bathroom and shower; this trailer has it. The bathroom on the ship was like the grand canyon compared to the trailer's. There is plenty of storage space. We unpacked and used all the hangers in the closet and put the rest of our stuff in the drawers. The suitcases went under the beds. There were two beach towels in the room and we used these to sit on the chairs on the balcony. There was salt on the railing and the chairs. Some nights the wind picked up and blew water onto the balcony leaving the salt deposits. The only complaint that we had with the cabin was that we could not hear any announcements without opening the cabin door. On R.C. there was a speaker with volume control in the room for this purpose. Read more