The entertainment and staff were overall wonderful on board. We really enjoyed our Hawaiian cruise. When we got home to share our experiences with family and friends, unfortunately the first things that came to mind were the negative issues with Norwegian.

Norwegian seemed to want to use every opportunity to get us to spend more than the initial $9000 we paid for our cruise to Hawaii. When we asked about transportation to a local town to do some shopping, they offered us an excursion costing $65 per person to take to a town to shop and visit various restaurants. We were not going to pay to go shopping. We tried again, asking for a simple excursion for the day and were told about one that was leaving in 10 minutes. He did not mention the cost. (We could have asked but he kept talking to us about how great the excursion was and how rare that there were any openings and we needed to decide quickly.) We went. The next day we found out the price was $369.17 per person! At our last port I point blank ask a staff member if there was some type of shuttle into town. She said 'No'. She explained that it was only a 10-minute walk into town when she knew we could have ridden. Once in town, we discovered there was a free shuttle that ran between the ship and town. (Another example of Norwegian not sharing information with passengers.) We understood that this shuttle had been in service for several years. While in town we also learned from a local person that we could ride a city bus around the island for about $3. In talking with other passengers on the ship, many of them hadn't found out until late in the cruise about local inexpensive transportation. Information Norwegian appears unwilling to share with their passengers.

Each night at the buffet there was a theme. One night it was Seafood. Unfortunately, it was difficult to SEE the seafood. It was buried in crab cakes, shrimp dishes with very small shrimp or dishes with little to no visible seafood. There were 4 restaurants you could choose rather than the buffet. These however had surcharges related to them. So again, you would have to pay additional money to eat at these restaurants. When we traveled with another cruise line this was not the case and there were no surcharges, no matter where you chose to eat.