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My Portrait
Photography
My Nature Photography
This was the sixth cruise for me and my wife, the fourth for our daughters. The girls were nine and eleven, prior cruises were on NCL, Holland America and Disney. My wonderful wife is a registered nurse in an emergency room and I technology executive for a dot.com company. Both have to deal with high stress and chose this vacation to de-tox from the world.
My in-laws came with us this time. They had not been to Hawaii and this was their second cruise. Their prior cruise had been on Holland America to Alaska.
We selected this cruise based upon port times, weather (wanted to go someplace nice) and destination. After booking the cruise I spent the several months learning all that could be learned about the ship and excursions via various web sites and news groups. After all I am an internet nerd by trade. The early reports had me shaking in my boots, but I decided to take a chance as it was Hawaii.
We chose to get our own hotel, as the NCL was not using the Hilton, and we really like this hotel.
The photos on this site have been reduced to 40-80% of original size to allow them to fit on your monitor. I also used thumbnails where ever possible. Videos are about 8 MBs in size. PDF's are about 400k.
Pre-Cruise – Hilton Hawaiian Village Hotel
In general we had a great trip. Good service, fun ports, good food and plenty to do. We did not use the kids program.
The ship however was showing its age in some areas (see our cabin. For a ship that had just been through a refurbishment, many things still needed work. It looks like they concentrated on the public areas redecoration and not cabin refurbishment.
Service for the most part was pleasant and prompt. Everyone seemed eager to provide assistance. Not once did we feel like we were being pressured or hustled to buy this or that. A perfect example was I was walking through the buffet and saw some soup that look good. They were just closing the buffet and had removed all the bowls. I mentioned to one of the staff that the soup looked good and he said give it a try. I told him there were no bowls and he said wait right here and went off to the kitchen to find one for me instead of saying the buffet was closed. As it turned out, the soup was pretty good - a lobster bisque.
We always ate between 5:30 and 6:00. Our longest wait was under five minutes for a table.
Finding a deck chair was never a problem. Seating for the buffet was a challenge though. Tables seemed to come and go in groups. We even tried the pool area and the rear deck to mixed results.
Weather was more than perfect. Only a little rain while we were at sea and one day of sprinkles in port in the early morning. We got very lucky as it does tend to rain much more. Temperatures were great.
We did a lot, but Hawaii has so much more to offer. Even this being our second trip, we have only made a small dent in the list of activities that can be enjoyed.
If you would like to support my costs in running this site, donations are welcome.
If you find a fact this is wrong, feel free to let me know, as I had multiple sources for a great deal of the information, and it often was conflicting. Most information is from my observations, and hence my perception of reality, which makes it my reality. Feel free to disagree, that is what the freedom of America is about. My great meal can be your worst dinner ever - that doesn't make either of us wrong, just different.
| Our Trip | Pre-Cruise | Sun-Board | Mon-Kauai | Tue-Kauai | Wed-Hilo | Home |
| Thu-Kona | Fri-Maui | Sat-Maui | Sun-Honolulu | Ship Tour | Videos | Back |
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