| Our Trip | Pre-Cruise | Sun-Board | Mon-Hilo | Tue-Sea | Wed-Fanning |
| Thu-Sea | Fri-Maui | Sat-Kauai | Sun-Leave | Ship Tour | Home |
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My Portrait
Photography
My Nature Photography
This was the fourth cruise for me and my wife, the second for our daughters. The girls were seven and nine, prior cruise was on 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.
We selected this cruise based upon sail dates (daughter's school break) 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.
We did not book our air thru NCL, as I had plenty of frequent flyer miles to get us to Hawaii. Our first leg was from Phoenix to Los Angeles - departure at 6:20 AM, which meant getting up way to early. After a two hour lay over we were on are way. Departing Los Angeles at 9:50 AM and arriving in Honolulu at 1:00 PM. Of course we had to take to obligatory first view of Hawaii shot.
The photos on this site have been reduced to 40% of original size to allow them to fit on your monitor. I also used thumbnails where ever possible. The Freestyle and Information sheet are PDF files and about 2 to 4 meg in size. The deck plans are click-able for public areas.
Pre-Cruise – Hilton Hawaiian Village
Wednesday - Fanning Island, Kiribati
In general we had a great trip. Good service, fun ports, good food and plenty to do. Kids program did not fit our expectations, but the kids did enjoy it. The one problem we had was handled quite well, and all cruisers involved seemed pleased with the outcome.
Service for the most part was pleasant and prompt. The key to some service issues maybe tied to the foreign crew. On a number of occasions the staff did not understand my request. Once they did, they were very helpful. For example, I was in the atrium looking at the menus, two of which were open on the table. I asked the women there "Do you have any other menus here that I can see?". Here response "No, we have these two". The gentleman next to me asked "Do you have a menu for the Aqua?" Her response, "Yes" and proceeded to get it. Then she saw that I was photographing them and quickly realized I wanted to see them all and brought me the entire stack.
Freestyle works well for us. We enjoyed the flexibility much more than traditional seatings. We hope that more lines offer this as an option. The Star could easily handle both as the Aqua and Versailles have the same menu each night, one could be freestyle and the other traditional - the best of both worlds.
There were several nights where freestyle indicate themes for dress such as 70's. Without prior notice, we did not pack for these. And looking around the ship, neither did anyone else.
Finding a deck chair was never a problem. Most of the time there were stacks of chairs that were not even set out as there was no demand for them.
Finding a table on deck at meal time or in the market cafe was a challenge at peak times. We always did within a very short time, but often it was not near where we desired to be. We never did once manage to get a table outside by the pool, but most times we just went into the market cafe with our trays.
If we were to do a Hawaii cruise again, we would consider the Wind as she has longer port times. We would really like to see NCL offer a 14 day cruise once a month on the Star with extra days in each port. There was so much more we would have liked to have done, but the short port times prevented. We knew this going in, so we don't rate the cruise down for this, just wishful thinking. We may do the Star again in the future, as sometimes seven days as all the time we can get away.
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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-Hilo | Tue-Sea | Wed-Fanning |
| Thu-Sea | Fri-Maui | Sat-Kauai | Sun-Leave | Ship Tour | Home |
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