We are writing to express our extreme dissatisfaction with our cruise of the Hawaiian Islands on the Pride of Aloha (which should be re-named Shame of Aloha) from August 22nd through August 29th, 2004. The following are only some of the inexcusable occurrences experienced by my husband and me, as well as by all the other passengers that we spoke to:

We had to wait 2-3 hours to be seated for dinner. Some guests were not seated at all, and actually went to bed without dinner. In addition, there was also slow service once we were seated, the menu was repetitious, and some of the items were very poorly prepared.The quality of the food on the buffet was unacceptable. Powdered dry eggs and reheated stale pancakes were typical of what was offered. There was also inadequate seating and long waits.There were housekeeping issues, such as stained towels, guests finding soiled and stained linens, and bathrooms having foul odors

We were charged for four excursions that we never signed up for. We had to wait over 2 hours on line to have the charges removed, and even then only with difficulty.

Several of the staff at the concierge desk were rude to passengers when approached about the problems. There was, however, no shortage of servers willing to take drink orders, or photographers waiting to take photos, for which there were additional charges.In addition to the above issues, the assistant Maitre'd, Daniel Krakowski, threatened to have my husband thrown off the ship when my husband approached him about poor service at the breakfast buffet on Wednesday, August 25th .

The compensation offered by Norwegian Cruise lines was an insult. A $35 per person refund on a service fee that was never authorized in the first place, and a 20% discount on a future cruise, does not make up for the inexcusably poor service we had to endure. We spent $3,500 for a week of aggravation and misery. How NCL can allow this to happen and take such a cavalier and high-handed attitude toward paying customers is simply unexplainable. When we talk to our friends who have had wonderful experiences for less money on other cruise lines, we get furious.

We will never take another cruise with Norwegian again.

However the Hawaiian Islands were beautiful and we did enjoy the time we spent on them.