[ Cruise Reviews ]  [ Port Reviews ] [ Cruise Chat ]  [ Cruise Links ]  [ News ]

NCL America
Pride of America Cruise Review
Hawaii

Zach Smith
Age: 28
Occupation: Consultant
Number of Cruises: 1
Sailing Date: July 2nd, 2006

I recently had my honeymoon on the Pride of America and was severely disappointed with the ship and the ship's staff. This was our first cruise but our families have been cruising for years and had suggested that the best way to see the Hawaiian islands was to take a cruise.

My wife and I decided to fly into Honolulu the day before the ship set sail and stay in a hotel which was included in the vacation package we purchased. The NCL service was sub par from the moment we stepped into the hotel. The hotel itself was beautiful but NCL gave us a room with two beds and the room wreaked of smoke. We put in a special request for a non-smoking room and a king bed when we booked the vacation. When we went back down to try and have the rooms switched, the girls working the NCL arrival desk were fighting about who actually had to get up to make the room switch. Once one of the girls drew the shorter straw, she got up with her boyfriend (who was sitting with her) and proceeded to the hotel counter to make the room switch. I tried to ask her questions but she wouldn’t answer them because she and her boyfriend were too busy flirting. To me, this is unacceptable. The families and individuals on their vacations spent a lot of money to have a good vacation, many which probably won't be able to afford another vacation for some time.


My wife and I paid extra for the butler and concierge service with our package which was the ONLY thing that made our time on the ship worth while, although they made mistakes too. As soon as we arrived, we met with our concierge who went over his and the butlers duties on the trip. He had us fill out our reservations to the restaurants that were supposed to be nicer than the free ones on the ship. On Monday we received a printout of all our reservations for the upcoming week. We had requested 7:30PM for dinner for every night. When we selected the time we realized that there were a lot of people on the boat and we may not get the times we selected. So when we received the printout and the times were different we were ok with it. The problem was that when the first reservation rolled around it was incorrect on our sheet. Our sheet said 8:30 but it was really for 7:30. It turns out that every night had the wrong time on it so we had to call and reconfirm all of our reservations for the week.

The food was horrible and the portions were child sized. If you asked for 2 entrees the server would scowl at you and complain about their job and tell you they would get to you as soon as everyone else was served. ALL of the service on the ship was unacceptable except for the butler (which we paid dearly for). The butler was the only one that would do his best to make sure we were happy. Thank God we had reservations because there were couples that couldn't even get sat in the "Freestyle" cafes because they were too busy. One couple we met after the cruise told us that they had reservations for a party of 5 people at 9:30Pm because that is all that was available and once they were sat down they were told they had 30 minutes to eat because the restaurant closed at 10PM.

The list of BAD service goes on and on.... I thought we were the only ones having a bad time but as soon as we disembarked from the ship and were on the bus ride to the airport, the bus came alive with complaints and people stating that they had a horrible time and WILL never cruise with NCL again.

To sum it up... Bad food and unacceptable service. I would not hire Pride Of America employees to clean my company's toilets. There isn't a letter grade for this cruise or it's crew but if there was it would be somewhere around a Z-.

Warm Regards,

Zach Smith