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Pride of Aloha Vacation Review

I was on the “Pride of Aloha” from August 15th through August 21st of 2004. I must say that this was the worst cruise I have ever been on.

But before I get into what made it bad, let me take a moment to point out the “Service Charge”. NCL will automatically charge you $10.00 a day per person for what they claim is going towards tips for the crew so that the passenger does not have to worry about tipping unlike on other cruise lines. This is an outright lie! I spent much of this adventure talking to the crew who were more then happy to go into great detail about how things are, and I learned that this is money does not go towards tips at all. The management told one of the passengers that this money actually covers the crew members health insurance and I only know this because as I was talking to one of the crew, this lady came up to us screaming about “how dare we have to pay for your health coverage”, this is also false because heath coverage comes out of the crews paychecks. It is pretty much a mystery where this money goes but many of the crew agrees that it goes towards a bonus for the officers or something like that.

Also check your charges carefully! There will be another hidden charge snuck in there for the museum they have aboard the ship! From what I have learned, the state of Hawaii made a contract with the cruise line to get $5.00 in donations from every room on the ship. This will be divided by person so if there are two in a room you will see two mysterious charges of $2.50 or four $1.25 if there are four people and so on. This charge, unlike the “service charge” you can have dropped if you point it out to them. But they want to hear from each person directly (you cannot have it dropped for everyone in your room at once by yourself), and they will not tell you about this charge! It is small, but it is not right that they sneak it in there! So keep your eyes opened for it. It falls under something like “Cultural Awareness” on the bill.

The cruise was terrible right from the beginning! At the port we had to wait on huge lines in the heat and sun to get our bags up to the single baggage scanner that was going. It took about an hour and a half. Then we had to get on another huge line to get into the building and checked in. We could have paid someone to take out bags so we could directly get onto the second line but with the way things looked, who knows if it all would have been delivered onto the ship. The second line took just as long if not longer and do you think there is any shade or people offering water? No! Fry and cry.

When we got onto the ship and into the room it was apparent that it was not fully cleaned yet. I later learned that the stateroom attendants dragged cleaning out as long as they could to get over time because there was no tipping going on. I must say though that when the room was cleaned, at least the job was finished in full unlike everything else on the ship. Though when you leave the room in the morning with the beds messed up and towels on the floor, expect to see them that afternoon when you get back.

After seeing the room, we went up to the buffet to get some food. The buffet was a mess like all the other reviews pointed out. The food was terrible, the selection was poor, and the lines were extremely long! I mean like 45minutes to an hour long! And the drink machines ejected colored water instead of orange juice or lemonade. Also there was no ice. ALSO very very important! Check your dishes before you use them! This ship was dirty! There is stuff stuck onto about 60% of the dishes and utensils it will make you sick just to see it. Obviously the dish washers have a few “growing pains” just like everyone else on the ship. In fact, at one point I saw in my mothers plastic cup filled with orange water (orange juice) dark lines. She thought it was just the plastic but upon emptying it into another cup she noticed it was actually mold! If you caught a sight of what it looked like in the kitchen you would notice all types of garbage on the floors and in the buffet place, there was always puddles of water coming out of the kitchen.

The tables always had dishes and trays on them, even outside, everywhere people could leave things piled up! Even just on the floors. Someone I was with landed her sandal in chocolate cake because people just left it on the floor.

The dining rooms, oh how to describe. Expect to wait anywhere from 3-4 hours for a seat. There were so many people waiting that it was near riot conditions! People were yelling and getting really upset because it was taking so long and when you got in there you noticed that only about 25% of the restaurant was full. The reason was because there were not enough people to staff the place! It was a real shame. Also the menu is the same every single night! The first three of the ten or so choices are different according to the night but everything else stays the same.

There are shows, they are somewhat enjoyable but the “free style” of eating destroys the structure these cruises usually have so you end up missing them most of the time because you are still waiting to be seated for dinner.

And there is no gambling of any kind in Hawaii so NO casino! Not even Bingo!

Also many of the ports the ship stops in are industrial, so plan to take buses to get anywhere and do excursions! Because otherwise they will offer free shuttles to some cheesy store called Hilo Hatties at every port that sells the “typical” Hawaiian stuff. It was so funny. Every port we stopped at had a few things in common. One was many crew members leaving. I talked to some as they were wheeling their luggage off the ship, others stated that they were off on Saturday when we reached Honolulu again. (leaving not vacation) From these crew members I learned that roughly 300 people had left (not vacation) and even the head of the restaurant was new because in someone’s frustration over the wait on a previous cruise, they had punched him out. Of course I cannot confirm because I was not there. The other thing I saw was massive amounts of people returning to the ship with Walmart bags full of food. Even I am guilty of this. I guess this is an indication that there is a problem! I have never been on a cruise where I had to stock up on food at each stop before.

According to the restaurant staff, the trip before us, the ship actually ran out of food. We found a letter in our room from that trip, they actually credited every person on the ship back with $100 because they were complaining so much. The complaints continued with us, but the ship only cut the “Service Charge” in half ($5 a day per person instead of $10) which is not good, its not $35 dollars saved, just $35 not spent! And also allow us to take a cruise in 2005 for 20% off what we paid to go on this cruise. Is this really compensation? No! I never want to go on another NCL cruise again.

The passengers were unhappy, the crew was unhappy, the trip was really bad. It was not even the crew’s fault! They were so short handed and over worked everything fell apart. We should have pulled out as soon as we heard the Pride of America sunk!

I hope this was informative.

I should also point out that when we were at one of the islands, one of the boats that transported us over heated and was taken out of service so it took extra long to get to and from the ship.

I feel bad for the people on the ship, especially sitting through the "Thank You" show on the last night. It really is not their fault, they are just under staffed. Still, NCL should do something! and give us back out money.



















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