Nords said:
BTW, Marshac, I'd appreciate a full cruise ship report when you get back to your home computer. We've been on the Norwegian Wind and the Star but we haven't yet tried their newer ones.
Norwegian Cruise Lines was getting away with almost $6/minute last year. However the more you spent the cheaper it got!
Ok here it is- I haven't had any sleep since Friday, so pardon any typos.
We got an airfare + cruise package from NCL- we flew over on northwest (which forced me to purchase trip insurance in case the pilots decided to strike- NW is also bankrupt)- an uneventful flight. Coming back was on United, and while there were nonstop flights from ITO to SEA, we weren't on one- instead NCL thought it would be awesome (and probably cheaper for them) to fly us out of Hawaii at 10PM at night into LA, where we had a 3 hour layover for another flight up to Seattle. Totaly 100% lame. The take away message- if you care about when you fly, or where you fly to- schedule your own airfare.
The ship was nice- we were on the "Pride of America" which is less than a year old, and is a US flagged ship registered in HI- this means no customs, no need to sail for 2 days to touch a foreign port, and since it's a HI registered ship, no casino (which I like). 98% of the staff were nice. The meals in the free restaurants were unremarkable, and the portion sizes were small- I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I lose weight on this cruise... not that that's a bad thing I suppose. In the 'restaurants' that had a cover charge ($10-$15), the food was quite good- I had a nice fillet mignon and lobster tail for $7.50 (it was half-off the cover night). Since you're all cheap bastards (like me), avoid all alcohol on the ship... this is where they try and make up for the fact that they don't have a casino on-board.
The destinations were good, although I wish that we had stayed overnight at Hawaii- I would have liked to go up to KECK for a night of stargazing. The only cruise-sponsored activity I paid for was a luau- free booze and women.... it was pretty good. On every island we rented a car- on Maui I got a mustang convertible and cruised around the island... the weather was nice, and it was loads of fun.
Would I want to take this cruise again? Probably not- once was enough. As I mentioned with KECK, some of the things that I would really like to do sometimes don't work out with the ship itinerary. Also, when you're stuck in an hour-long traffic jam outside of Kona, you know that if you don't make it back to the ship on time, it won't wait for you... this adds a certain level of stress to an otherwise pleasant vacation.
I'd rather be working out, eating cookies in the café, strolling the pool deck (with a cookie), watching a movie, hearing a talk, eating cookies in the café, spending quality time with spouse & kid, eating cookies in the café, reading a good book... somehow "surfing the Internet" never came into the picture.
It was $.75/min. Megan had to turn in a paper, so there really wasn't an option- I bought a 30min block of 'net time (I wasn't sure how speedy it would be)... turns out that the speed was pretty good, and it only took her a few minutes to log-in to her online class and submit her paper.... otherwise I wouldn't have been on the internet either- I just couldn't let those expensive minutes go to waste
