Norwegin Cruise Line
7665 Corporate Center Drive
Miami, FL 33126

To Whom It Concerns:

We sailed on a 7 day cruise on the Pride of Aloha departing Honolulu on Sunday, July 25, 2004 with a group of 35 family members and friends. I was in cabin # 9301. We were originally booked, since October, 2003, on the Pride of America. We had more people, but when we were switched to Pride of Aloha, a smaller ship, some of our group dropped out because they couldn't get rooms equivalent to those paid for on the larger ship. We had several serious problems on this cruise.

1. When we were downgraded, we received no money back or credits toward future cruises.
2. Upon arrival, out of our 11 staterooms, we had at least 4 staterooms that weren't made up when we arrived on the ship. One room didn't get sheets on the bed until 2:00 AM, after we had sailed.
3. Some of our members were in parties of 4 and put into staterooms accommodating 3 people. Parties of 3 people were put in staterooms accommodating 2 people. Extra beds were brought in, creating wall-to-wall bed, making it so people couldn't walk around in the room.
4. We had members with all types of staterooms...after being re-assigned on the Pride of Aloha (inside staterooms, ocean view staterooms, executive suites with balconies)...our party was scattered all over the ship. We had balcony cabins on the very back of the ship on decks 8 and 9 and on the very front of deck 9. We had cabins in the middle of deck 8 and deck 9 and deck 4, inside cabins at the front of deck 9. We had a cabin on deck 7. This was extremely inconvenient for our party of 35 because the telephones did not record messages, so we could not coordinate what we were doing, where we were, or where we were going (especially after we had to reschedule several shore tours...see below).
5. Shore tours booked ahead of time through the Internet or booked personally on the phone were confirmed, but tickets were not received on the ship when we arrived. We spent a long time standing in lines to learn the tours were full and we had to coordinate and reschedule at different times or select other adventures. This was very inconvenient and exhausting to get these corrected.
6. The volume of general PA announcements was too low to be heard in any common areas with several people and could not be heard in the rooms.
7. Only 2 of the 6 restaurants were included in the cruise price. The other 4 involved additional fees. This might have been acceptable for "Freestyle Cruising" if the 2 restaurants had different menus OR if the menu for both had a complete change each day. It was difficult to find something to eat that was different each day unless one liked every item on the repeated menu.
8. The restaurants were not consistently open at the same time each day.
9. Why was it hard to get pineapple in Hawaii?
10. Freestyle seating wasn't working. Once we arrived, we still had to put our name in for a reservation and wait for 45 minutes to 90 minutes to be seated. If we had a large enough party we could make a reservation ahead of time, but this doesn't work out well when you can't find the others.
11. There was a lack open restaurants. No restaurant opened for breakfast until 7:00 AM, much too late for people who had booked shore tours that started at 7:30 AM to eat.
12. The lamps on the tables in the Crossing Restaurant are too big and too tall, making it difficult to talk with the person on the other side.
13. The 24-hour pizza station was a good idea and would have been even better if the pizza had been edible. I would suggest you investigate the pizza ovens and brands used by Carnival Cruise lines. Theirs is excellent!
14. There was a general lack of food on the ship. There's no excuse for running out of bananas, Frosted Flakes cereal, or Raisin Bran cereal. One of our 20-something boys actually lost weight on this cruise! Certain items were not available through room service, especially if we had a lower category room number, for example an inside cabin versus a suitewith a large balcony.
15. The food quality was substandard to other cruises I've been on. One exception is some of the food delivered for room service which seemed better quality than that being served at the buffets.
16. The ice cream bar was only open from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. This is a very bad time to serve children before dinner and people who are on shore tours never get to enjoy this feature.
17. Free margaritas were supposed to be served at the Mexican buffet. This was a fiasco because the margaritas were served in 6 ounce juice cups. We were not allowed to take one as we got our meal. The waiters were supposed to bring them as we were seated and eating, but they never came. When we checked on drinks again, we were told they ran out of clean 6 ounce cups and the servers were not allowed to put the margaritas in a larger cup that was available.
18. It seemed that food items were available based on room category. We could get more from my brother's executive suite than from my inside cabin. If this was done on purpose, it was a bad tactic, especially since many of us paid for cabins that were better categories than what was received...i.e. I paid for an ocean view.
19. There was a shortage of staff and management-type people. We heard rumors that 150 of the staff had walked out before our cruise sailed.
20. All of the individual people we met...waiters and room stewards...were all very nice, but generally, no one on the ship was smiling...not the staff or the passengers...because of the way things were being run.
21. Was it really necessary to go 20 knots per hour to get from one island to another? This made the cruise rougher than it should have been.
22. The plain staterooms did not appear to be redecorated and were rather drab. Remember, we had originally booked a brand new ship. It appeared the executive suites with balconies had been redone.
23. The beds did not have individual top sheets and blankets. There was an off white comforter on top which was sufficient to keep you warm but insufficient for personal comfort temperature control of a sheet only.
24. My stateroom was small, not having enough closet space for 2 people to put clothes away in drawers and the closets. We had to use some things directly out of the suitcases rather than being able to stow them under the beds and have room to walk around. I don't know how my brother survived with 4 people and their wall-to-wall beds.
25. A ship with no gambling needs more organized activities. BINGO would be good but I understand that since this ship was a US cruise there was no gambling available.
26. I understand the requirement for 100% US staffing on this cruise around Hawaii only. There were a lot of staff that was not well trained yet. It did not appear that there were enough management-types or supervisors to help them learn what they should be doing. For example, there were no extras, like towel animals, etc.
27. This was my 25-year-old daughter's first cruise. She is an experienced international traveler and was not impressed enough to go on another cruise any time soon.
28. Several of the dining room and room service meals had items forgotten/missing from the orders.
29. I never saw pricing information for Internet access on board using ship computers in any of the literature.
30. There was no provision for extra tipping to room stewards.
31. Room steward maintenance carts were stowed in the hallways even when not being used...all day long. This was bothersome, cluttered, and annoying when carrying bags and equipment for shore tours.
32. A room service breakfast request was left on the door at 9PM and was never picked up before breakfast the next morning.

1. The shore tours were good.
2. The life jackets are designed better than on some other cruise ships. They don't choke heavier passengers.
3. The key holder by the door was convenient.
4. Butter served soft rather than hard as a brick was good.
5. The new decor of the public areas of the ship looked nice, as they should have for a refurbished, re-commissioned ship.
6. The craft classes and hula lessons were good.
7. The small refrigerators in the rooms were nice, but the cabinets enclosing them created a hot heat pocket that competed with the refrigeration process.