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Pride of Hawaii: Freestyle dining leaves a bad taste

By Michael & Nancy from Kissimmee, FL on September 13, 2006.

My wife and I went on the August 28 Pride of Hawaii cruise from Honolulu. We were led to believe that freestyle dining was an innovative creation that all the passengers would love. Not true. What you are not told is that you must board the ship, drop everything and go to the reservations desk, and make reservations for the week. If you don’t, you will be standing in line at every nightly meal. This is not only our opinion, but the majority of the passengers that we spoke to, were fed up with this style of dining.

Our service was terrible. We had a butler that came to our Penthouse the first day and handed us two envelopes for donations for himself and the housekeeping individual. He told us to place cash in the envelopes so that he would not have to pay taxes. I am sure this was not part of his training. Generally, the service was poor and the individuals were lazy and untrained. We did have two ladies that served our dinner at the Jasmine Restaurant that restored our faith in ‘good service’.

We enjoyed Hawaii and the ship, so the cruise was not a total loss.

We will not be customers of NCL in the future. We take a cruise every year and we will inform our cruise agent not to schedule NCL in the future.

In closing, you have paradise in Hawaii and you have a very nice ship, but you attempt to destroy the rest with inexperienced, lazy, and shady individuals that make the cruise less than a total enjoyable experience.

Pride of Hawaii is located at 7665 Corporate Center Dr., Miami, FL 33126.

See related reviews in: Not Recommended, Cruise Ship, Customer Service, User Reviews - 3-Star rating

This review is the subjective opinion of the individual traveler and not of MiamiBeach411 nor of its partners.

Michael & Nancy does not recommend this business.

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2 Comments on

"Freestyle dining leaves a bad taste"

Dave says:

Freestyle cruising is our favorite way to cruise. We have never had an issue with getting reservations for dinner if we so chose to do so, even in the middle of our cruise. Most of the time we dine at the buffet because it allows us more freedom.

We have been on 9 cruises, 6 of them with NCL. If you are looking for a more stringent eating schedule, I would suggest looking elsewhere. However, if you are looking for a truly relaxing cruise with no demands, NCL is the way to go.

Posted on 08/09/2009 at 6:04 PM

Blake says:

We went on a NCL cruise and we ate at the buffet most of the time as well. Not because we wanted too, but because dining in the main dining room would have required a long wait. A couple of nights we paid extra to eat at one of the alternate dining establishments, but we had to wait there as well. We were very disappointed about eating at the buffet so many nights, but our only alternatives were to wait 30-40 minutes or pay extra. Too many of the dining spots on NCL charge extra, and the long waits at the free spots force many passengers to pay so they can eat in a timely fashion. I can understand having a premium restaurant where you pay extra, but the food we received in the alternate restaurants was not any different than the food you get for free on most lines. NCL has way too many pay extra spots. I think the lack of free dining options is an intentional strategy to drive customers to the restaurants that charge extra.

Posted on 01/21/2010 at 10:39 AM

Pride of Hawaii: Freestyle dining leaves a bad taste

Michael & Nancy does not recommend this business.

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"Freestyle dining leaves a bad taste"

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