We had never been to Hawaii before and liked the itinerary that POA offered. My husband and I stayed a week in Honolulu before boarding this cruise. As stated in another review, be sure to make reservations for Pearl Harbor.. Lines are long. We would recommend booking a tour, we did and had no waiting on line. It was very easy to get from our timeshare to the port. There are many shuttles to choose from. We arrived for embarkation around 1pm...had lunch in the Aloha Buffet and our cabin was ready before 4pm. Our luggage arrived shortly after.
We have only been on two cruises before this one, (Alaska RCL and Eastern Carribean RCL) those did not disappoint and neither did this one. We booked a midship oceanview picture window cabin on the 7th level which was very, very nice. We had very ample storage space. We brought extra hangers with us, so that helped a lot.
We did alot of research about wine packages, and decided to bring our own wine with us, (ABC Store in Honolulu has a good variety and prices that are reasonable). We were charged a corking fee of $15.00 per bottle (which we expected). We carried on 4 bottles and kept them in our room. We asked our VERY PLEASANT cabin steward to empty out our refrigerator of mini bar supplies so that we could make room to chill our wine and he was happy to do so. We carried our bottle to dinner each night and the waiters opened and poured our wine and kept it chilled in a bucket throughout dinner.