My wife and I had our first cruise with Norwegian and we will never cruise with them again. This trip was for our 25th wedding anniversary and we took the 10 hour flight each way from Sydney to Honolulu to get there. We found out from our travel agent on the day we were leaving Australia that the ship would not go to Hilo on the Big Island due to the volcano and we spent the first 24 hours sitting in port at Honolulu. As we had already organised extra days at the end of the cruise to explore Oahu there was not much for us to do except stay onboard the ship. Then on the evening we were supposed to sail to Kona on the Big Island the Captain announced over the PA that we would not be stopping there either and would be spending a day at sea. Then the Cruise Director gets on the PA and tried to put a positive spin on the situation, which just came across as an insincere "snow job". So instead of stopping at four ports we only stopped at two - Kahului on Maui and Nawilili on Kauai. They were nice places to visit and I would have preferred an extra day on both Maui and Kauai instead of sitting in port or spending a day at sea. The volcano had been erupting since the 3rd of May so NCL could have made the decision not to go to the Big Island a lot earlier and arranged extra days on the other two islands to make up for it. The shore excursions we had booked from Australia at Hilo and Kona were cancelled and we were offered on board credit (but not a refund). When we tried to book other excursions we found that others had got in before us and most of the good excursions were booked out so we had to settle for the crumbs. The lady at the Shore Excursions desk was not very helpful and lacked empathy for the situation we were in.

We had a mid-ship oceanview room, which was OK although the bathroom was very small and you had to be a contortionist to use the shower. Our cabin stewardess was very good and looked after us very well.

The entertainment was very poor. Some of the singers couldn't stay in tune. The magician was poor. Toby Beau and Carre Stone were good. Fred Bevill the comedian was very good - at least my wife and I were able to have a laugh in spite of all the dissappointments. Read more