Hope this is helpful to someone. Really appreciate all the insight shared on this forum (and many others) and wanted to pass along those things that worked well for us.

This cruise was part of a planned vacation for my parents (active grandparents in their 60s), myself and three kids (17, 16, 11) and my brother and his 2 kids (9,3). Due to life circumstances, it had been years since my parents had had a vacation and they wanted something special with their kids and grandkids. They have cruised previously (three times including the Caribbean and Alaska) and like the idea of a floating hotel to visit the islands and have some great family memories. The volcano changed NCL's original itinerary so that was a bummer (we visited Hawaii one time previously when I was 15...I still remember the helicopter tour over the volcano and wanted to give my kids that kind of lifetime memory but alas it was not be for this trip).

Our trip began with traveling first to Los Angeles for a few days. This was to break up the trip for the little ones and adjust to the time change easier. Will skip that part since this is a cruise review ;) We flew from LAX to HON on Friday and had Robert's pick us up at the airport to take us to the hotel. This was the only part of the trip with Robert's that was disappointing. Every single Robert's employee seemed cluesless to help us and it took awhile for us and others who had booked to get situated. We stayed at Holiday Inn Express in Waikiki for Friday night. Went to Waikiki beach that evening. Repacked the next morning and headed to the ship Saturday morning around 11 via Robert's shuttle. Read more