Sorry for the long hiatus. I was out with my girlfriend on a 7 day interisland cruise on the Pride of Aloha for our week long vacation. So how was it? Read on.
We were dropped off by the owner of this blog, none other than Erik, at the pier next to Aloha Tower Marketplace. You can’t miss it as the pier is right before the enormous cruise ship. You are guided into the pier to check in your luggage then stand in line to confirm your travel. Our boarding time was 1pm, but you would actually board eariler.
Before entering the ship, you must sanitize your hands with alcoholic sanitizer globes which were practically everywhere on the ship. The reason why? They had a case of botulism because someone had contaminted food after coming out of the bathroom and did not wash their hands. So as a preventive measure, they included sanitizer globes all over the ship, and especially at the door of every restaurant.
The ship was amazingly large on the inside as it is on the outside. The interior was much nicer than I thought, but they really made a point by using very bright colors everywhere. We started the day off at the Hukilau Restaurant. It is located on the top deck, and is basically the restaurant that is the most laid back, where you can wear anything you want at anytime. We ate a nice buffet lunch that consisted of roast beef which was sliced to the cut that you preferred, fish, rice, vegetables, pasta cooked to order, and a large assortment of fruits. I was actually surprised at the quality of the meal…it was better than I would have imagined.
Around 2pm, we were notified by the loudspeaker that our room was ready (they announce it by floor). We hurried to our room to see what it looked like. Unfortunately our key cards did not work, and even worse, when we took it back to the reception desk to fix it, they gave us new cards that also didn’t work. We did this about 3 times and finally the security had to come up and change the cards. At least everyone was courteous and sincerely apologized about the errors they had caused.
The room is really really tiny. They list it at 127 sq feet. The twin beds were combined to one large queen bed at our request when we booked the trip. The shower was extremely small. In fact, it’s not even arm-length wide. The shower curtain was also pretty flimsy, and came off the hooks if you tug too hard. The sink and toilet were as expected…very limited room. It kind of reminded me of an airplane bathroom…but cleaner.
After leaving the room, we decided to reserve some times at their specialty restaurants. They have 3 specialty restaurants…a french bistro, an Italian restaurant, and a Pacific Rim restaurant. All specialty restaurants have a dress code, which means no t-shirts, slippers, jeans, shorts, etc. There was also a premium to eat at these restaurants. It is a fixed cost of $10-15 per head, but included 3-4 course meals. Luckily for us, when we arrived they told us that you did not have to dress up this first night, and that the cost was half off so we chose the most expensive restaurant which was the Royal Palm Bistro, the french restaurant.
We started off with escargot, french onion soup, calamari, and salad. All of which were superb. I ended up getting the pork chop and my girlfriend got the fennel crusted seared ahi. My dish consisted of two very small pieces of pork and was not as tender as I had wished, but the taste was pretty good. The ahi was much better and included a bigger piece, but I don’t really care for fennel. Lastly, we closed out with dessert which were the tiramisu and creme brule. The creme brule was very good and included rasberry and blueberrys. The tiramisu was only average. But for $7.50 a head, it was awesome. =)
The only complaint I had was that our luggage arrived rather late. We got our luggage around 8:30pm even though we boarded at before 1pm. I guess with so many luggages to drop off, it would take a bit of time. We ended up watching a movie in our room (they play different movies everyday) and fell asleep.
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