POH Questions

[luv2bcruzn]

For those of you who have sailed on the POH I have a few questions that maybe you can help me answer and make some decisions.

 

1. Are there any major differences in an AF mini-suite and a BA balcony that make it worth the price difference? (besides the extra square footage and the bathtub)

 

2. On the excursion list NCL offers the "Pacific Paradise Luau" on Maui is this the same as the Old Lahaina Luau? Can anyone tell me about this/these luaus that are offered?

 

3. What are the prices of the specialty restaurants, do they offer discounts on certain days or hours, which ones are "not to be missed", and what dishes are the favorites in each restaurant?

 

Thanks in advance for the information.

[BBC5]

Can not answer the first two questions; however as for the last one; on our cruise on 9/11/06 it was half off between 5:30 and 6:30 pm. In our opinion, Cagney's was not to be missed, just remember, the "specialty water" is an extra expense, we were not aware of this.

[2tnts]

Just back fromt he 10-30 sailing. The NCL Luau was cancelled last week. We booked the Old Lahaina Luau, glad we did because otherwise we would not have attended a luau. We had a rent a car, thus transportation to the Lahaina was not a problem. The doors open about 5:15 p.m. You are given a lei, drinks and escorted to your seat. All drinks are free all evening. There is a list of various drinks that are available. You can walk around the grounds, they give hula lessons, you can take pictures at various sites, jewelry sales, live music all night, etc. The site is beautiful, right on the water.

You can watch as the pig is taken from the ground. The food is very tasty - pork, various chicken dishes, salads, seafood salads, beef, vegies.... Guests are called table by table to the buffet line. Desserts are brought to your table. After dinner is served, the show begins. The dancers (male and female) are great, beautiful costumes.

We enjoyed the experience and would recommend it highly. Since the the NCL luau was cancelled, we were not able to get feedback on the Paradise luau from other cruisers.

[CruisinMK]

For those of you who have sailed on the POH I have a few questions that maybe you can help me answer and make some decisions.

 

1. Are there any major differences in an AF mini-suite and a BA balcony that make it worth the price difference? (besides the extra square footage and the bathtub)

 

basically no, I think the really good perks start one level above at AE

 

2. On the excursion list NCL offers the "Pacific Paradise Luau" on Maui is this the same as the Old Lahaina Luau? Can anyone tell me about this/these luaus that are offered?

 

You can find info fast doing a "luau" search over on the hawaii ports-of-call forum here

 

3. What are the prices of the specialty restaurants, do they offer discounts on certain days or hours, which ones are "not to be missed", and what dishes are the favorites in each restaurant?

 

I mostly like them all, but I thought the italian wasn't as good as the others. Italian and mexican are free. I recommend doing at least 2 or 3 nights of specialty restaurants if you like the menus on them

[2tnts]

Specialty Restaurants - We tried several.

Cagneys - great steaks. The cajun ribeye is to die for. The salads good. Lobster bisque - not recommeneded. The crab cake good. Didn't care for the bread they served.

Paniolo - we had two appetizers, both were excellent. For meals we had the fajitas - chicken and beef. Just enough meat for two fajitas. I did not care for the beans and rice - a pasty/powderery taste. Dessert was excellent - churros and ice cream. We went several other evenings just for the churros before closing.

Le Bistro - We had steaks again, good. Come with sliced homemade frenchfries - we ordered extra fries. Bread and Salad good. I am not a french onion soup eater, but my hubbie liked it.

Italian - You can create you own pizza - Hubbie order a pizza, I didn't taste it, but he ate the entire pizza. Chicken parmasean was good. For dessert I ordered a strawberry shortcake (called something else on the menu). Too much cream, and not enough cake - but had a great taste. We went back to Paniola for dessert later.

The service was excellent in all of the specialty restaurants. I heard people on the ship complaining of long wait times for service. We did not experience any wait times. For all of our reservations, we were immediately seated. Even when we walked into Paniola for dessert without reservations. I guess they got used to us coming for dessert every night.

Alizar - We did not like the food at all. We went to Alizar on Lobster night. We went about 8:30 p.m. so maybe the time had something to do with it. The lobster was extremely bitter tasting. If this was my first time eating lobster I would say - I don't like lobster. Others on the ship said the lobster night was excellent, even in Alizar. So I am putting my bad tasting lobster on dining so late and "getting the bottom of the barrel".

[beachchick]

luv2bcruzn:

 

2. On the excursion list NCL offers the "Pacific Paradise Luau" on Maui is this the same as the Old Lahaina Luau? Can anyone tell me about this/these luaus that are offered?

 

No, these are not the same luau. OLL is not offered as a ship excursion. If you want to do that one (in Lahaina), you will have to book on your own and get there and back on your own. However, it does get excellent reviews. I don't know anything about Pacific Paradise Luau. But the ship's excursion will include transportation. (Must confess that with all our time in Hawaii, DH and I have not gone to a commercial luau.) It's excellent advice to hop over to the Hawaii forum and do a search for the luaus.

 

beachchick

[tomluvsaida]

For those of you who have sailed on the POH I have a few questions that maybe you can help me answer and make some decisions.

 

1. Are there any major differences in an AF mini-suite and a BA balcony that make it worth the price difference? (besides the extra square footage and the bathtub)

 

We didn’t have a BA Balcony so I can't say much about that. We did however have a mini-suite. The mini suite had a standard size bath tub big enough for one person to lie down in or two to shower in. This worked fine for us. :D :p The suite has a private balcony with two lounge chairs and a table. There is a refrigerator in the room and also comes with bottled water.

About water. Watch out for when they read off the water list at Cagney's and other specialty restaurants. At first I thought it was a wine list and said I'd just have a beer. The waitress looked at me funny and let me know this was a water list. I wound up ordering one without thinking. POH has one of the most advanced filtration systems ever made for any ship. The tap water tastes just as good as the expensive bottled stuff. Cagney's was good; we had surf and turf which was an extra charge on top of the extra charge. This charge along with two beers and bottled water brought the bill up to $69!!!! :eek: Cagney's was good but I felt lobster and prime rib night in Alizar was just as good for a lot less money. By the way, have lobster/ prime rib night at Alizar instead of Grand Pacific. I read it has better service so we went there and went there as soon as they opened at 6:00pm. At Alizar we had three waiters and their service was excellent! :) I doubt if we could get any better service at a five star hotel restaurant!

We also ate at Jasmine. We brought the sparkling wine there from our honeymoon package. This was definitely my favorite as far as food goes. The beef was better than Cagney's and was so tender you could cut it with a fork!

We went to Le Bistro as part of our $69 honeymoon package. This alone made it worth it! We selected any wine we wanted from their wine list as part of the deal. We had an Italian 2004 sparkling wine as our selection which was the best I ever tasted! I had a fish dish which tasted rather fishy and my wife had pork which was very good! (We shared). For desert I had some sort of strawberry thing I can't remember the name of which was quite good and my wife had chocolate mouse, also quite good. We both had the French onion soup which was also good.

The only other specialty restaurant we ate at was Papas. The food was good but nothing special except the antipasti cart was real good. The nice thing though is that there was no charge at all! I had the chicken primavera which was good and served with spaghetti and sauce. It was good but much like you would find any where. Desert was also good which was an Italian pastry.

My absolute favorite excursion was Safari Helicopter tour! That was fantastic! :D The DVD I paid $28 for was well worth it. It showed and sounded just as it happened complete with the background music!

2tnts gave us a ride home from Old Lahaina Luau. The food, show and drinks were all very good here.

[Lu2283]

For those of you who have sailed on the POH I have a few questions that maybe you can help me answer and make some decisions.

 

1. Are there any major differences in an AF mini-suite and a BA balcony that make it worth the price difference? (besides the extra square footage and the bathtub)

 

2. On the excursion list NCL offers the "Pacific Paradise Luau" on Maui is this the same as the Old Lahaina Luau? Can anyone tell me about this/these luaus that are offered?

 

3. What are the prices of the specialty restaurants, do they offer discounts on certain days or hours, which ones are "not to be missed", and what dishes are the favorites in each restaurant?

 

Thanks in advance for the information.

 

I got a lot of feedback about the Pacific Paradise Luau from guests and I've heard it's kind of cheesy...and it gets cancelled a lot because of weather....I've been to the Old Lahaina Luau and LOVED it....I'd recommend doing that one instead. It's only 29.00 to rent a car from Thrifty which is right down the street from the Port in Maui, probably a 7 dollar taxi ride.

 

Lindsay

[Kay240]

We were very pleased with our "mini-suite", but must admit, I expected something larger when I convinced my DH to "go for it". Luckily, later I knew just what to expect through CC.

 

We, and the couple we were traveling with, went to Cagney's the first night, where we had EXCELLENT (efficient and friendly) service from Katie. I ate the most: crab cakes- very good, lobster bisque- no lobster chunks, but very tasty, Wedge iceburg lettuce salad- considerably "underdressed" (tomatoes and blue cheese- had two cherry/grape tomatoes garnishing plate and a teaspoon of blue cheese crumbles- should have been more blue cheese, blue cheese dressing, or a combination, and chopped tomatoes over the wedge) Double Lamb Chops- EXCELLENT and plenty of meat, bananas foster- OK, not prepared tableside and not much flavor. My husband, who eats his salad without dressing anyway, also had "the wedge", a 10 oz. medium-well filet mignon, and "Chocolate Obsession" and thought it was the worst meal of the entire trip. By the way, "Obesession" was very light chocolate and insufficient for a true chocoholic!

 

I also enjoyed the antipasto cart at Papas, but almost didn't have the chance! We were offered caesar salad immediately, when we sat down. I was impressed and thought it would curb our hunger and speed dinner along. We were never asked about other appetizers, and you can have as many as you want. I had to ask for the cart, and by the time we had started to eat our antipasto, our entres were served. I can't remember what I ate, but I know my DH's chicken parmesan was dry. My girl friend and I both had dessert... I think it was a large size helping of fairly good chocolate mousse. Service was very enthusiastic and friendly, but despite the entre rush, ended up slow, and our husbands left early to get seats at the show.

 

Le Bistro was duck for me, steak for DH, and chateaubriand (from "Tasting Menu for 2", for another $10 per person) for our friends; everybody was pleased with their entrees. DH had onion soup which he really enjoyed, and I had the veal pate, which I was disappointed with. Dessert was chocolate souffle. They stopped serving chocolate fondue! The souffle is on the "Tasting menu", otherwise it is an extra $1. WARNING: Unless they have stopped this (we sailed 10/30-11/6), or the person I discussed this with happened to have the same assistant waiter we did, TOO MUCH chocolate sauce is put into the souffle; it is saturated! Yes, there is is such a thing as too much chocolate; it totally destroyed the souffle. The FRIDAY NIGHT SOUFFLE IN THE MAIN DINING ROOMS WAS MUCH BETTER. Our service was very good, but we were there a LONG TIME; I believe it was because of the time it took to cook the chateaubriand and souffle.

 

 

I can't say very much about Jasmine, as we went there on our last night, after I usually cut down on my food consumption! The menu was much longer than the other specialty restaurants, which were very brief. Our friends seemed to really enjoy all the selections they had chosen. Service here was slow.

[Kay240]

For those of you who have sailed on the POH I have a few questions that maybe you can help me answer and make some decisions.

 

 

3. What are the prices of the specialty restaurants, do they offer discounts on certain days or hours, which ones are "not to be missed", and what dishes are the favorites in each restaurant?

 

Thanks in advance for the information.

 

All the specialty restaurants are half price 5:30 to 6:30. The usual prices are: Cagney' $15 per person, plus an extra $10 per person for a couple of items, such as Surf and Turf; Le Bistro $10, unless you order the "Tasting Menu" ($10 per person more); and Jasmin $10. I can't remember any extra charges at Jasmine. The most expensive restaurant is $20 and I can't remember how to spell it :D, something like Teppany...!! The early discounts DO NOT apply to the extra charges.