Unknotted

No blanket in May?  Poo!  What will the new gift be?

At Kailua Pier (Kona) you will see some private tour guides just outside the pier holding up signs. You can also just walk directly into the Courtyard Marriott King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel to book parasailing with UFO or dive adventures with the operators who have offices inside the hotel. Or you can make a right coming out of the pier and walk down Ali'i Drive and you'll see the offices and/or kiosks for the Atlantis Submarine tours, Body Glove snorkel cruise, etc. Same-day bookings can be iffy, since you're competing with the resort and vacation rental crowds. But, you can also have a very nice time shopping along Ali'i Drive in the heart of historic Kailua town. It's all completely walkable with lots of oceanfront open air dining, and fairly level for families with wheelchairs, strollers, etc.

Good information, thanks.

Not sure if your ship overnights in Maui and Kauai as does the POA? If so, this is another thing in favor of rental cars on those islands. A car lets you be off on your own til very late, have dinner ashore, vs a 6 hour tour. Although, you did not mention Kauai at all, so maybe no overnights and you skip Kauai?

 

In any case, if you are wanting someone else to do the driving, at least some of the time, you might check out Mary Lou's Big Island Tours here and on Trip Advisor for a tour in Hilo and/or Kona. There is another thread here about their tours currently. They are family operators, Mary Lou, Ken and son Kyle. They offer a small group tour in each of the 2 ports, 6 people or less in each of 3 vehicles, somewhat customizable and it's a full day. Very highly rated, like touring with family. In Hilo, they are the only tour I am aware of who had permission to pick up inside the port area other than those who were "ship" tours.

We will be on the POA and will be overnighting in Kauai, but we already have plans figured out for those days. Actually, since I first posted this we have taken care of everything but Kona now. Clay thinks we should take it easy that day because we aren't young any more and have packed an awful lot in this vacation so far.

Thanks for all the ideas!

Aloha Unknotted -

 

Hope you have considered taking a whale watch cruise while you are here on Maui. You are coming at the perfect time of year for that. You can sail from Maalaea harbor, which isn't all that far from your ship.

We have rented a car for Maui, so finding Maalaea harbor shouldn't be a problem. Thanks for the tip.

Susan-M We have rented cars for Oahu (post-cruise) and for Maui. I suppose we could go ahead and rent on the others too, but we were hoping we could just kick back and let someone drive us around :)

Thank you for the assorted answers. We have a few tours booked during our upcomping cruise, but we always save a couple of ports that we can find things to do on a whim. Some of our best tour guides were near the ports and offered us nice tours at decent prices.

Thanks again

All of our cruises have been to "foreign" ports and there are always tour vendors hanging around all the piers we've been to. We have had some great tours using these guys.

Can we expect to see private tour vendors at the Hawaiian ports?

Thanks so much for the info. I hadn't been able to find it at the website.

Can anyone who has taken a cruisetour tell me if you get loyalty/latitude points for just the cruise portion or for the whole package? If it is for the whole package, does that apply to bonus points too? (for booking a suite, for example.)

No, sorry, you can't do that. But it would be really expensive if they did let you do it -the fare for the suite then double occupancy for an inside on top of that.

That reminds me of a funny story that happened on the last cruise we took on the Liberty. My DH had a shirt that he has taken on the last few cruises, and he complained about how it fit everytime he wore it. Finally, i threw it in the garbage on the ship and told him to quit his complaining. When we came back to our room later that evening, the shirt was nicely folded and laying on the dresser. So, we threw it away again. Next day, it was folded on the dresser again.

I suppose our Steward thought we would never throw away a shirt in such good condition, so he took it out. The next time we threw it away, we put it in a plastic bag and then in the trash.

Finally got rid of it.

Claudia

My husband has an artificial leg. The comfort of his other leg is really important to him because he depends so much on it. He got a pair of shoes for one of our cruises and they were really uncomfortable so he tried to throw them away and the steward did the same thing...every day the shoes would be sitting neatly by the side of the bed after Clay had tossed them in the trash. So he brought them home and threw them away here. He still makes frequent jokes about the shoes that wouldn't stay in the trash and that was 3 years ago.

Thanks tons for providing the list. It's not nearly as pricey and I had expected...everything is usually MORE expensive than I am expecting.

Good luck with it. Let us know if/when you hear something back.

We watch and laugh, but don't yell. Once we saw a group of 4 college age guys rushing in at the last minute. One was passed out drunk and the other three were trying to carry his limp carcass. They sure did have a lot of yellers calling down to them, but not us...we just laughed harder than usual.

I enjoy elegant nights. We are very causal people...I don't even own a gown and he doesn't own a tux...but we wear our best Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes and fit in fine. More than anything I love to admire everyone else in their nice clothes. I love seeing fine looking gentlemen that I have previously only seen sucking down beer with their pot belly hanging over their swim trunks by the pool. And I admire the beautiful women who dress up for the occasion too. And the youth that I am constantly seeing with their shorts hanging down below their underwear really can dress up nicely when they want to.

Yup, I really look forward to elegant nights.

I have bought a lot of meds in Mexico, and only one time it was antibiotics. I stock up on my osteoporosis meds there and it saves me a mint! Actonel costs about $15-$18 per tablet in the US and even most insurance plans don't pay enough of it to help much. But in Mexico it's so much cheaper that I can actually afford the darn stuff.

Actually the coin doesn't have to have the ship's name on it, nor is the coin minted for that ship. It can be an ordinary coin, but the coin is supposed to be integrated into the ship's structure. That is the key point of it. So a coin just hidden behind a vase somewhere on the ship wouldn't work. But if it is secured into a welded box, then it is integrated into the ship's structure. Older ships had them sometimes wedged between floorboards, etc.

Hmmm, I wonder if they forgot to put a coin on the Splendor??

EDIT: Thanks so much for the photo of it. I didn't mean to be hinting at anything other than I sure wanted to see what Destiny's coin looked like, lol.

Awesome! But where is a picture for us?? :D

The first time we did the anytime dining I was a little worried that they would lose track of us because they had a bottle of wine that we had purchased. But every night without fail, our server (no matter which one we had) would mention our wine and ask if we wanted some of it.

I wouldn't ask for any other kind of dining now. On our last Carnival cruise we got stuck with assigned seating and the first night I asked if it could be changed. The next day we got a note from the MD saying we had been changed to anytime.

Putting magnets on your door can "potentially" make your door key/locking mechanism not work right. So I've heard :rolleyes:

I still decorate my door, but I use double sided tape or something. However, things will get stolen if they are awesome, cute, one of a kind things. I use stuff I've printed off my computer and then take extras. If anything gets stolen then later on I replace it, without much worry. But most people won't bother with stealing computer paper decorations, especially the ones with our names on them.