MildredK

9 minutes ago, BermudaBound2014 said:

If you are tendering in Maui that means you are coming in at Lahaina. If that is correct, you are just a few miles away from Ka'anapali Beach which got the #1 beach in America award from trip advisor last year (although subjective of course). 

 

Easiest way from the pier in Lahaina is to grab an uber. Head to Whalers village. There you will find plenty of food, shops, the world famous monkeypod Mai-tai, and places to rent beach chairs. 

https://www.whalersvillage.com/en.html

 

 

You can also take the bus for $1/$2. I've written extensive directions for how to use the bus in Maui on other threads. Let me know if you want this option and I can point you to the right direction.

 

Here's an article on the beach award:

 https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2023/03/10/kaanapali-beach-ranked-no-1-beach-in-the-us.html#:~:text=On the list of best beaches in the,Beach Park on Maui was named No. 5.

 

Enjoy your time on Maui. It's paradise.

Thanks BermudaBound2014!    Please do point me in the right direction!  I appreciate your response!   

We’ve been to HI many times on land trips, this will be our first cruise and I think I’m fixated on land based methods.   Help me make this as easy as it should be 🙂

We will tender in Maui and dock in Kauai and we’d like to go to a beach at both.  It would be great if the beach had chairs, facilities etc….   Ok, tell me how you like to do that from the port or dock?   Yes, silly basic question but we haven’t been to HI in many years and I can’t visualize the process from a cruise ship.  Thank you!  

Thank you Princeton123211. I do see other locations besides the airport but all seem to close early as in Honolulu.  Online doesn’t appear to allow key drop off but I can certainly call and check.    We’d really prefer not to go to airport every port day!  

I appreciate your help 
 

Right now we have cars reserved (at the airports) but it sure seems like it has the potential to be a hassle (smile).   We’ve been to HI many, many times but never on a cruise so this is quite different planning.  This time we will be with elderly people so need to just have transportation for the day and play it by ear.  

Thank you Damiross.  We’re getting conflicting info as well.

Thank you CruiserBruce,  I read that first (smile).  When I follow through on the suggestions, the ones I have looked at so far  don’t work for us.  For example, the car rental agency closest to the dock in Honolulu will close at 3:30 the day we are there we will want the car later.    

In July we will be on a Princess cruise rt LA to Hawaii.  We’ve been to HI many times but never on a cruise so in each port we are just renting a car.   I think all car rentals are at the airports.

Two questions:

1.  It feels like a hassle to go to the airport on each island to pick up the car.  Is there a better way we’re missing?

2.  Will there be taxis when we disembark or should be reserve one ahead of time to take us to the car rental?  Or is there a better way to get to the car rental agency?

Thanks!

Yes,  bars are open for sitting.   I think there must be smoking somewhere in the casino since we smelled it.   

Thank you so much! @Essiesmom and @mtnesterz!!  Wow, that’s an all time speed response time!!   

Hi lovely people,

We’re onboard the Royal now - so great!  Crew is great across the board!     Everyone is masked (I say yeah!!). Embarkation was unbelievably easy!   It’s the beginning of Day two  so we haven’t been out and about much the ship does seem pretty empty. 
 

BUT,  We need a workaround please?   We’re on Deck 15 in a mini suite.   At night motion sensitive under lights come on when we get up (nice so no stubbed toes) and the overhead light comes on in the closet area outside the bathroom is also comes on motion sensitive.    Problem  - these lights light up the cabin!     Anyone know how to turn off the motion sensitive lights at night?   Especially outside the bathroom? The sudden change in light wakes me up.  And, since we are of a certain age - we do get up during the night 🙂

Thanks!

31 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

  I suppose this is where you have landed before and is the tech support you mentioned.  If so, what did they tell you?

I just called and tech support was the best yet - not fixed, but he said he hoped it would be before the cruise.  He logged in as my husband saw that we didn't have QR codes and couldn't request an arrival group and agreed that we had problem (that acknowldegement is first in my series of calls) and put in a fix it ticket (also a first) so fingers crossed it is fixed.  Otherwise we just show up and say let us on! 🙂.  I also got  throughto tech support right away.    We're going with friends who haven't cruised in 30 years and really don't travel - so I want this to go smoothly for them!   They are having the same QR code, boarding pass, arrival group problem as we are.  

31 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

. I gather you cannot even get into individual night bookings in order to just review what you have (the bookings with friends).  

Correct.  Or if we want to change something, it would be good if we could do it ourselves with the App.   The Tech added this problem to our ticket.

We depart on the Royal, June 4, Alaska.   

Three questions:

1. Where will our boarding passes appear on the app?

2.  When I try to select an arrival group, the following messages appears "Sorry Arrival Groups will be available closer to the start of your journey"   App error or true?  We're sightly over 2 weeks out

3.  Any insights?   I've spoken with Princess tech support and have reinstall the app several times now,  for dinner reservations. I get the following error message "Sorry you are not currently able to make dinner reservations......... to access Dine my Way your vogage must be paid in full..... "    I can assure all that we are paid in full.    Our friends have made all of the dinner reservations for us so when I call Princess (each time) they seem confused b/c we have dinner reservations.   Will this be a problem on board - I don't think it's going to be fixed.  

Thanks!

We don’t cruise until June 2022 and I’ve had no problem setting anything up using Medallion.    Everything I can set up at this point is set up.   Go for it!   It’s straightforward and I think will be handy on the cruise.

Cheers!

I think you probably have an answer to this by now, but I just did a live chat with Princess and the walking distance is given in yards 

Update!   As of last week 4/25/21 our money has been 100% refunded!    It took over a year, granted an extremely difficult year for the travel industry, but the important part is that we have all of our money returned.  We were skeptical about getting any refund and were calling it the "the most expensive vacation we never took"

Thanks for all of your insights and advice

Thanks for the update, I appreciate it.  We have filed with Mass Attorney General's Office but have not heard back yet but it's nice to know we will get a name.   In March (?) Vantage sent a letter saying we would get a full refund.   We just got a form letter from Vantage in response to our registered letter we sent to the company president.   

Wow!  This could be great news if they follow through.   Please do keep us posted.

Oh no,  Bornfreenowexpensive,  I'm sorry you're in the same mess we are, but I'm glad to not be alone.  We have not filed with the Mass Attorney General yet.   If you decide to file a class action law suit (the idea had crossed my mind) please message me.    Good idea on the Boston media.    We travel a lot and never have we experienced anything like this and we started trying to get our money back, pre-Covid.  

Take care

Thank you.   We have a letter from them from months ago saying they would send a full refund.   They are not offering vouchers. A couple of months ago they offered us a deal to switch to a different cruise.  We  didn’t take it, as we would just like our money back as they agreed to in the letter they sent months and months ago.   We have a really negative opinion of the company after the hassle getting our airfare back (which we did ultimately did) and don’t want to do any business with them.
 

 And now they say “no timeline for refunds” and in talking to the director of customer satisfaction (?) on the phone, she wouldn’t say anything more.   Even when my husband quoted from their terms and conditions, she wouldn’t give an assurance we would get a refund or go beyond “no timeline for refunds””.   When we cancelled the cruise we expected to get our money back but that it to take a while, we didn’t expect the “no timelines for refunds” after months of stringing us along.

Yep, at 3% we fully agree, we have credit cards with cash back or miles for the 2-3% range, but  this was 10% which  was a sizable savings but we won’t be doing it again! 

Thank you.  We are trusting, not anymore.   We also always usually buy our own independent insurance and this time for some inexplicable reason we went with their insurance.    We are careful but we were going with friends who had been on Vantage before so we skipped some due diligence skips.   We now stand to lose a lot of money and have made a potential very expensive mistake.  We are contacting an attorney, small claims court in MA is limited to $7,000 so we need to do more than that

.  

42 minutes ago, Roz said:

You are correct Roz, sadly,  we did pay with electronic transfer as it was a 10% discount on a big dollar amount.     We travel a lot and have never had any problem and didn’t expect one this time.    Lesson learned - credit card only  

Hello all,

So sorry to trouble you again but your wisdom was wonderful last time.   Last time, I got your insights when we canceled our air with Vantage and were having trouble getting a refund.  Then in the end of Feb  we decided to cancel the entire trip (an expensive trip for us - over $8,000 to have taken place in July).      Cut to bottom line - we still don't have a refund.  And foolish us - we paid in full because their discount was good.  We've called regularly, spoken with various people about 6 weeks ago the Director Guest Experience(I'm not sure that is her exact title and I don't think there is a need here to give her name) and she said another 4 weeks for the refund.  Today we spoke to her and she said she never said that and they "have no timeline for refunds"!   Yikes!    My husband spoke with her at length and there was no assurance we would get our money back, and if we did, "no timeline for refunds".     Weeks ago we filed a complaint with BBB Bureau in MA.   We looked at the site recently and read many many complaints predating this year.    I think we did everything this time that the experts here suggested to help us get our airfare back.    

Her response today that "there was no timeline" for refunds was entirely unexpected!  We are at a loss. 

Any more wisdom?    It may be time to get an attorney involved.  

2 minutes ago, gnome12 said:

"Their discount is actually really good, and I couldn't match it. I could have saved 10% (after tax) for paying in full a year in advance, ..."

Yep, it was a great discount and we did take advantage of it.    But, points well taken Rorygirl4528

Good News!    The refund for our airfare is in our bank account as of this morning!   I really appreciate your support and all of your amazing insights,  guidance and helpful approaches.   This is a wonderful community.

Rorygirl4528 - indeed that would have been a good idea however Vantage offered a good discount if we paid in full upfront and we did so we were in a position of getting refunds. 

Cheers!

Thank you Peregrina651!   This is very helpful information!   I will go to the web site now.     I agree, an attorney intervention is a last resort. We just noted the legal action piece from the terms and conditions sections (and that makes sense they are located in Boston.)   

We really do appreciate all of the suggestions and insights.  In all of our travels, we've never had a single problem so we're in new territory here.