Niele da Kine

What about a cabin directly above the main stage?  Depending on the show, it may be noisy?  Those shows end fairly early, don't they? 

BB King is a bit further down, so hopefully not noise from there.

We don't have a specific room yet, just a cabin class and they are all pretty much above the main stage.   Well, it's still early yet, there's still time for the upgrade fairy to strike, but how concerned should we be?

I've always blamed this sort of thing on the Jones Act instead of Customs, but they could be cahoots for all I know. 

I was chatting with someone in town today about cruises, luggage, bringing things back and such and we got around to the topic of seashells.  They seemed to think there may be an issue with Australia not letting folks take seashells away in their luggage if we left from an Australian airport?  I'm sure there would be opportunities to buy shells here and there and it never occurred to me there may be a restriction about taking them in luggage home.  I'd always thought the problem would just be sheer room, not regulations.  Guess I could Google it, but anyone have any trouble with taking things out of an Australian airport?

On 5/4/2022 at 8:33 PM, billbunger said:

Why don’t you ask HAL these question? People here can answer and say all they want but only HAL can give you the right answers. 

True, but where would the fun be in that?  Also, sometimes by chatting with folks, one finds new and different questions, too!

On 5/16/2022 at 8:42 AM, WriterOnDeck said:

I've been on a cruise to Hawaii that skipped Kona. A passenger was injured early on the cruise, we backtracked toward California to get close enough to offload her on a helicopter, and they dropped Kona. I would just fly to Seattle with your luggage and sail from there. If you wanted to drop something off at home, I doubt it would be a problem if backpack size and not a suitcase.

 

Check the laundry price and do it by the bag if not by the day. It's amazing how much you can get in the bag if you roll it tightly. Then cruise like crazy till you get 4 star! 🙂

 

BTW, I just signed up for this cruise this morning!

Yay on just signing up!  I think it's gonna be a lovely cruise no matter where the laundry gets done.

I hadn't thought about missing the port entirely!  Guess we should just pack everything along to Seattle and start at the beginning. 

Wonder how little luggage is actually necessary on a two month long voyage?  I keep adding things to my 'to pack' list.  "Snorkel, fins and underwater camera" were yesterday's addition to the list.

On 5/16/2022 at 7:37 AM, Essiesmom said:

More thoughts.  The cruise leaves from Seattle, first port of call is Honolulu.  No foreign ports visited.  Another Hawaiian port or two before Kona.  No foreign ports (despite what some Americans may think).  There should not be any customs issues taking stuff ashore, including souvenirs from Seattle (hopefully not made in China…) nor bringing bags back on the tender.  But I would avoid very large bags and maybe soft side luggage, one per person.  Perhaps since you live in/on Kona, you should keep track of how often a ship misses the port, to give you an idea if this is possible/practical.  EM

 

I see Pride of America calls every Wednesday.  Only ship calling until Westerdam, Oct 11.  EM

Oh, I hadn't thought about not having gone to any foreign ports, although we will have sailed through international waters.  So maybe we can. 

Yeah, you're right about how a lot of folks think Hawaii is a foreign port.  We always try to buy stuff online from the mainland United States just to be told by the seller that they won't ship to a foreign country.  Sigh!

We don't actually live in Kona, but over on the other side of the island about an hour away.  Which might make it more of a hassle than not to get any laundry done.  We'd have to have someone come pick us up at the port and then an hour home, then several hours worth of doing laundry, then an hour back to the port.  Hmm, it would work although it would be a lot of driving for our friends.  This will be nine days into the cruise and it would be a lot more fun to see Kona with some other folks on the ship since things are new and interesting when seen with folks who haven't seen it before.  Is it possible to have non-passengers visit the ship?  It would be a lot of fun to be able to let our friends come onto the ship, but somehow I doubt that would be allowed.

Pride of America is the ship that does the inter-island cruises so it shows up pretty frequently.  It just circles the state and might pop down to Kiribati or somewhere for a 'foreign' port.  Or maybe they got a dispensation or some other way around the Jones Act, I've not paid attention.

On 5/16/2022 at 5:28 AM, RuthC said:

You must have missed where I said it was bringing your clothes into Kona that could be the Customs problem; not back to the ship. It's US Customs who might get involved. 
Are you aware that Kona is a tender port, and even on days when you can get ashore, it can be very difficult to board the tender? Adding in a suitcase to deal with just adds to the danger (although the crew might be helpful.) 

As Jayhawk said, you can get an unlimited laundry package for $7/day times the number of days in the cruise. That means it costs you the same to send laundry every day, with very little in it, as it does to wait until a bag is full. Come in from your day, change for dinner, and send what you want right then. It will likely be back the next afternoon (or sooner). 
But in the US, the bag at a time price is $20, not the $30 posted (unless it went up since cruising started again, but I haven't read that it did.) 

Hmm, that'd be about $357 worth of laundry for the cruise if we did the $7 per day.  Guess we will just send in the occasional bag of laundry and do some in the cabin as well.  So, I should buy some soap in Seattle before we get on the ship.  Guess I'll get the clothespins then, too.  I should make a list of all the little stuff to get before we get on the ship.  Laundry soap, clothespins, suntan lotion, sunburn creme, etc, the basic little stuff that lives in the medicine cabinet that would be ferociously expensive to buy onboard.  Some of our ports would have shops with that sort of things.  On this itinerary, it looks like some of them won't.

Kona is in the lee of the island and it's almost always calm on that side so it shouldn't be a bad tender port at all.  It comes into a dock once it gets into Kona, right where they start the swimming part of the Ironman triathlon.  So, should be easy enough to bring another suitcase.  It would save on a checked bag from Hawaii to Seattle which runs about $50 these days, I think.

For the Kona port, once you get off the tender, you're literally right in the middle of town and Kailua-Kona is the tourist town on the island.  Should be a really easy port to just wander around and not have to have an excursion.  Honolulu is the same way, although there the cruise ship is at a dock so it's even easier.

Are clothes pins available by asking the room steward or should we bring some? 

We're gonna be on a 60+ day cruise and not everything will be sent in the bag, although I'm sure some if not most of the laundry will be, but not quite everything.  So what's the best way to hang what doesn't get put in the bag?

On 5/8/2022 at 1:37 PM, RuthC said:

You should be asking HAL these questions; someone at HAL who has more experience and responsibility than a person who takes calls to book cruises. 
You are asking obscure questions that don't come up every day---or even every month, most likely. They certainly haven't come up on this forum since I have been reading it. 

There could easily be factors that people who haven't done this won't think of. One I can think of has to do with bringing dirty laundry home to wash, then returning it to the ship. In the past people have asked about bringing clothes off the ship in Alaska to mail home, and someone who knows what he is talking about suggested that there could be a Customs problem with that idea. 
Your thought is similar in that you would be bringing personal goods ashore in the US from a 'foreign country' (the ship, which is registered in the Netherlands). Customs doesn't know that you are returning the goods back to the ship.
I don't know if that is a concern or not in your case, but it seems similar enough to me that it could be. I doubt that you will get answers you can count on here. 

Hmm, they usually let us lug all kinds of souvenir stuff onboard at each port, so bringing an additional luggage bag would be about the same as bringing a pile of shopping, one would think?  That way we could fly to Seattle with just carry on luggage and only have to pay for checked luggage from Sydney back home.

Does Kona even have Customs?  It's not a big port.

Guess I should ask Holland about how much stuff - if any - we can take off the ship at each port.  Not that I really want to zip home and do laundry, but it's nine days into a sixty some odd day cruise (we're adding a B2B after the 51 day cruise) so it would seem that laundry is gonna have to be figured out at some point.  It's pretty expensive to have it done on the ship, isn't it?

Ratz on the $750 fine.  It'd be lovely to have my friend on the sea days since there would be more appreciation for sea days than with my SO.  Well, that won't work. 

There aren't any more passenger ships between the mainland and Hawaii.  The old ones ran as passenger ships and not cruise ships, now most if not all passengers show up on airplanes.  It would be nice if we had both.

I'm hoping to not have to take all our luggage with us on the airline to the start of the voyage if we can pick up part of it in Kona.  It would be the usual amount of luggage for a long voyage, just done in two parts instead of all at once.  Well, if we forget anything, we can zip home and get it.  We're an hour away from the port, but we can see anything on the island when we're home so we'd not need to do any excursions.  Maybe drop off any souvenirs from Seattle while we were here to save having to transport them home via air later.

It would be nine days into a 51 day voyage at that time.  Hmm, it'd even be nice to take all the dirty laundry home and run it through the washer and dryer and then bring it back to the ship.  Do they allow that, do you think?

We got a tile with a picture of the ship on it for going to the Mariner's luncheon.  If you're a repeat HAL cruiser, you get invited to the luncheons.  They also handed out pins with wild abandon at the team trivia, but we we were on a relocation cruise and they were heading to a new cruise region.

We also take along a board game and or card game just in case nothing else interesting is going on.  As well as lots of digital books in case there's nothing interesting to read on board.  You can put the 'Libby' ap on your phone and that will let you log into your local library and download digital books from anywhere you can get a cell signal.  They also go back to the library when they're due so no late charges even if the ship is at sea and out of cell phone range.

Ratz!  I was hoping to have the ship bring our house sitter to us.  But it is a foreign flagged ship hauling a passenger between two U.S. ports so the PVSA would howl.  Wonder if just paying the PVSA fine would be less than airfare?  Although, we'd still have to get HAL to allow the passenger substitution in the first place.

Would a delayed boarding in Hawaii be a problem?  Possibly HAL wouldn't even allow that, tho.  Well, I like sea days so starting in Seattle is good with me.  Guess we will just start at the beginning and do the sea days down to our home port. 

Can we bring additional luggage on board mid-cruise?  That wouldn't be a problem, would it?

Not sure if the rules would be different for different cruise lines, so I thought perhaps the HAL folks would know since we've booked a HAL ship.

Is it possible for a passenger to go for a portion of a cruise and then be replaced by someone else part way through the cruise? 

We've booked a relocation cruise and it goes past our home port early on in the cruise.  Our house sitter is near the starting port.  Would it be possible for our house sitter to take the early portion of the cruise and then get replaced by the person the cabin was booked for when reaching the port near to us?  It would still be the same amount of people in the cabin, it would just be different people than who started the cruise.

There's two ports on the Island of Hawaii (aka the "Big Island") - Hilo and Kailua-Kona. 

For the port of Hilo, it's a pretty long walk to get out of the sorta industrial area where the boat docks to Hilo town or anything interesting.  You'd probably want a car or a tour in the Hilo port.

For the Kailua-Kona port, folks get ashore via tenders and those go to the pier in the middle of Kailua-Kona itself.  If you didn't want to rent a car for that port, there would be enough things to do and see in Kailua-Kona itself.  The pier is pretty much the focal point of Kailua-Kona so you're directly in the middle of things as soon as you get to the pier.

Now that you mention it, I think there was a water fountain up by the basketball area on the Westie.

There's always drinks available at the Lido. Water, ice tea, lemonade, hot tea, hot chocolate are almost always available there. Lots more choices at breakfast, either in the Lido or MDR.

When we were on an 18 day cruse on the Koningsdam, there was no sound on during the day when the screen showed nature pics. The movies were only shown in the evening, once the pool closed. That was when the chairs were set up facing the screen with head rests.

We were never Promenade deck chair sitters so the narrow deck did not bother me. We were still able to walk all the way around. The added features on that ship is what has us on the Nieuw Statendam next year.

The pool is closed during the movies? Wouldn't it be fun to watch the movie from the pool, though? Are the hot tubs closed then, too?

Anyone know the pool hours on the K'dam or should I start a new thread? Hmm, I'll go check 'search' someone has probably already asked that kinda question.

Similar question. We are sailing from Rome at 6:00 pm in October. Will the MDR be open & serving dinner that evening?

Thanks for asking that, I've not gotten that far along in finding things out yet. We will be on the same sailing, so maybe we will see you at dinner!

We weren't able to sign up for a set dining time/table so we will be meeting a lot of different folks around dinner time. That's kinda fun, although it does get pretty repetitive with the night after night of 'where are you from' questions. Anyone have any better dinner conversation starters? I guess since we will be leaving from Rome, we could always ask "So, did you visit the Forum today?" In the Caribbean, we could "did anyone see any sea turtles while snorkeling today?" How often do you get to ask your dinner companions that?

Weren't there drink waiters around the aft pool deck? Maybe they were just in charge of towels and such, though. But the Lido is pretty much right between the two swimming pools, so it's easy enough to walk a plate outside. There's no trays on the Lido deck so it can be a bit humbug to carry things around but it's close enough to make several trips.

The hamburger and taco stand is between the Lido and the mid deck pool, so there you can get food that's already outside.

We were on the Westerdam through the Panama canal last year which is why we signed up for this longer cruise this year. The entertainment there (and I'd think it'd be somewhat similar?) had the house entertainers who were very versatile and we'd go anytime they did pretty much anything. There were also 'guest' entertainers who were brought on board for certain parts of the voyage and then exchanged for new ones a port or two down the coast. Those were hit or miss as far as being good or not. I guess it gives the house entertainers a night off now and then.

We really enjoyed the after dinner 'music stroll'. The Lido deck is too good and we'd eat too much if we ate there too often, so we'd have dinner at the MDR. After that, we'd start at the Lincoln Center Stage, then head off to BB King's and end up at the main stage for whatever the evening's entertainment offering. By that time, we'd be pretty entertained out and we'd head 'home' to our cabin, but there'd generally still be a lot of folks around the two pianos and in the casino. The Westie didn't have an outdoor screen, so that will be an added option on the K'dam. Not sure if we will have time for everything! Guess we'd better book another cruise so we can see what we missed on the first one.

Personally, I liked the Lincoln Center Stage the best. Have you ever heard Radiohead's 'Creep' done as chamber music? It's amazingly lush.

We met them onboard in various places and asked about their group. They are a 'pickup' band that trains together before they sign on for a certain length of tour. After their tour, the musicians go their individual ways when their contract is over.

The entertainers and musicians are allowed to mingle and eat with the guests, so sometimes you'll meet them at various places around the ship. I think ship's officers are allowed to mingle with passengers on their off time, too. A lot of the crew has to stay in crew parts of the ship which seems kinda sad for them.

We'll be on the TA in November followed by a circle down through the Caribbean. It will be interesting to see if popularity of the outdoor screen changes with latitude.

The K'dam is scheduled for drydock in early December. At that time, they're supposed to put in a Rock n Roll venue to expand the Music Walk, so we will miss out on seeing that since it won't be there yet. Ratz! Guess it's just another good reason to sign up for another cruise later.

Not sure if the cruise ships that stop in Hilo go to the vanilla place in Pauuilo or not? It's not that big of a place, a whole bus full of folks could overwhelm them. They do have good vanilla and a lovely lunch.

Vanilla is an orchid and the beans are the seed pods. We don't have the insect (I think it's a type of moth) that pollinates vanilla orchids here in Hawaii so all the Hawaiian vanilla is hand pollinated. I've heard the blossoms are only open for a day, so someone has to pollinate the flowers every day in order to get the seed pods.

We also bury vanilla pods in a bottle of sugar and then use the sugar for baking and making ice cream and such.

It is beginning to look like the Jaeger Museum at Hale Maumau crater (one of the major sites at Volcano National Park) is going to be destroyed from earthquake damage. That is, if Hale Maumau crater doesn't expand to that area and just engulf it.

VNP did open another section of the park which is much further away from the crater. I've heard they've moved the art gallery and parts of the Visitor's Center to the new location, but I've not been there to see it yet. So what the new VNP experience will be like, we don't know yet.

In Hilo itself, there's (as mentioned before) Queen Liliokalani gardens. It's a walking park near Hilo Bay.

There's a small zoo just outside of Hilo. It's free and has a lot of botanical things in it as well as the animals. Takes about forty five minutes to see it.

There's Wainuenue (Rainbow) Falls in Hilo. It's a lovely waterfall and easy to get to. No fee, no hiking.

Along the Hamakua Coast out of Hilo is the scenic route with a botanical garden along it. There's also Akaka Falls above Honomu. That has a small entrance fee now these days.

The Hamakua coast is a scenic drive. We like to drive down to Laupahoehoe Point park, just for the scenery and to see the Tsunami Memorial, although it's not really enough of a memorial to make it a destination. The scenery from the park there is, though.

Further down the coast is Waipio Valley with an overlook park that is free. That's near the quaint town of Honokaa which is old Hawaii.

Depending on how much time was spent in the various places, there may be time to circle around Waimea and take the Saddle Road back to the ship. That goes through some entirely different types of geography. Google Maps can give you times and routes. There's not really that many roads on the Island of Hawaii.

I've looked at those re-positioning cruises out of Vancouver to Honolulu, too! FWIW, I think it'd be a great way to combine cruising and visiting Hawaii. Since it's a one way cruise, once you get to Honolulu you can add on as many days as you like. It's a quick flight between islands, so if you wanted to visit more than one island, that could work as well.

It's also a downwind cruise, so it should be a nice cruise, too. Not that big cruise ships really pay that much attention to the wind direction, but following seas are always better.

Most of the charter boats in Kona are pretty small (less than ten folks or so). If you get together with a few other folks, you'll be able to charter the entire boat and pretty much set your own schedule. Ask a few of the charter boats directly and see if they will adjust their time schedules to suit yours.

We picked up a 75% discounted tour 36 days before sailing which also allowed for reasonable airfares. It wasn't as discounted the next week, though, and it's only 68% now.

Perhaps on your next cruise, you could hit the thrift shops and get formal night clothing? We do that for our cruises since we only fly with carry ons and formal wear takes up too much room. Plus we don't have any formal wear to pack and nobody on the island really sells much of it, either. For the price of flying one bag on the airplane, we can drop into a thrift shop near the cruise line port, pick up some sparkly stuff to wear on formal night and then give it back to the thrift shop afterwards and not have to try to find a place in the closet for it.

Maybe we will be able to find a Dollar Tree in port on our cruise. There aren't any of them here in the islands. Sigh! Not that we really need CDs of Hawaiian music when we can get the neighbor's kids to play for us. Their little girls do hula too, and it's terribly cute when they do the "Cockeyed Mayor of Kaunakakai".

Long time ago when internet time was dial up and charged by the minute (gee, sounds like a cruise ship, doesn't it?) there used to be a small program called "Silly Little Mail Reader". It would go online, snatch all my emails and then log off, usually in less than a minute. I'd then answer the emails and get them ready to send, then log on again and do a send/receive for the new emails. I don't know if there is still something similar out there or not. This was a DOS based system, it might still even work?