PoAm 2/24/07 Review W/Recommendations

PoAm 2/24/07 Review

Background – He mid 60s, she mid 50s, both semi/mostly retired. Twelfth cruise, first NCL & first Hawaii. We went into this cruise planning to use PoAm as a floating hotel without much expectation. We wanted to do & see a lot and we planned every day with some flexibility. We are value conscious and generally don’t do ship tours mainly because we like the flexibility of our own schedule. We rented cars on all islands except Kona port stop and no car on first 2 days in Waikiki. Our intent was to see a lot but not spend too much time doing any one thing – a sampling.

I did a LOT of research pre trip, 50+ hours.

The cruise/vacation was in a word - wonderful. The PoAm exceeded our expectations and we did most of what we planned but it was a high-energy vacation. Weather also cooperated with only major rain Sat night at PCC.

Thanks to all previous posters on CC for all the info & I hope this helps others.

Below is the actual itinerary overview. Pre-cruise version very much similar

Hawaii Itinerary Overview

Thursday – Arrive HNL shuttle to hotel, ate @ Kelly O’Neils (coupon) & bed

Friday – Waikiki beach (briefly), Diamond Head, Lunch Irifune. Get SB snorkel rentals. Intl mktplace, Sears. Dinner Gyu-Kaku (coupon).

Saturday – Rest, pack then board POA~noon, lunch then walk around Chinatown, Aloha tower & port area.

Sunday - Hilo rent car VNP, Punalu'u black sand beach, Akatsuka Orchid, Akaka falls, Big Island Candies. Return car.

Monday – Maui rent car Haleakala, Ioa valley, Hawaii Nature Ctr (coupon), PWF whale watch 3pm.

Tuesday – Maui keep rental car. Snorkel & relax on Ulua/Mokapu beaches on south part of island, Paia(briefly), shop.

Wednesday – Kona no car. Beach shuttle to Kahalu'u, snorkel. Kona brewing, shop, taste/buy Country Samurai coffee.

Thursday – Kauai rent car 10am Waimea canyon, Kokee Park, Kauai Coffee Estate, Poipu beach, return snorkel gear.

Friday – Kauai keep car & return by 10am. Airplane tour at 10:30 (see comments below)

Saturday – Oahu rent car, check in to B&B in Kailua, then to Polynesian Cultural Center

Sunday – USS Arizona Mem (early), flea market (souvenirs), Byodo-In temple & tour around south part of island.

Monday – Late checkout, beach then tour north part of island before flight. Dinner @ Kin Wah, return car, flight home.

Hilo & first day in Maui were especially busy. Some stops were because we had time & looked interesting like orchid & Kauai coffee Estate.

PoAm Comments – More informal & maybe a little less spotless than some other lines though we did see some painting being done. A few minor issues but nothing major (sometimes had to press toilet flusher several times). Crew seemed, with few exceptions, eager to please. We had a balcony on deck 8, which was smaller than other ships we had been on (except river cruises).

Shows - Only shows we saw were comedians and they were good. We crashed early most nights.

Food - We planed to do mostly specialty restaurants BUT were pleasantly surprised with both service & food in Skyline & Liberty though we didn’t try them until Wednesday because of previous cruisers comments. Liked Little Italy but much preferred the veal to the Lasagna. We always asked for a couple of recommendations from the waiters. Ironically the slowest service & only time I sent food back was in Jefferson’s Bistro. Wife said duck in Liberty was better than duck l'Orange in Bistro. Cadillac was hit or miss. We ate there one night for hamburgers and they were good as was the warm brownie & cheesecake. Others said the Cadillac chicken was dry. Another thing that we believe helped the service & food was that we ate between 6 & 7 most nights.

You could make specialty restaurants a day ahead i.e. Wednesday from 0700 you could make reservations for Thursday night. Some were confused about this and tried to book too late. Read the daily blurb. Yes there were open tables at 6:15 because they were for the 6:30 or 7 PM reservations. Specialty restaurants were half price from 5:30 to 6. We did enjoy chatting with the crew in restaurants, again most were great if you took an interest.

Ate most breakfasts in buffet and OK but hectic. Ate one breakfast in Cadillac & one in Skyline (last morning) mainly for a less hectic environment. As an aside ALL buffets on ships we have been on are hectic in morning. In Cadillac I wanted plain yogurt & they said they didn’t have any. After we ordered I went up to buffet and got one and brought it down. Maitre’d saw me bring in yogurt and he said he would have gotten. I told him I wanted turkey sausage and he asked the waiter to get some(pork sausage was less dry). If you don’t get what you want ask a supervisor.

I did pay $15 corkage for a bottle of wine I bought @ Longs near Chinatown.

Car Rental – We used Thrifty, are Blue Chip and all worked great EXCEPT HNL where we waited an hour. They ran out of cars!! We had some time but others were really steamed. At all other ports the wait was ~5 minutes. We asked for and got a no-charge convertible upgrade for the 2 days in Maui. We reserved compact cars. If you rent, become a premier member – Blue Chip, Hertz #1, etc. Be sure to get a map and return instructions. Driving easy though more tiring than tours. Major tourist spots had well marked directions. We had trail mix, fruit & fast food for lunch on days with cars.

Maps & Books – We used Frommers, Revealed and Driver guide maps. Got some books from library & bought some.

Snorkeling – Brought our own mask & snorkel and also rented $9 combo from Snorkel Bob in HNL, returned in Kauai. SB helpful with locations, etc. Had rash guard shirts, worked well to prevent burns & also keep in body heat. Water was not too cool.

Airplane trip over Kauai – Had scheduled for second day w/Air Ventures but got call from Billy that his plane was delayed in HNL due to annual inspection glitch. Bummer!! But he did correct the situation by getting us an 11:30 reservation with Wings Over Kauai, Bruce Coulombe. Billy also gave us a comp 1.5 hour tour and a box of Mac nuts. Bruce’s Wings Over Kauai air tour was wonderful with the narration over the Bose headsets and the pix he e-mailed. Bruce also brought us back to ship. Recommend either Air Ventures or Wings over Kauai.

Recommendations/Tips – Bring diving gloves ($2 fishing gloves from WM work great) lava can be sharp. Also wear aqua sox (or regular sox) for lava/coral. We saw & have read about cut feet.

Bring small flashlight for Thurston lava tube.

Bring small collapsible “coozie” with ziplock bag of ice to keep water, etc cold while in rental cars..

If you go to PCC on own, buy the Entertainment Book (EB) for the $40 off coupon. Also used EB for several other things including three restaurants. Worked well.

If you don’t bring or rent GPS, buy a $2 suction car compass at WM for the rental cars. Helped us save a couple of wrong turns also gave confidence we were going in correct direction.

Bring a couple of plastic “over door” hooks to hang things in the small cabin.

Very Good local eats: Irifune in HNL on Kapahulu near Snorkel Bobs. Kin Wah in Kaneohe on Kamehameha hwy (unbelievably inexpensive). Shave ice with mac nut ice cream at Aoki’s in Haleiwa. Also happy with Ohana BBQ, Gyu-Kaku & Kelly O’Neils – all 3 in EB.

Senior perks: Golden Eagle Passport gets you & car in free at Volcanoes NP & Haleakala NP. Show Medicare card on TheBus and ride for $1 instead of $2.

Make reservations for cars, PCC, air tours, etc several weeks before trip to avoid surprises.

Get to Hawaii a day or more before cruise if possible to get over flight, especially if coming from east coast of US or further. We were glad we stayed out of Waikiki after the cruise when we had the car since we had seen all we wanted to see in Waikiki and driving was a little less hectic outside of Waikiki.

Use local transport in Waikiki. Example – we used Roberts Hawaii shuttle to and from airport/pier and also TheBus for Diamond head & Ala Moana. Also shoe leather, since it is so compact an area.

“No Jet Lag” homeopathic pills work great for us. Have used previously for Europe.

Walk through Chinatown. I bought $3 (really) Aloha shirt at Rainbow on Hotel St. Paid $20 @ Sears previous day. Also got $3 his & hers leis.

Stop at tourist office kiosks at piers for maps/info. One in Kona had discount coupons for coffee.

Highlights – PoAm (maybe we were lucky), turtles on Punalu'u, snorkeling at Kahalu'u, Haleakala NP, Volcanoes NP, helpful people, whale watching trip, Kauai plane ride, Na’Pali coast from ship, Waimea canyon, PCC shows (not luau) plus many others.

Above are our opinions - YMMV

Thanks for all the helpful comments! If I read this correctly, you boarded ship for lunch, then went back off to walk around Chinatown. Did I get this right? Great idea! Is Chinatown within walking distance of the pier in Honolulu?

Great review and suggestions. I will look for those inexpensive shirts and leis in Chinatown before we board. How exhausted were you when you got home? My itinerary is about a full as yours was and I am thinking I should cut some stuff out so the vacation is more relaxing. How long were you at VNP that you could fit all that other stuff in, especially the black sand beach. Did you just do the crater rim or did you go down to the ocean?

Thanks for the tip on the gloves for snorkeling. We also have our own masks and snorkles. Does SB rent just fins? And did you rent the rash shirts or buy them?

Do the no jet lag pills have a name? Was it melatonin?

I'm sure I'll check in with more questions in the next week or so. Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip. You sound like a go with the flow kind of couple.

Great review! Thanks for the info. We hve already booked our SB rentals. We are traveling with out 10 and 11 year old kids, so I don't know if we'll be as busy as you, but your snorkeling tips we will certainly heed.

How warm was it? We leave this Friday, March 9.

Thanks!

DanL, great review. We leave next week for 3 days precruise before we board the PoAM on March 17. Thanks for all the good tips.

sounds like a great vacation... thanks for posting your review!

DanL, thanks for taking the time to post the great review! Sounds like you had a great time. Like us many times, you probably needed a vacation to rest up from your vacation when you got home!

One question...what is a rash guard shirt, and where do you get them?

Thanks,

Sandy

Thanks so much for sharing your experience! It will be helpful in our planning. We met Bruce when DH and I were on POH last fall while waiting for our guys to come in on a Sunday morning on the tropical bi-plane tour at the same terminal (awesome flight on that bi-plane , could reach out and touch the clouds !) . With Mom (72) , I am trying to convince her to go and be adventurous and come along with Bruce for an hour or so.

Thanks for the Golden Eagle suggestion of VNP, save some $, thanks!

GoldieAZ

DanL ~ Thanks for the great review and comments. IS Chinatown walking distance from the ship?

Welcome home.

Yes, Chinatown is very walkable from Aloha Tower. I often see tourists there while I'm shopping. (thought I'd jump in and answer for DanL :) )

Hey DanL, glad to hear you enjoyed your visit to Hawaii. What a fantastic list of activities. And you chose the yummy eating places too! You've shared such great tips for others. Thanks!

Aloha,

Noreen.

hi DanL,

Great review...its making me very excited for my tip in may...I loved your Hilo day...very similar for what my fiancee and I have planned. I was just wondering how much time you spent at VNP, the beach, the falls, and the orchid garden????? Trying to better plan out that day since we are also renting a car! Any help would be great!!!

Sara

Great review! And some very useful info!

I was also on the same cruise. I agree with DanL. I did some different excusions that were also great. See my review in the review section. The cruise was awesome!!!! :D :D

DanL (or anyone that knows) I saw that you went to Big Island Candies while you were in Hilo. Was it hard to find? I saw this store on one of the Hawaii specials on the Travel Channel and wanted to go there. We will also be renting a car and driving around. Thanks for the help. I can't stop thinking about this cruise I am so excited. Every review I read makes me that much more happy to be going.

Forgot two other yummy places:

Leonard's malasadas store near Snorkel Bobs & Irifune on Kapahulu. Also have red & white striped trucks around Oahu. Get them FILLED.

Romy's Shrimp shack- on way to north part of island.

Chinatown map: http://www.chinatownhi.com/?q=node/59

Weather & water were warm. ~80/75

Snorkel Bobs: http://www.snorkelbob.com/

Hilo was busiest day: In car by ~9 & back by 4:30. 2 hours at VNP rim road stops & Thurston. 30 min@ black sand beach ate lunch in car there, turtles were waiting for us, 30 min @ Akaka then candy store. Would have skipped candy store but it was close to airport. Also saw it on Hawaii show ~2 weeks before trip - perfect timing.

We were tired every night but after sleep ready to go. What did us in was red eye flight from HNL @ 10PM, flight to east coast then drive 3+ hours home mostly in dark.

No jet lag is NOT melatonin but used both. They have different actions . NJL removes most of the brain fogginess, zombie feeling I get after flying many time zones.

Had rash guards, bought I think at Dicks via internet. Under $20 good forever, make you look really good. Wife calls them corset shirt.

Please google or froogle the items mentioned if you have further questions

EWww is that the candy store that has chocolate dipped calamari?! I'll stick to macadamia nuts thank you! (I saw that show too)

Here's another great place to eat when off the ship. In Kauia, there is a restaurant called Duke's right behind Anchor Cove Shopping. It is right on the beach, which is up to the right of where the ships docks. Fantastic food!! Opah fish with Macadamia Nut and parmasean crust was out of this world!! Give it a try. You will love it! :)

Dan, I'll be on the 3/31 PoAM trip, & your remark about check-in at noon has me wondering - my cruise documents say that checkin starts at 1:00. Can you actually check in a little earlier than that? Also, at what time should you be back on the ship for the drill? And, if they have them, a tour of the ship and orientation/checkin to the teen program?

Thanks much for your helpful review.

Deb

Dan, would you please also post this on the NCL board?

Deb, we were off the ship after eating by 1:30. I think the drill was about 5, just after I got in the hot tub. No idea on kid program.