Hawaii...cruise or hotel? Just do both!! Here is our photo intensive review

[sunshine55]

Loved the review and pictures. You did a great job. We have been talking about a Hawaii cruise for a while. Your review has kicked that idea up again. Do you know when the POA will go in dry dock? May take cruise after dry dock. Thanks for the great review.

 

Linda

[CruisingGoddess]

cruisinskier - Thanks so much for your great review!! I especially appreciate all the POA photos. We are sailing next month. Did your cruise have a special itinerary? I saw that you mentioned training and you had a sea day, which my cruise does not.

 

Thanks!

[Liquid Shiva]

What a wonderful review!

Just by your story and pics, we're sure we will do this cruise (and stay on land!) in one of the coming years.

Time difference will be even worse, Hawaii is virtually at the other side of the world for us and the difference will be 11 hours!

 

It's sad I'm not native English speaking, so to write such an extended review is way too difficult,

Reading is not an issue, and I love it!

 

Warmest compliments from Holland ;)

[FloatYourBoatSince2003]

I'm not cruisinskier, but I can give you my experience of the long layover at YVR. We arrived at the international terminal sometime before noon and went straight the area for US connections, where you preclear customs. There was an airport agent in the area who told us that we were better off staying in the international part and going through preclearance closer to our flight because there wasn't much to do on the other side. We took his advice and killed most of the 6 hours by visiting the shops and checking out the giant fish tank in the terminal. There are lot of shops, some airline lounges, and a good sized food court. Once you go through to the US connections area, there are still some options available, but not as many. We also brought reading material and ipods.

 

So, if you find yourself in the international terminal when you get to YVR, you may want to find out how long the preclearance counters are open and just hang out for a while. Although when my parents did this trip and went through YVR a few months later than us, they didn't go through the international terminal so they had to do preclearance right away. Not sure why the difference.

 

By the way, your son might enjoy some of the offerings at the Cadillac Diner on the ship!

 

Thanks SP! Good to know. Did you ever consider leaving the airport for a few hours? I'm SO tempted to do so...The train can take us to downtown vancouver in under 30 minutes. Or we may even hit the fitness area in the adjacent hotel. It would be a great way to stretch our legs and tire ourselves out so that we can maybe catch a snooze on the second leg of the flight.

 

ps: I'm sure the POA won't be making any money from my son's fare...He'll be hitting Cadillac Diner more often than I even want to think about.

[FloatYourBoatSince2003]

cruisinskier -Those pictures continue to amaze! Thanks again.

[spacepotatoes]

Thanks SP! Good to know. Did you ever consider leaving the airport for a few hours? I'm SO tempted to do so...The train can take us to downtown vancouver in under 30 minutes. Or we may even hit the fitness area in the adjacent hotel. It would be a great way to stretch our legs and tire ourselves out so that we can maybe catch a snooze on the second leg of the flight.

 

We thought about leaving but were too paranoid to actually do it! I had only looked into cabs and buses, which seemed to take too long to get downtown and back. We could see the Fairmont from the international terminal but couldn't figure out how to get there. I'm sure it's doable, though!

 

Are you flying with WestJet? After about an hour out of Vancouver, their satellite tvs don't work anymore so you're on your own unless you want to pay for movies. That would be a good flight for napping.

[FloatYourBoatSince2003]

 

Are you flying with WestJet? After about an hour out of Vancouver, their satellite tvs don't work anymore so you're on your own unless you want to pay for movies. That would be a good flight for napping.

 

Air Canada. And...good to know. I'll be sure to bring some reading material in case it happens to them too.

 

THanks again.

[spacepotatoes]

Air Canada is no problem, they have (free) on-demand entertainment rather than satellite. Have a great trip :)

[Kcarp]

Outstanding review! We really enjoyed all the details and pics. Thanks for sharing your great vacation with us. :)

[Ms belp]

Yes, thank you! We've decided to go forward with our cruise next August based on your review and pictures. One person can make a difference!:)

[cruisinskier]

Wow, this is the best review I've read on CC. I do have one request: Please book many more cruises and then come back and post reviews!! :D Thanks for the great read!

 

Thanks chelegirly. I am more than willing to do as many cruises as you want we to....we just need a lottery win and off we go!

 

I noticed that you are cruising on the EPIC next month. If you are interested, attached is a link to my EPIC review. We were onbaord with a group of 17 to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary. As a result we were very busy, had a lot of fun and totally enjoyed the EPIC. My review is not as detailed as this one but does have some pics attached. Enjoy your cruise!! http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1269569&highlight=

[cruisinskier]

Loved the review and pictures. You did a great job. We have been talking about a Hawaii cruise for a while. Your review has kicked that idea up again. Do you know when the POA will go in dry dock? May take cruise after dry dock. Thanks for the great review.

 

Linda

 

Hi Linda. I do not think a date has been announced yet for a dry dock but I do know it is something NCL is planning. We heard this directly from the senior management of the POA while we were onboard. In looking at the NCL website, all dates are still posted weekly up to April 2012.

[cruisinskier]

cruisinskier - Thanks so much for your great review!! I especially appreciate all the POA photos. We are sailing next month. Did your cruise have a special itinerary? I saw that you mentioned training and you had a sea day, which my cruise does not.

 

Thanks!

 

CruisingGoddess, yes our itinerary was revised as orignally it was a planned dry dock. Once that was changed they could not get the dock space which resulted in us spending a day sailing the coast of Molokai instead on the normal overnight in Maui.

 

Enjoy your cruise and I look forward to reading your review!!

[cruisinskier]

What a wonderful review!

Just by your story and pics, we're sure we will do this cruise (and stay on land!) in one of the coming years.

Time difference will be even worse, Hawaii is virtually at the other side of the world for us and the difference will be 11 hours!

 

It's sad I'm not native English speaking, so to write such an extended review is way too difficult,

Reading is not an issue, and I love it!

 

Warmest compliments from Holland ;)

 

Thank you Liquid Shiva. Yes that is too far to travel for just one week. The cruise gives you a great oversight of the various islands and then you need probably 4-5 days per island that you choose to see so you can visit it properly. We ended up spending 5 days on Oahu (3 pre cruise and 2 post cruise) and then 4 days in Kauai. I hope to post more info on our post cruise adventures in the next day or two. And from your note, your English appears very good. :)

[cruisinskier]

Yes, thank you! We've decided to go forward with our cruise next August based on your review and pictures. One person can make a difference!:)

 

Ms belp, glad we could assist in your decision. If you have any questions, we will do our best to answer them. And I look forward to reading your review which hopefully you will post in a more timely period than I have given this is a few months late! :o

[cruisinskier]

First of all thank you all for the nice comments. Glad you are enjoying the review of our trip and I have to admit it's making me want to go back!

 

There are a couple of items I neglected to speak to in my earlier comments. First, after leaving port in Hilo, the POA does a night sail past Kilauea volcano. From the distance you are able to see the red lava flowing down the banks, and if you are lucky it will flow into the water. Unfortunately there was not much lava flowing the night we sailed past.

 

Secondly, in each of the staircases there are murals of various US landmarks. Each one is different and it includes various city scapes as well as the top tourist sites across the U.S. such as Niagara Falls, Yellowstone, etc. For some reason I did not take any pictures of these....

 

Before I leave the cruise, here are a few final cruise pictures...does it look like these people had a good week!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cruisinskier]

After disembarking the POA, we grabbed a taxi right outside the gate and we were on our way to our hotel, the Kahala Resort. The taxi was $30 including tip and upon arrival we were greeted with a lei greeting. Even though it was not yet 10:00am, we were able to check in as our room was available.

 

The Kahala is a higher end property and not the type of place that we would typically stay however we had found a great deal and decided to splurge (as we kind of did with all of our post cruise hotels...:D). Our room was 545 sq ft with a great bathroom and a view of the golf course next door. As we wandered around the property, my wife (who is an event planner) decided that this was the type of property that she would potentially bring a group to and she arranged a site visit of the property with their sales dept. I tagged along on the tour to see all of the Kahala. They have a full spa, an onsite dolphin experience, various levels of rooms and suites, a nice private beach, a couple of large ballrooms, and an underwelming pool. My wife was disappointed when she learned that George Clooney had stayed here the previous week (but was happier when told he was still in Hawaii filming so she kept looking...). At the end of the tour, they offered to upgrade our room however we declined as that was not the intent of arranging the tour.

 

After the tour, we decided to hop on the free shuttle and head to the Ala Moana Shopping Centre. The shuttle was about 15 minutes. We looked around for a while but no real deals on anything. We decided to walk back to Waikiki beach, walking through the Hilton Hawaiian Village complex and along the beach. After a farily long walk, we stopped at the Shorebird, found a table overlooking the beach, and rewarded ourselves for our walk with a nice cold beer. :D

 

We continued our walk along the beach up to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel where we headed out to the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Centre. Lots of high end shops in this areas. After a few small purchases, we caught the shuttle back to ther Kahala as it also had a stop at the Royal Hawaiian.

 

After some down time in the room, we headed for dinner. We decided to stay at the Kahala for dinner and went to the Plumeria Beach House. The food was very good, the location was great with a table overlooking the beach, and they had a live hawaiian band playing typical Hawiian music with a Hula dancer performing. Overall a great meal with great ambiance and the cost for dinner without drinks was not bad for this type of hotel ($85). After dinner we strolled the beachfront path and then headed back to the room to call it a night....

[cruisinskier]

The Kahala (formerly Mandarin Oriental)

 

The Conservatory

 

Our lei greeting

 

Room at the Kahala

 

Our View

 

The Plumeria Restaurant

[cruisinskier]

 

 

At the Shorebird

 

[vc562894]

cruisinskier- What kind of camera are you using? It's great!!

[cruisinskier]

cruisinskier- What kind of camera are you using? It's great!!

 

Hi vc562894, I actually used 2 cameras. Most of the pictures are taken on a 8-9 year old Canon Powershot G3 that is a 4 megapixel. I have thought about replacing it but it is working well for us and has taken thousands of photo memories over the years. The second camera was a new addition I had bought for this trip. It is a Fuj Z33WP underwater camera that I used for the inwater and underwater pictures as well as a few others as it was pocket size. It is a 10 megapixel but was not anything expensive...I believe it was about $140.

 

Congrats to you on your upcoming honeymoon and we look forward to reading your trip report on the POA.

[cruisinskier]

Given this site is a cruise site, I will not spend much time describing the hotels in any detail. I will post a few pictures in case you want to stay at them pre or post cruise. I will concentrate more on our activities throughout the day as any of these could be done as a shore excursion. Having said that, day 12 was not filled with much activity....

 

We started our morning with breakfast at the Plumeria restaurant. After a week of buffets, we were not too sure that we wanted another one but I must say this was the best buffet I have ever seen. You name it, they had it. Every type of fruit, fresh waffles, omelettes, etc. And the juice. By combining the passionfruit, orange and guave, I was able to create my own POG juice! Needless to say, breakfast was a hit. :)

 

We had decided that today was going to be a down day. Basically it consisted of lying on lounge chairs, reading books, napping, a walk on the beach, back to the lounge chairs, a swim in the pool, relax in the hot tub, watch the dolphins, etc. I wanted to snorkel but the weather did not co-operate. It was overcast with sporatic rain showers throughout the day. We did have lunch by the pool which was very good and then later we did decide to spend an hour or so in the gym which was well equipped with all the typical equipment and included water bottles, towels, etc.

 

After more lounging around, we decided to have room service for dinner and ordered a pizza. We stayed in the room, watched a movie and basically recovered from the past 11 days of ongoing activity. Later in the night we packed up what we could as we had an early flight to Kauai in the morning....

[cruisinskier]

Outdoor area of the Plumeria restaurant

 

Beach at Kahala

 

The smallish pool

 

The dolphins at the Kahala...yes you can get a room overlooking this lagoon (but too pricey for us!)

 

The Bay at one end of the property

 

The beach in front of the villas (this is where George Clooney had just stayed)

[LindaLa]

This is a wonderful review! It makes me miss Hawaii. I wish it wasn't such a long trip for us. We never did a cruise, but I always thought it would be a great way to see all the islands. That time difference is a killer - not only there, but if you spend enough time there, it takes a few days to get back to normal when you get home. My husband would love to retire there, but it would be too far from home (I think). He is now talking about St. John USVI. Sometimes reading this forum, you get disgusted with all the negative back and forth. This review makes it worthwhile. Thanks!

[cruisinskier]

This is a wonderful review! It makes me miss Hawaii. I wish it wasn't such a long trip for us. We never did a cruise, but I always thought it would be a great way to see all the islands. That time difference is a killer - not only there, but if you spend enough time there, it takes a few days to get back to normal when you get home. My husband would love to retire there, but it would be too far from home (I think). He is now talking about St. John USVI. Sometimes reading this forum, you get disgusted with all the negative back and forth. This review makes it worthwhile. Thanks!

 

Hi LindaLa. You do not indicate where home is but yes I agree the time change and the jet lag do impact the trip to Hawaii. Having said that, I would go back in a second. Glad you are enjoying the review...I am not saying that everything about our trip was perfect but for us, a typical average couple who got to do their dream trip, after saving and planning, the last thing we were going to do was concentrate on the negative items. I do think I have been balanced in the cruise feedback and indicated that not everything was perfect. We travel a fair bit (only 6 cruises but lots of other travel) and have not yet had a trip that I regretted, nor do I really see that happening. :)

 

As far as retiring to St. John, we spent a great day snorkelling at Trunk Bay a few years back and I would love to spend more time there. With so much of the Island being a National Park, I would think it would be a great place to retire with lots to explore.