An Exhaustive Review of Our Exhausting Hawaiian Adventure

[marysb]

Loved your photobook. We just got back from a 4 island land cruise, which is pretty similar to the cruise as we only got 2-3 days on each island. i used CC to make sure we had the most efficient way to see everything. Thanks to everyone for suggestions!

We had lots of highlights: Pearl Harbour, Maui- the Ka'anapali Beach hotel at Black Rock, the drive to the north shore in Kauai, Kona -riding the trolley to snorkel at Kahaluu beach.

Will get a full review when I get some time. Christmas is starting to get in the way.

mary

[Walt fan]

Donna: Hey again! I just took a trip down memory lane with you; your Mixbook travel book is completely amazing. I have never seen one done before; and now I want to try! Can a completely inept computer person do one of these fairly easily? I would love to put one together for our Oasis cruise back in June. I haven't even downloaded the photos from our scan cards yet. That is how behind I am!!! Let me know the range of difficulty. And thank you again for sharing!

[kwbound]

Donna: Hey again! I just took a trip down memory lane with you; your Mixbook travel book is completely amazing. I have never seen one done before; and now I want to try! Can a completely inept computer person do one of these fairly easily? I would love to put one together for our Oasis cruise back in June. I haven't even downloaded the photos from our scan cards yet. That is how behind I am!!! Let me know the range of difficulty. And thank you again for sharing!

 

 

It is really easy and the amount of customizing you want to do is completely up to you. The easiest way to do it would be to pick out all the pictures you want to include in the book. Pick a theme from one of the themes they have available. There is one for Tropical Cruise that would probably work. Upload the pictures you want to use in the book and the hit the Automix button. It will lay out all of your photos sorted in order by date taken. Then you can go in and customize as much as you want - resize photos or zoom level, change orientation, add embellishments, etc. If you have tickets, maps, key cards and things like that you want to include you can scan those things if you have a scanner and save them as jpg files and upload them the same as photos. If you don't have a scanner, you could photograph them and just crop around them. It is free to use the software. You only pay for books if you have them printed. So it wouldn't cost you anything to play around with a book. Also, they have a very good live-chat help feature that I found helpful.

 

We received our printed books yesterday. I love, love, love, love it!!!! It is so much more impressive in the 12 x 12 book than on the screen. I've already started on a new book from the Western Caribbean cruise we took back in June. I'm definitely going to do a book for all my future vacations.

[tone1]

Just checked their website. Really like the simplicity of your instructions and how easy it appears to be to use this product...and they ship to Canada. Woohoo!:) Thanks again.

[Walt fan]

Donna: Thank you for all of the information! I think this will be my next huge project to do. I have a TON of stuff from past vacations, just throwing it boxes and telling myself when I get time I will do something with it. This seems like it might take some time but will definitely be the easiest. I will let you know! This is my three days off from work project, it will take me that long just to download the photos and find all my keepsakes. Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas. My oldest is home from college as of last night! Yea!

[Raison]

Donna: Thank you for all of the information! I think this will be my next huge project to do. I have a TON of stuff from past vacations, just throwing it boxes and telling myself when I get time I will do something with it. This seems like it might take some time but will definitely be the easiest. I will let you know! This is my three days off from work project, it will take me that long just to download the photos and find all my keepsakes. Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas. My oldest is home from college as of last night! Yea!

 

 

Seeing Donna's album has also inspired me to get my act together and do something with all my trip photos as well!!

[kwbound]

Donna: Thank you for all of the information! I think this will be my next huge project to do. I have a TON of stuff from past vacations, just throwing it boxes and telling myself when I get time I will do something with it. This seems like it might take some time but will definitely be the easiest. I will let you know! This is my three days off from work project, it will take me that long just to download the photos and find all my keepsakes. Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas. My oldest is home from college as of last night! Yea!

 

Seeing Donna's album has also inspired me to get my act together and do something with all my trip photos as well!!

 

 

Please post links when your books are done. I love looking at everyone else's travel adventures...It gives me ideas for future trips.

 

I think we've pretty much decided for a return trip to Hawaii in 2014 - to celebrate my 50th birthday. That gives me a few years to get in really good shape (I need all the time I can get!). I'm thinking for the next trip we will still do POA, but we will fly in on Wed before the trip for more time on Oahu. And we will disembark on Fri in Kauai and spend and extra night or two there. I want to kayak along the Na Pali coast if the seas are calm enough. If not, I want to hike at least to the first beach. Oh well - lots of time to plan this one!

[yorkshireterrierist]

Day 3 Continued – VNP – Thurston Lava Tube

The Thurston Lava Tube is a very, very popular stop, with limited parking, a great deal of which is taking up by tour busses. There is another lot about ~1/2 mile away that you can park at and either walk along the road or take a trail back to Thurston, but that was too far a walk for DFH, plus it was raining. So we drove back and forth a few times until we were able to snag a parking place near an entrance to the tube. The lava tube is definitely in the rain forest and it is beautiful. You have to walk down a pretty steep path to get to the tube, and it can be slippery. We had brought flash lights so we could go in the unimproved section of the tube. I was not loving that part of the tube. It was SUPER dark. It seemed like the darkness just soaked up the light from the flashlights. And I certainly didn’t want to be at the back of our group. I’ve seen too many movies – I know what happens to the poor sucker in the back! At one point we all turned out our flashlights. That was the darkest dark I've ever experienced.

 

 

 

Coming up: Richardson Beach Park in Hilo

 

Thank you for the wonderful review, we are going on this cruise Jan 15th. I was just wondering if there were any bees at the lava tube? I read somewhere that there was and I am very allergic. What about other places?

Thanks again!

[kwbound]

Thank you for the wonderful review, we are going on this cruise Jan 15th. I was just wondering if there were any bees at the lava tube? I read somewhere that there was and I am very allergic. What about other places?

Thanks again!

 

Hey Serena - Except for the unfortunate discovery of the bugs in our cabin, I don't recall seeing any bugs in Hawaii. I had read that you may run into centipedes or spiders to be concerned about, but we didn't see either.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Donna

[KonaDave]

Great review except you need to try a good shave ice. It is ono!!!!!

[medacruise]

Wow....this is really helping me plan our trip. Thanks for taking the time and passing on all this advice. It help for people like me who have never been to Hawaii before. Appreicate it.

[kwbound]

Great review except you need to try a good shave ice. It is ono!!!!!

 

Where would recommend for a good shaved ice?

[kwbound]

Wow....this is really helping me plan our trip. Thanks for taking the time and passing on all this advice. It help for people like me who have never been to Hawaii before. Appreicate it.

 

Glad to help. I hope you have a wonderful time.

 

We used to live in Austin and my sister's family lives in Lakeway. Nephew plays football for the state champion Cavaliers (he was on JV this year tho). We love going to Austin and visit often. We will be running the half marathon there in February....maybe while you are in Hawaii.

[marysb]

Donna,

your travel book is AWESOME! I just started ours and it is soooooo much work. It takes me forever to do one page. Now I really appreciated how exceptional your book is. Oh well, it's worth it I am very sure. I have made myself a goal of 2 pages a day :-)

Mary

 

PS. How did you get the pictures of your leis to be stickers?

[kwbound]

Donna,

your travel book is AWESOME! I just started ours and it is soooooo much work. It takes me forever to do one page. Now I really appreciated how exceptional your book is. Oh well, it's worth it I am very sure. I have made myself a goal of 2 pages a day :-)

Mary

 

PS. How did you get the pictures of your leis to be stickers?

 

Thanks Mary. I love my finished book. When my son was small he loved the Pokey Little Puppy series of books. We read those over and over every night. I call my Hawaii photo book my Pokey Little Puppy book because I love to look at it all the time.

 

As for the lei embellishments, I downloaded this tropical paradise digital scrapbooking kit, and then uploaded the papers and stickers to my Mixbook account. If you do a web search for beach digital scrapbooking kits, or tropical or Hawaiian, you will find a pretty good selection, and they are much, much, much less expensive than buying embellishments for a paper scrapbook.

 

Please post a link when you finish your book. I would love to see it.

 

Donna

[Sunny AZ Girl]

As for the lei embellishments, I downloaded this tropical paradise digital scrapbooking kit, and then uploaded the papers and stickers to my Mixbook account. If you do a web search for beach digital scrapbooking kits, or tropical or Hawaiian, you will find a pretty good selection, and they are much, much, much less expensive than buying embellishments for a paper scrapbook.

Donna

Donna - I also loved your lei embellishments. I am confused about the kit you bought. It looks like papers, etc. How does it work? I am not as interested in the backgounds (although they are cute) as the actual embellishments. :confused:

[kwbound]

Donna - I also loved your lei embellishments. I am confused about the kit you bought. It looks like papers, etc. How does it work? I am not as interested in the backgounds (although they are cute) as the actual embellishments. :confused:

 

Hey Ginny - When you download a digital scrapbooking kit, each item (backgrounds, embellishments, layouts, etc) comes as its own separate file. They are usually .png files. You can upload these files to your Mixbook acct, just like you upload your pictures....but you will upload them to the background or sticker areas. If you are in your Mixbook account, where you edit your book, and you click on Stickers, you will see a button that say "Add Stickers"...click that, from there you can add stickers (I call them embellishments) from other Mixbook themes, other books you have done, or you can upload new ones from your computer. Once they are in your Mixbook project folders, you can drag and drop them onto your book pages where ever you want.

 

Hope this helps.

[Sunny AZ Girl]

Thanks, Donna. I wonder if there is a way I can use them on my Picaboo book? There is not anyplace to add stickers, but I know you can scan things like tickets and add them. Hmmmmmm.....something to investigate! I am familiar with Picaboo and love their program, but the Mixbook has nice features, too.

[Erreyl]

BFW and I have a tradition of trying to get Henna or airbrushed tattoos whenever we go on vacation. We prefer Henna because they last longer. While doing research I found a temporary tattoo stand in the International Marketplace and had emailed them. After dinner we went over for my tattoo. I had picked it out online weeks ago - Hibiscus and Honu.

 

I LOVED it!!! This was it 24 hours later. It would get a little darker than the photo shows. It lasted all week and still hasn't faded completely but you have to look for it to see it now. The tattoo artists name was Panamaw and he really is an artist. Before me he did an AWESOME koi fish on a girls back that covered at least half her back and was so intricate. My tattoo only cost $21. I definitely think he is undercharging for his work.

 

While I was getting my tattoo BFH went back to the hotel to rest, BFW was shopping in the marketplace and DH was getting a calf massage at a massage salon at the marketplace - $20/15 minutes.

 

All in all it was a wonderful, altho very long day. You can see all the day one pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dmbryals/Day1Oahu?authkey=Gv1sRgCMzQ4Kiwq_SdkAE#

 

That's it for today. Feel free to ask questions.The next installment will be Day Two: The Arizona Memorial, Kualoa Ranch, ONO Hawaiian Food and boarding the Pride of America.

 

Thanks for the great review. We leave the end of this month on the Sapphire Princess from LA and I would love any details you have about the henna tattoo place. If you have the online info you mentioned (email or pics to choose from) or just the name of the place so I can find it when I get there. Did you pick a picture they had or just something you found online? Thanks for any info regarding this!

Amanda

[kwbound]

Thanks for the great review. We leave the end of this month on the Sapphire Princess from LA and I would love any details you have about the henna tattoo place. If you have the online info you mentioned (email or pics to choose from) or just the name of the place so I can find it when I get there. Did you pick a picture they had or just something you found online? Thanks for any info regarding this!

 

Amanda

 

Hey Amanda - Here is the website for the henna tattoo stand: http://www.arainbowstudio.com/ Their website has a lot of good information.

 

I picked a design off the Henna page of the website (2nd one on the right), but they have several albums of designs to choose from. They can even do a new design if you tell them what you want. They are located in the International Marketplace. If you enter from the main entrance, you wind around towards the back to find them. If you email them, they can tell you exactly where they are. I emailed them several times and they were always quick to answer.

 

There is another temporary tatoo place located near a Rainbow Studio, but that place uses body makeup, not henna. Make sure you are at Rainbow Studio.

 

Come back a post a picture of your tatoo when you get back.

 

Aloha!

 

Donna

[katef]

Donna,

 

I loved your extensive review of your trip. We're going for the third time on the POA in April. Can you tell how much we love the itinerary?

 

My question is, how hard or easy was the on and off of the SeaQuest excursion? Your review made it seem like a must-do excursion, but I'm worried about the access for a "fluffier-than-you" woman.

 

Your description of the houskeeping in your cabin (or lack of) is disturbing. We've never had any problems like that on any of our cruises with any cruiseline, thank heaven! I hope you let someone know about it and didn't leave an extra tip for your room steward. ;)

 

Thanks again for the awesome review and beautiful pictures!!!

[sue402001]

Hey katef, I see you are cruising in April. When are you going? If your sailing the 16th be sure to come and join our roll call!

I bet you'll be happy like me to see the greenery in HI after the snows here in Michigan. :)

[katef]

Hey katef, I see you are cruising in April. When are you going? If your sailing the 16th be sure to come and join our roll call!

I bet you'll be happy like me to see the greenery in HI after the snows here in Michigan. :)

 

Sue, we're on the April 2nd cruise and yes, we can't wait to see the green and feel the warmth in Hawaii after all this Michigan weather!! :D

[bronxite]

I feel very sad and excited at the same time; sad that your wonderful review is over and excited for our trip in April 2011. We will be staying at the Hale Koa and will look for the Parrot man, and the John, who make the best mai tais.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to put something like this together, it was wonderful. I am also going to purchase the Canon D10 camera, I was going to get another smaller camera for my husband, then some waterproof disposable, but when I saw your photos; I would rather spend the price for a better camera.

[GypRasc]

Wow. I think I may now be sold on doing my scrapbooks online. I just might have to try mixbook.com. Thank you for sharing your album. It looks wonderful and it also looks like it would be alot easier to put together than the ones I do by hand.