Pride of America February 23-March 2, 2013

[bugsbunny222]

Pride of America February 23-March 2, 2013

 

First off, I would like to thank everyone on the CC boards for posting their reviews and recommendations! They were so helpful in planning our trip which was more wonderful than we could have hoped for! My husband and I booked this trip for our 5th wedding anniversary. My husband had never been on a cruise before and I had only done 2 short cruises growing up. We originally booked a balcony room on the port side for the Na Pali coast sail by. About a week before our trip, I received a call and e-mail from the upsell fairy offering us a port side penthouse suite, which we immediately accepted!

 

We flew to Honolulu on a non-stop Hawaiian flight on Feb 23 which made me nervous in case of any sort of delays but our flight took off on time and landed early. I had arranged for transportation to the pier with Hawaii23. While we were waiting for our luggage, I received a call from Mark at Hawaii23. He was aware that we had landed early and was sending his brother-in-law who owns Johnny Cab to pick us up so we wouldn't have to wait. We were picked up shortly after receiving our luggage and brought directly to the pier.

 

We arrived at the pier around noon. After heading through security, we were directed to the suite check-in area where we were checked-in promptly and within a few minutes were brought to Lazy J's for lunch by the concierge James. James was very nice and we saw him a few times throughout the week but we really didn't need any of his services as we had most things planned far in advance of our trip. We had a wonderful lunch and by time we were done our room was ready and our luggage was waiting for us. Our suite was amazing and I think our favorite part was the balcony which was huge! There were two lounge chairs plus a table with four chairs and still plenty of room! We took advantage of the balcony every day after spending long days on the islands. We had dinner delivered to our room a few nights and ate dinner on the balcony which was wonderful! That afternoon we met out butler, George, and our room steward, Victor. Both were wonderful throughout the cruise...any request was met with a quick friendly response. That night we had arranged with George to have dinner on our balcony scheduled for the planned sail away time. George arrived promptly with our dinner and set it up on the balcony. We had an amazing anniversary dinner as we sailed away from Honolulu!

 

Maui

 

We had arranged for private tours both days in Maui through Awapuhi Adventures. Our guide, Florian, picked us up at 8:30am Sunday morning right outside the security gate. The weather was slightly rainy that day and Florian asked if we minded switching up our original plan a bit to try and miss some of the rain. My husband and I were fine with that and we were off exploring Maui with Florian until 6pm. We took the back way to Hana and then worked our way down, stopping many times along the way for some amazing hikes, waterfalls and an incredible picnic lunch! We were exhausted when we got back to the ship, ordered dinner in our room and called it an early night. Florian picked us up the next morning at 8:30 again and we headed off to explore more of Maui. We hiked to another waterfall, saw beautiful ocean pools, went to Iao Valley and our favorite part was stopping in a small village at Lorraine's Shave Ice. Florian is friends with Lorraine and she runs a shave ice stand out of her house. She was kind enough to let us have our picnic lunch in her backyard which had the most amazing ocean view!! She let us wander through her beautiful backyard taking pictures and chatted with us during lunch. My husband had a slice of her banana cream pie for dessert and said it was the most amazing thing he had ever had!! We also purchased some coconut candy and passion fruit jam from her. We left her house feeling like we had been with a friend! After a wonderful two days in Maui, Florian brought us back to the ship around 4pm. Awapuhi Adventures had set the bar high for the rest of our trip! Back on the ship, we attended the kukui nut lei making class, then we enjoyed dinner in the Liberty dining room and then relaxed on our balcony the rest of our evening.

 

Hilo

 

For Hilo, we booked a private tour through Marylou's tours. We had a great day with Marylou although it felt the most rushed of all our days since we only had the one day in port and had a lot we wanted to see while there. Marylou picked us up at the pier around 8:45 and we were off to Volcano National park, the orchid farm, Hilo Coffee Mill, Akaka Falls, and Rainbow Falls. Marylou also stopped at a smoothie place we wanted to try called What's Shakin' where we had the most amazing tropical smoothies! We probably would have had time to go to the black sand beaches but traffic was starting to get bad and we didn't want to risk the possibility of missing the ship. We had an early dinner at the Cadillac Diner and then accidently fell asleep waiting for the lava sail by! Oh well! We heard from others that it was amazing!

 

Kona

 

Kona was the only port where we booked an excursion through the ship since we had to tender in to port and at the time we booked it, we were not in a suite so we didn't know that we would have priority tendering. We booked the Captain Zodiac snorkel tour through the ship and it was well worth paying the extra few dollars. There were about 15 people on the zodiac for the ride to the snorkel site. Along the way our captain, Ken, stopped to point out some whales and on our way back we saw both dolphins and whales. The snorkeling was nice but my husband and I enjoyed the ride on the zodiac so much more!! On the ride back, we were much closer to the shore and got a close view of sea caves and the beautiful coast. It was a great way to spend our morning. We had also booked a parasail ride though UFO Parasail. After we got off the zodiac, we headed over to check in for our parasail ride. We were about an hour early and they were able to move up our time so we headed right over and got on the boat for our ride. My husband and I parasailed together and it was so much fun! I thought that I would be scared the entire time but it was so beautiful, relaxing and peaceful! The view was amazing. We had a ten minute ride and opted for them to dip our feet in the ocean on our way back down! We paid extra to have them take pictures of us and give us the memory card. We ended up with ~50 pictures from our ride. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Kona, shopping and enjoying some Kona coffee and shave ice. Back on the ship, we attended the ribbon weaving lei making class then ordered dinner in our room and again relaxed on our balcony.

 

Kauai

 

For both of our days in Kauai, we booked through Kauai Photo Tours. For our first day on Thursday we booked the Hiking Tour. There was a slight delay with us getting off the ship due to the Coast Guard delaying our arrival into port by about 30 min. I called and spoke with Michelle (the owner's wife) who assured me that they would not leave without us! We got off the ship and took the trolley about a quarter mile away to the shopping center where they were picking us up. We were brought to the shop where we were divided into the walking and hiking tour groups. Our hiking group had seven people which is the max that they allow for their tours which is really nice because we all received a lot of personal attention. Our guide for our hiking tour was Christian and he was wonderful! We had a diverse group of photography levels from people like my husband with DSLR cameras to ones like me with just our point and shoot cameras who just wanted to see gorgeous places in Kauai! Christian was wonderful and pointed out ways for all of us to maximize whatever camera we were using to get amazing pictures. If you want to see waterfalls, you have to book the hiking tour. None of the hikes were overly strenuous-maybe about 5-10 minutes each way and all were beautiful! We saw gorgeous waterfall, beaches and look outs-many we may not have found on our own. Christian knew so much about photography and the island so it was wonderful to hear his stories. We stopped for lunch at a local place before seeing a few more sites and heading back to the shop for the ride back to the ship. We had a nice dinner at the Skyline restaurant and called it an early night since we would be up early for our private sunrise photo tour. We were up at 5 am Friday for our 6am pick up for our tour. We ordered a quick room service breakfast, the only day we did not eat at Lazy J's for breakfast (we loved that suite perk!). Our guide, Matt, picked us up right at 6am and took us to a gorgeous beach for the sunrise. We were the only ones on the beach and the sunrise was one of the highlights of the trip! Matt was a wonderful guide as well. He had a lot of wonderful photography advice for my husband and also knew so much about the island. After the sunrise, Matt took us to many other gorgeous stops. None were repeats of where we had been with Christian the day before. After our tour, we enjoyed lunch at Lazy J's and then got ready for the Na Pali coast sail by. We enjoyed the sail by on our balcony. It was amazing. The port side definitely gets the better view. After the ship had turned around, we headed up to the deck to see it again and by then it was darker out and the ship was much farther away so we were very glad that we were able to enjoy the port side view of it! After having a huge lunch at Lazy J's, we weren't even hungry for dinner and spent the evening packing up and getting ready for disembarkation the next day.

 

Oahu

 

We opted to do the self disembarkation after having a leisurely breakfast at Lazy J's. The concierge had told us that he could escort us off but it wasn't crowded when we decided to leave at 8am and easily disembarked on our own. Our flight was in the afternoon so instead of heading directly to the airport we opted to do a Half Island Limo Tour though ABC Limo. Melvin was very nice and moved up our pick up time when we found out we would be able to disembark so easily. The limo was very nice and clean. We really didn't stay at any of the locations very long but it was a nice way to enjoy some of the highlights of Oahu. The tour was about three hours and then Melvin dropped us off at the airport for our flight home.

 

I really have nothing but wonderful things to say about our trip. We found the staff on the Pride of America to all be friendly and helpful. We didn't see any of the shows as we were pretty tired at the end of each day but we enjoyed the two lei making classes we attended. The itinerary is fabulous- we can't decide which island was our favorite! All of our tours were wonderful. We felt that we got to see in one week what would normally take two weeks to and really the only day we felt a little rushed was Hilo. We loved our room and balcony as well as the perks of being in a suite. The upsell to one of the penthouse rooms was definitely the cherry on top of a wonderful vacation for us!

 

Since everyone on CC was so helpful for me in planning my trip, I am happy to answer any questions or go into more detail about our trip!

[Sauer-kraut]

Fantastic review! Thank you for taking the time to share it. :)

[Dirkgun]

Do you know how early at each port you were required to be back on board? before sail away....is it the standard hour or longer

[bugsbunny222]

The Freestyle Dailies listed the all aboard times for each port, which if I recall were 30 min prior to sail time. The times were also posted at a couple of places where we disembarked as well so we always double checked as we left the ship.