Overdue POA Honeymoon Review - 05/04/2013

[tdeyette]

"Before we left home, I made an agenda of sorts in Excel with each day’s activities, prices, times, and addresses for everything we wanted to see. It wasn’t hard to put together and I’m willing to share with anyone who is interested. "

 

MalervyC,

 

Great review! I'm also doing some research on this cruise for possible 2014 spring time frame, maybe May? Planning is half the fun! If you can, I would love to see what you have put together in Excel.

 

Thanks in advance

 

tomhelen@roadrunner dot com

[slidergirl]

First, congratulations! I'm sure you needed another vacation of doing NOTHING after a time of wedding planning, the wedding, the honeymoon planning and the honeymoon!!!

 

It does sound like you had a wonderful time on the cruise. Out of all the islands, the Big Island is my absolute favorite. For years, a trip there was our "default" vacation if we couldn't decide on any thing else. Kailua-Kona is such a cool town. It's changed a bit over the years, but it has managed to retain much of it's old small-town feel. I've stayed at the King Kam before - it's so much fun to be able to wander the "main drag", have a mai tai and some poke while watching the sun set at the Kona Inn. If you do go back to Kona, split your time between the King Kam and the Marriott Waikoloa up the road by about 30 minutes. It's right on a very good beach. I've also stayed there many times before it was a Marriott. You saw one side of the island, now you can rent a car and drive the other side!!!

 

Now that you've done the 10 hours flying, when you expand your cruise experiences, the 7 hours from the East Coast to Europe will be easy;)

[lgerrish]

MalervyC,

 

Congratulations to your and your hubby on your recent marriage. May you have a wonderful life together!

 

Thank you for your detailed review. We will be sailing on the POA in ten months and your details are helping us make informed decisions for our first trip to Hawaii. I've printed your review so I can highlight "likes" and compare notes. We are traveling with two other couples and have discussed renting a vehicle and exploring on our own as well.

 

With our connecting flight from Maine to Newark, we chose to have a connection in San Francisco to stretch our legs before the last leg of our journey. I know my hubby wouldn't be able to fly non-stop for that length of time.

 

Thanks again for your informational review!

 

Lynn

[kat52]

Thank you so much for your review. It definitely gave me some ideas for our cruise.

Best Wishes!

[allesonwonderland]

 

Our plan for the day was basically to explore Maui. I know the thing to do is the Road to Hana but I wasn’t really into it. I read so many reviews about how long the drive is, the high cost of a tour so that you don’t have to drive, and if you do drive, how tiring it can be. We really wanted to do our own thing and go at our own pace. So I decided we would go in the complete opposite direction of everyone and explore the NW side of the island. We started from the airport and drove 340 through Waihee. Loved the scenery here! The road kept climbing higher and higher as we drove going north towards Kahakuloa Bay. The road was insane: one lane, semi-paved, next to a 100+ foot drop off, with turns every few feet! DH did an incredible job navigating, pulling over and waving people on as we had to share the road. He had a smile on his face the whole time, he totally loved this! There were rolling hills and complete drop off cliffs with the ocean crashing below. There were about 12 miles of road like this and it took us about 2 hours, including some picture stops and pauses to allow other cars and bikers through. We could clearly see Molokai and Lanai from where we were driving.

 

I was just planning a route to explore West Maui with googlemaps! Then I started using Trip Advisor to find attractions along the way. I thought it was interesting that the highway was listed as one of the attractions. So, I started reading reviews and people were talking about how terrifying it was and citing people who have died from driving off the cliffs or warning that it voids your rental car contract. Decided to look it up on youtube...kinda scary! But, your review makes it not sound like as much of a death wish as some of the reviewers. LOL So, I'll have to decide if we can be brave and do it, or if I need to plan an alternate route. ;)

 

Wonderful review, thanks so much for taking the time to share!

[amcw]

Thanks for your awesome review! We are doing this for our honeymoon too at the end of next month and found it a great and very useful read to help with our planning :)

[Funkat]

Thanks for the wealth of information!! We will be on the POA 11/30/13 sailing and are trying to decide what to plan to do in each port - when to rent a car or take an excursion or both. I definitely plan to research all the things you mentioned and your review is extremely helpful. We were on the fence as to whether or not to do the ATV Tour at Kipu Ranch mudbug excursion but will be sure to book it after reading how much fun you two had on it (and take along the bug spray).

Edited July 17, 2013 by Funkat

[3onTour]

MalervyC:

 

I just want to say, THANK YOU!! sooo much for this awesome review and invaluable information.. I can't say enough how grateful I am that you shared all your research and hard work...:p:D

Edited August 30, 2013 by 3onTour

[soakedbythesea]

Thanks so much for a really detailed review - I really enjoyed all your words and remembered some of our memorable past cruises. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we have decided to book our cruise for January 18, 2014. Glad to hear the car rentals went well, as that was the only part I had already done for our land-based Hawaiian Adventure, which is now our honeymoon cruise. Actually we have been married 12 years, but each cruise is like a honeymoon Like you, we are somewhat thrifty too and found an agent with a balcony guar for $1483, which is less than most OV cabins sell for now. Maybe we'll get a good cabin, but plan to do many of the things you did + road to Hana on 2nd day in Maui, so will get car for just one day & hope it doesn't rain. Just have to change car rental dates to coincide with the cruise dates. :eek:

 

I know, we've been on so many cruises and so many trips to Hawaii, but this will be our first real Hawaii cruise, as others were inter-island flights to all the islands with several days at each one, or going to just Oahu or like our last cruise to Honolulu, which was a TransPacific cruise of south pacific islands from Australia, ending with a week in Waikiki before heading back home to Houston.

 

It sounds like you like Outrigger on the Beach for Duke's, but we like to stay there too after having stayed at other places, but last time they were remodeling so we stayed down further, but still on the beach. We really like to ride 'The Bus' in Oahu and have been all over the island by bus for just $1 each.:cool:

 

Long Life, Happy Marriage & Peace,

Edited September 9, 2013 by soakedbythesea

[Krazy Kruizers]

WOW

What a wonderful review.

[greatlakesgirl]

Hi MalervyC, I hope you see this! I have a quick question about the car rental pick-up in Hilo. We are using Budget like you did and I was wondering if you had to call ahead for pier pick up? We're using Thrifty for the other ports and in their fine print it says they will have the shuttles waiting, but I didn't see anything like that for Budget, so I was just wondering...

 

Thank you so much!:)

[MalervyC]

Quick BUMP to all who posted to this review. For those who went, how was it!?!? Did you fall in love with Hawaii like we did!?

 

No call to pier for shuttles....they arrive all day while the ship is in port at every island.

[ncbeachteacher]

What an awesome review! Thank you so much! Loved the description of the ATV excursion... my daughter has said we have to do some type of tour that covers many of the movie/TV show locations. That excursion sounds like it fits the bill and is great fun!