Honolulu Embarkation/Porters

[tortoisegirl]

I have a post-cruise question to ask that is pretty silly, but was something that confused me on our cruise a couple weeks ago.

 

We boarded POA in Honolulu. A taxi dropped us off from our hotel around 1pm, so check-in was in full swing. A porter walked up and asked if he could take our bags. I confirmed that we wouldn't need to do anything until they showed up in our room (just in case he would only take them inside for us, as we could do that ourselves). We gave him a $5 tip for 4 bags.

 

He said we had to walk with him as they had to see our itinerary. I was confused at first, but realized he meant our boarding documents. This hadn't happened for our other cruises (Miami and Seattle), for which we had the porter take the bags at the curb without any matching with documents. We already had the tags on them with our cabin number. We showed the documents to a lady and he said we could now skip the line we were near and go to the other line.

 

We looked around and started walking and realized that there was a really long luggage drop off line (everyone had large bags), then a check-in line. There were very few porters around and I didn't see anyone else around us who had a porter and was skipping the luggage check-in line.

 

So did we just get really lucky to get a porter and avoid that luggage check-in line, was everyone in line too cheap to pay for a porter / didn't realize they could skip the line that way, or was something shady going on with our porter getting our bags through? Thank you and best wishes.

[Aussiegirl58]

This happened to us back in May when we did this cruise. A lady from the company we had hired to take us from our hotel to the ship came on board the bus. She explained if we used a porter we could skip the long lines of people and he would take us inside the building. This was a wise choice we made to use a porter as walked past other people on our bus who decided to do it on their own.

.

[elhenry]

We used a porter for the POA in July, and we experienced the same service.

 

For the past ten years, we have always used a porter, no matter the port, and we always have been "waved past" the line. We tip $2-3 a bag, and it's a bargain at twice the price. :)

 

el henry

[Molokai-Chuck]

We always have used the porters at the Honolulu pier...great service, and very helpful.

[tortoisegirl]

Thanks for the info! Seems like there might have been a shortage of porters, or else folks just didn't know or were too cheap. The line was crazy long so that just confused me more. I hadn't been to a port / cruise line before which had a bag drop off line, only at the curb, where porters took your bags tip or not. Best wishes.

[dune]

Is it obvious who the porter are or do you need to seek them out. We cruise in 2008 but don't remember porters. I have used them in Seattle and they were great. Thanks

[tortoisegirl]

Yes the porters were obvious as they had luggage carts, which didn't seem to be available otherwise. I didn't see a lot of them, but it was at the peak of check-in, and they could have been elsewhere. Best wishes.

[dune]

Thanks, that exactly the way it works in Seattle. Can't for the trip next year.