Hawaii Grand Princess Shore excursions

[c4blunjit]

Has anyone gone on the shore excursions from the Grand Princess to Hawaii?? Whale watching??

Volcano National Park? Island tours?? Looking for places to go for 2 "out of shape" cruisers! Thanx in advance.

[skynight]

Has anyone gone on the shore excursions from the Grand Princess to Hawaii?? Whale watching??

Volcano National Park? Island tours?? Looking for places to go for 2 "out of shape" cruisers! Thanx in advance.

 

A good place to research shore excursions is in the Cruise Critic Roll Call for your voyage. There you should find private tours that you can compare with the ones Princess offers. FYI all the islands have many many tours that are very enjoyable.

[Whoo]

We just did the Volcanoes Natl. Park tour - the half day one. It was great! Good tour guide. Kind of a drizzly day, but the guide managed to take us to some nice overlooks and we got some nice views of the craters in between clouds. Stopped at Mauna Loa Macademia Nut Factory on way back to ship - based on guide's advice, I ordered a vanilla macademia nut ice cream cone - WOW! Best ice cream I ever had!

 

We also enjoyed the "Movies & Waterfalls" tour on Kauai. Nice, small tour bus with a big-screen TV - we would watch clips of movies/tv shows/music videos, and then see the actual place where it was filmed. Got to go inside the old, abandoned Cocoa Palms resort (where Blue Hawaii with Elvis was filmed) - what a creepy, interesting place!

 

Neither of these tours were strenuous. I recommend both!

[Times Prince]

Have you looked at the excursions offered by Princess? If they are not yet available for your cruise, sometimes you can discover them in the ports area of the Princess web site.

 

Key to this is Princess has rated each tour according to the effort needed by the passenger (mild, strenuous, etc.) and you can filter by that rating.

 

We went onto the lava flow area in Volcano National Park and it is definitely not an area you should try if you are out of shape, however the visitor center further up the mountain was interesting.

[Woobstr112G]

Might be a good idea to look into private excursions. On the Golden we did Whale Watching via Princess. While we saw a lot of whales, the large boat was quite crowded. We did a private tour on the Sapphire on a much smaller boat. We enjoyed the later much better. We also arranged a private helicopter excursion on Hilo and while it was expensive we loved it.....:):):)

 

Bob

[Cruisin' Chick]

We just did the Volcanoes Natl. Park tour - the half day one. It was great! Good tour guide. Kind of a drizzly day, but the guide managed to take us to some nice overlooks and we got some nice views of the craters in between clouds. Stopped at Mauna Loa Macademia Nut Factory on way back to ship - based on guide's advice, I ordered a vanilla macademia nut ice cream cone - WOW! Best ice cream I ever had!

 

We also enjoyed the "Movies & Waterfalls" tour on Kauai. Nice, small tour bus with a big-screen TV - we would watch clips of movies/tv shows/music videos, and then see the actual place where it was filmed. Got to go inside the old, abandoned Cocoa Palms resort (where Blue Hawaii with Elvis was filmed) - what a creepy, interesting place!

 

Neither of these tours were strenuous. I recommend both!

 

We did the "Movies and Waterfalls" tour on Kauai last December. One of the best excursions we ever did. My hubby is a waterfall nut (one of his dream cruises is the South American one with a sidetrip to Iguazu Falls), my teen usually gets bored with scenery but she's a movie nut like me. We had lunch at the diner featured in The Descendants, which I've seen twice and hubby once before our cruise. There's some getting on and off the bus, and a couple of short walks to get to the featured site on a stop, but not strenuous at all. The stop at the Coco Palms ruins is apparently something you can't do on your own, if the guide was telling the truth. There's a local icon, Larry Rivera who greets the tours and plays some of his songs for the group (hubby bought one of his CDs).

 

Most of the time when we go out in a port, we just tour on our own (based on my research). We've done this itinerary three times, out of LA, and the second time we didn't do one single excursion (my hubby's preference). We usually book through Princess, another preference.

[sassyredhat]

We book ships tours because DH doesn't want to do 'anything'. :D

We both have walking issues, and we have taken both tours in question.

The volcanoes tour was easily done by me, who has the most 'issues'.

The whale watching tour we took on Maui. We embarked the whale watching boat directly from Sapphire.

Yes, it was a bit crowded, but we got on early and found good seats.

Afterwards we were tendered into Lahaina, and then tendered back to the ship.

 

PCL does a good job of classifying the degree of difficulty on the shore excursions area of the website, right down to how many steps each leg of the tour is. The videos are also pretty accurate also.

I stick to the level 1 but some of the level 2 tours are doable for me.

 

Pat

[bdjam]

Has anyone gone on the shore excursions from the Grand Princess to Hawaii?? Whale watching??

Volcano National Park? Island tours?? Looking for places to go for 2 "out of shape" cruisers! Thanx in advance.

 

Volcanoes National Park is an excellent tour. Wiamea Canyon on Kauai is a nice tour - lots of bus riding, but great scenery. There are island tours on Oahu that cover different areas - Pearl Harbor is a must if you haven't seen it. If it's your first time to Oahu, combining that with an island tour would be great. Maui has nice tours too, but a nice way to spend the day is to take the local shuttle to Whaler's Villiage in Kaanapali for shopping, lunch, beach walking. The shuttle is available right where the tenders disembark.

I know that local tours are less expensive than the Princess tours, but I find you get what you pay for. While some people enjoy the local tours more, the Princess tours are rated by the cruise line and tours that don't measure up are not offered. In addition, if you're on a Princess tour, you are guaranteed to get back to the ship before it sails.

[DRS/NC]

The old Coco Palms in Kauai -- nice memory! My late DH & I visited there on our delayed honeymoon in 1968. It was really quite pretty, esp. the grounds. So sad now.

 

I'm interested in this thread because I'm booked on the Star to Hawaii in 2015. Haven't had my whale-watching fix in several years.