POA package with air from Boston

[betmust]

I have been looking at the package for the POA with hotel and air from Boston.

I was wondering if anyone has done this from Boston and how the flight times were. I know from the west coast you will be booked on a red eye to Honolulu. I am more curious what time you were booked to leave Boston and if you had a long layover time between flights.

 

Anyone want to share your experience?

Thanks

[earlbird]

I have been looking at the package for the POA with hotel and air from Boston.

I was wondering if anyone has done this from Boston and how the flight times were. I know from the west coast you will be booked on a red eye to Honolulu. I am more curious what time you were booked to leave Boston and if you had a long layover time between flights.

 

Anyone want to share your experience?

Thanks

 

This package is relatively new, so I don't know if you will find any previously booked passengers.

We are doing the 11day package next month, and the flight package was not available when we booked. Actually I believe that it has only been available for a couple of weeks.

[garycarla]

Not this destination in particular, but in general..... Some folks wind up with not so great flights, and some are happy with what they got.

 

We like to be in control so always book our own. If the price is much better, and you are okay with whatever you get - including multiple connections and/or layovers - they do it. Otherwise, start researching. All the way from Boston - I would surely do at least one extra day in Hawaii on the front end.

[brettsmom2004]

Well, I'm not coming from Boston, but Michigan. Here's how I do it.

 

I book own hotels and flights as I found out it's cheaper that way. I fly into Las Vegas, spend the night there and then fly out around 9AM on Hawaiian Air into Honolulu 1-2 days before cruise. Both non-stop flights.

 

Sometimes you can get good Hotel/Flight rates if you book both thru Hawaiian Air. They have some nice hotels listed. After the cruise, catch an afternoon flight back to Las Vegas, spend a day or two there, then head back to Michigan. I like breaking up the flight days both ways, easier on the body and mind.

 

Not sure how others do this but I like picking my own flight times, non-stops, hotels...it takes more work, but it's cheaper on my pocketbook.

 

The cruise line can do all of this for you, you have to do nothing but show up, you can pick your hotel from a list but the flights are usually at the cruise lines discretion, or maybe you can tell them ahead of time about what flight times u might want. For our first cruise, we let NCL do it all for us, we weren't able to pick flight times, but once we received our flight confirmation code, we were able to change seats.

 

Why stop in Las Vegas?...I like it there, and I meet up with my sister there and we fly to Hawaii together for the cruise. Almost like rolling 2 vacations into 1. We have another POA cruise scheduled for September 2016. We love this cruise...lol...

 

Good luck with whatever you decide, POA's way of seeing the islands is great!

 

GG

[GeezerCouple]

We arranged our own flights to and from Hawaii, with a few extra days before, and one extra day after, with *refundable tickets*.

 

As full payment date approached, our TA asked NCL "how much" to do the EXACT SAME ROUTES/DATES.

 

NCL beat the price if we had re-booked for lower, non-refundable fare at that time.

 

And this way, we also had our own choice of flights/dates guaranteed in case availability changed, etc.

 

We might have been able to get a lower non-refundable fare earlier, but I don't think so. (Or at least, on the days that I checked for lower fares over the months/weeks leading up to the final payment date, we never saw anything much better than what we were offered. Yes, better than our "full fare", so that was the risk...)

 

So we told TA to tell NCL "yes, please", and we cancelled our flights and got the full refund.

 

Worked out very well.

 

GeezerCouple

[garycarla]

We arranged our own flights to and from Hawaii, with a few extra days before, and one extra day after, with *refundable tickets*.

 

As full payment date approached, our TA asked NCL "how much" to do the EXACT SAME ROUTES/DATES.

 

NCL beat the price if we had re-booked for lower, non-refundable fare at that time.

 

And this way, we also had our own choice of flights/dates guaranteed in case availability changed, etc.

 

We might have been able to get a lower non-refundable fare earlier, but I don't think so. (Or at least, on the days that I checked for lower fares over the months/weeks leading up to the final payment date, we never saw anything much better than what we were offered. Yes, better than our "full fare", so that was the risk...)

 

So we told TA to tell NCL "yes, please", and we cancelled our flights and got the full refund.

 

Worked out very well.

 

GeezerCouple

 

I guess that would work, but we would never buy "refundable" tickets as the cost is often double what non-refundable tickets cost. Just one more way to do it though.

[GeezerCouple]

I guess that would work, but we would never buy "refundable" tickets as the cost is often double what non-refundable tickets cost. Just one more way to do it though.

 

The tickets were not all that much more than non-refundable, which was a surprise. That's why we did it.

 

But it was our way of guaranteeing that we'd be able to get there when we wanted to IF NCL hadn't been able to get us the bulk-type rate tickets.

 

It worked out, but we were prepared if it didn't.

Actually, it worked out far better than we expected, so we've done this again a few times for other trips since then, but not with NCL just yet.

We now hold refundable tickets, while watching for special non-refundable rates, for a couple of trips. (In some cases, no money is required; in others, we do need to pay, but it's 100% refundable. Not quite sure what the difference is - carriers? countries? or?)

 

(As it turned out, the entire trip was cancelled, less than two weeks before the cruise, due to a medical emergency. We'll reschedule, but in the meantime, we have several other trips planned.)

 

GeezerCouple

[stylez4o1]

We're from RI, so we ended up taking Hawaiian Airlines out of JFK in NY straight to Honolulu. Left here around 8AM est and arrived in Honolulu at 3pm hast. Took about 11 hrs. We stayed a few nights before and after the POA cruise. Best trip ever!

[genealogyfan]

We were also flying from the east coast and decided to break up the flight and spend the night at LAX. Totally worth it especially when my flight from LAX to Honolulu had mechanical problems and luckily I asked and got rebooked on another flight - this was still the day before the cruise

 

We used points to get a free hotel at lax but breaking up the flight was worth it as it seemed long enough to fly to/from LAX and Honolulu

[punkincc]

We are sailing the POA in August and also booked our own own flights and hotels independently. The idea of an 11 or 12 hour flight did not appeal and in researching flights, we noted that in many cases we would have had about a 6 hour layover at LAX before flying out to HNL. Not my idea of fun.

 

We found that if we simply flew 3 hours out to Phoenix and spent the night, we could get a nonstop flight to HNL the next am on Hawaiian Air and be there at 11:30 am ( about a 6 hour flight ). The prices out of Phoenix were very good in comparison to the non stop and layover prices from the Midwest.

[jesathome]

We are sailing on POA in September but staying on Kauai for a week prior. We live in Florida so it is 6 hours time difference. We are flying to LAX and spending a night before flying into Kauai. Then to Oahu the day before the cruise and then stopping overnight at LAX on the way home also. Two of my aunts are flying direct with a change in Phoenix. What I found interesting was that my airline ticket price was less than theirs.

 

 

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