Review- Land and Sea Hawaiian Journeys cruise

[Knights on the Beach]

On 4/23/2019 at 2:18 PM, Xmansmom said:

By the way, before I get off of here. Let me share with you my balcony. If you have never seen these special "bowling alley" balconies, they are considered an extended balcony. Only available on the Legend and Pride I believe but check deck plans. There is two per floor, on the aft portside. Ours was 6232.

 

 

We have one of these balcony cabins (7258) on Spirit on this same itinerary next April - so excited we were able to get it!  Can't wait to hear how the weather was for you on sea days on the way to Vancouver and if you were able to fully enjoy this amazing balcony.  🙂  

 

Sounds like embarkation day was a real mess - good to know so we'll be prepared to be patient and arrive later.  My husband and I are both Platinum but my sister-in-law and niece are not so we were planning to board later with them anyway.  Selfishly, I'm almost happy there was no priority line.  lol

[CruisinginWonderland]

I’m so curious about snorkeling in Alaska! That sounds like a bucket list item for sure!

[Kim_KS]

We are doing this cruise next April - I really hope the review gets finished. I keep checking back for more!

[Xmansmom]

Sorry it has taken me so long to continue. Been busy. Any woo, Tuesday was Maui. I had found another couple on our cruise to share the Road to Hana with. I seriously considered just rented a car and driving it. The tour was expensive (almost $700 for the 3 of us) but it was awesome. I am so glad that I wasn't driving. It allowed me to really enjoy the sights. Plus having just 5 of us on the tour was great. The tour was through Holo Holo tours. The tour guide was a local who had grown up in the area. She was extremely knowledgeable and had great personal stories to share about the area. I was able to check off a few of bucket list items during this trip. The Road to Hana is almost indescribable. Beautiful cliffs and waterfalls. Lava tubes and black sand beaches. And don't forget some of the best banana bread you've ever had. My DS and I jumped off the cliffs of the waterfalls. The whole group crawled through a lava tube in the side of the road. Visited a black sand beach with a lava tube that went out to the ocean.

Tuesday April 23-1.pdf Tuesday April 23-2.pdf Tuesday April 23-3.pdf

[Xmansmom]

The PDFs are the Funtimes for that day. We were back onboard by about 6 pm that evening. We did our normal dinner. OUr dinner mates were a bit late that evening but did wind up meeting up with us. It really confused the people sitting folks. They didn't want to let them join us but we finally convinced them it was ok. We were pretty exhausted from all the port days and were looking forward to being able to see in the next day. This is the first night that the clocks would turn back an hour. I had wondered before how time would work on this trip. With the huge change in time from Hawaii to Canada it was nice to see that it was done gradually. Every other sea night the time would go back an hour.Transiting the 3 hrs.

[mommiemudd]

Thanks for the review! We have this booked for April. I have a couple of questions. Do you sail back to Vancouver? If so, how was the temperature on the sea days? And how far in advance do you book airfare? Thanks in advance!

[Xmansmom]

On 5/19/2019 at 11:01 AM, CruisinginWonderland said:

I’m so curious about snorkeling in Alaska! That sounds like a bucket list item for sure!

It was absolutely a bucket list item. It was one of the most colorful experiences. I expected this to be very drab but the life in Alaska was very colorful. It was cold but the wetsuit made it bearable. It was amazing and really cool when two whales surfaced about a football field distance away from us.

[Xmansmom]

On 6/2/2019 at 4:26 PM, mommiemudd said:

Thanks for the review! We have this booked for April. I have a couple of questions. Do you sail back to Vancouver? If so, how was the temperature on the sea days? And how far in advance do you book airfare? Thanks in advance!

 I am just getting into the sea days. But the short answer is it was much cooler then I expected. I didn't pack enough colder weather clothes. I actually bought a Carnival Legend sweatshirt which is one of the softest sweatshirts I own. We sailed from Hawaii back to Vancouver. By sea day two the colder temps had set in. We booked airfare way in advance (as far as I could) but I don't have a lot of options and I like to be able to go out of certain airports.

[Xmansmom]

On 6/1/2019 at 9:25 AM, Kim_KS said:

We are doing this cruise next April - I really hope the review gets finished. I keep checking back for more!

I promise I am slow but I will finish. The thing that bugged me the most as that there seemed to be very little infomation about this cruise and there was definitely no funtimes posted. I promised at a minimum I would at least post those fun times. I am a planner and hated to not know what to expect.

[Xmansmom]

On 4/24/2019 at 9:41 AM, JaniceB said:

Good information on boarding after a repositioning.  I will be boarding the Legend in London after a T/A, I wonder if the same will be true?

I would tell you that one of the guys on our page on another sight made a big point to tell us about having patience on boarding day. He was the guy that did the Academy of fun talks. He went into a lot of detail on how they do the change over. I would say based on that when they do the repositioning to Europe they will face similar challenges. Trying to get European products on board, switching over all the sale prices to European going through customs in Europe with all crew members. Now I would say all of these things are probably harder in America. We all know we make things hard in the US

[JaniceB]

Thank you Xmansmom.

 

[mommiemudd]

What was your all aboard time? We want to spend the day doing some things in Honolulu. We are usually the first group onboard but since we have five sea days we will have plenty of ship time!

[Xmansmom]

So Wed. was the first sea day. The sea days are when the a lot of the extra Journey's stuff happens. This first day there was a Hawaiian night including the Luau deck party, a lecture on the Island of Aloha, and the first of the Academy of Fun lectures, Photography. Now our Cruise Critic Meet and Mingle was also scheduled this first morning. I totally missed it because I never got anything in my room. I only knew it happened because later I was looking at my paper Funtimes and happened to see it. I was a bit sad about it. But I had set our slot pull that afternoon.

So in the afternoon we were hanging on the Lido deck, DS swimming. There was a Lip Sync competition. DS tried to volunteer  me. I didn't get up there but probably should have. It was fun to watch. Right after they had a Fun in the Sun  Competition. I convinced DS to compete with me. OMG. We have never done anything like this but it was hilarious. Basically there were 6 of us to start. They would say items which we had to find on the Lido deck and return to the stage with. Last person back was eliminated. First things were a towel and 3 left flip flops. So it got down to 4 and it was me, DS and 2 others. We were right by Guys and they said mustard, ketchup and pickles. Me,DS and one other ran right over to the burger condiment station. I put it directly in my hand (bad example mom) and ran back and set my hand on the stage. DS (remember 10 yrs old) followed my example, put it in his hand and then came back and dropped the whole mess on the stage. 🤣🤣. It was down to just Me, DS, and one other girl and they asked us for false teeth. That through us all for a loop. After like 5 minutes they finally gave us a hint (comb or zipper). By then the other girl had gotten an actual set of false teeth. OMG. WOW. DS knocked me out with a zipper. The last thing was an ice cream eating contest. DS got beat but he still earned a ship on a stick.
 

I spoke with the casino host and he brought me over some gifts to give away. We had about 15 of us. It was fun. We didn't win anything but we had fun. Dinner was our normal meet up with friends. There was a "Hawaiian Appreciation event" in the lobby with free wine, beer and punch. We stopped by after dinner and grabbed a couple drinks. We went and played for a little bit in the casino. I was itching to play craps. Now I will tell you I am definitely not big gambler. I am a no more then a couple hundred a day gambler. I was doing well on craps that evening, up about $200. The pit boss was even buying me drinks (I think because I was the only one tipping the dealers). Had a great time playing. When it was time for the Hawaiian Luau event we went up to the Lido. There was a Hawaiian group onboard that throughout all the sea days did thinks like the lectures, the events, teaching ukulele lessons, dance lessons. So they performed and taught the group the Hula. We were given grass skirts and flower lays. Inside there was desserts, a whole pig, and some Hawaiian salads. Food was good. I will say that by the evening time we had started to notice the drop in temps.

[Xmansmom]

37 minutes ago, mommiemudd said:

What was your all aboard time? We want to spend the day doing some things in Honolulu. We are usually the first group onboard but since we have five sea days we will have plenty of ship time!

 

6pm was the final onboard even though the sail time was 11 pm. I would tell you I love getting onboard quickly. I wish I had done this totally different. If I knew how the first day would be I would have gone ahead and waited till late. Those that waited till 3 or later walked right on. I will say the only good thing about the wait to get on. They had people doing hula, hawaiian music, making things with palm leaves, and giving out leis. My son got a new headband and a fishing rod with a fish.

[Xmansmom]

Sorry forgot the PDFs for the Funtimes.

Wednesday April 24-1.pdf Wednesday April 24-2.pdf Wednesday April 24-3.pdf

[Knights on the Beach]

Xmansmom, I do hope you'll come back and tell us about the rest of your sea days on the way to Vancouver when you have the time.  This has been a very enjoyable review and I so appreciate you taking the time to post!