Time between disembarkation and flight home

[mooline]

If you’re on a ship (e.g. Pride of America) that ends in Honolulu, you'll probably have a good bit of time to kill before your flight home.

 

Not wanting to sit for hours at the airport, we booked with Private Tours Hawaii to take us to a few sights we'd missed during our short precruise visit to Honolulu.

 

The tour is completely customized, and can be changed on the fly. For example, we visited Diamond Head, then traveled to Leonard's bakery. Next, we wanted to see the Dole Plantation, but when we arrived, it was so jam packed that we couldn’t enjoy anything. Our driver, Adam, who also owns the business, helped us quickly plan a visit to a small village on the North Shore, which we all enjoyed.

 

Our tour ended with drop off at the airport, in plenty of time for our flight.

 

Yes, this option is not inexpensive, but it was, for us, a great way to use the time between ship and airplane.

 

[CruiserBruce]

Hmmm...good info about the tour, but flights to the mainland on various airlines leave virtually every hour, at least until about 3pm, when the time changes make for very late arrivals. So, generally,  unless you have strict destination or airline restrictions, you shouldn't have to wait too long for a flight.

[mooline]

Thank you, @CruiserBruce, that’s very true in some cases, but others may have airline or connection preferences. For example, we usually fly Delta, and can use points for upgrades, a nice benefit for a trip of this length. And we wanted a flight long enough to allow for sleep with the time change, versus two shorter flights where we'd be more seriously jet lagged coming back.

 

For us, that meant a 3:30 pm departure, 6 hours after disembarking. The tour was a great way to fill that time.

[georgiacat]

Sounds like you had a good tour.  We used the POA transfer from ship to airport (Delta departure 4:30 pm) via Pearl Harbor and City Tour.  We enjoyed this tour also, used our excursion credits from NCL on it.