POAm - Great shore excursions? NCL or Independants Recommendations

[Cheeseliz]

Hello - My husband and I will be leaving our little ones (5 year and 6 mon.)at home with Grandma and taking a well deserved one week cruise on the Pride of America - We are 30 somethings and looking for recommendations on great shore excursions, whether offered through NCL or going independantly. I know I want to do a helicopter tour, the famous sunrise bick ride down the mountain (which mountain - I have no idea - just Maui - right?), and either snorkeling or an intro to scuba thing (my hubbys request) - possibly a luau too - We will be staying one night before cruise in Honolulu and two nights after the cruise (where we will do Pearl Harbor, etc...) We want fun adventures, not just sightseeing per se - Any suggestions on fun tours would be appreciated! Thanks in advance - :o Cheeseliz

[CruisinMK]

I recommend Captain Zodiac in Kona. That's what I did on my Pride of America sailing, lot of fun, wonderful snorkeling, interesting history to the place... Hard to beat

[lambs2]

We had a fabulous time on the Pride of America June 3-10! I will link my review below in which you will find many goodies that we did:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=362922&highlight=PoAm+June+3-10

 

 

The only shore excursion we purchased was the Captain Zodiak Raft and Snorkel Adventure on Kona which had been talked about so much on this board that we decided to go! It was a blast and we were so glad we did it! The rest of the time we rented cars and did our own tours on all the islands. I had brought copies of the Revealed series books along and we followed suggestions there as well as research I did on this board. We did a WONDERFUL luau on Maui, the Royal Lahaina or Kanapali Luau which we booked on our own using the link below: http://www.hawaiidiscountactivities.com/reservationrequest/activitylistings.asp?catkey=28&subcat=False&vendor id=&actkey=&page_size=5&current_page=1&island=2&OV RAW=maui%20luau&OVKEY=maui%20luau&OVMTC=standard

 

Good luck with your planning! We really planned ahead of time and it paid off. We had the Vacation of a Lifetime! If there are any questions you still have, please ask them here!

[Cheeseliz]

Lambs2 - Thanks for your reply - I read your post when first reviewing cruise lines - Thanks for all the insight and taking the time to write up a great review - Anything you would do differently? Any things you would try a second time around? :)

[lambs2]

One thing we might do differently is to take a helicopter ride in Kauai rather than the small airplane that we chartered. It was great and we paid only about half of the usual copter fares, but I saw the helicopters below us that followed the exact same route as us but they were closer to the waterfalls and went farther down in Waimea Canyon and to the Napali coast. Other than that I would have just liked a longer cruise or perhaps two weeks back to back just doing it all over again, but this time relaxing more! We really had no time to just relax and enjoy or even enjoy some of the activities the ship definitely offered, like the Chocolate Buffet or the crew show - or even the gym, pools or spas onboard! We had so much planned during the days and nights that we missed most of those! I also would have like to take the bike ride down Haleakala in Maui, or at least go see the sunrise, but as I mentioned in my review - we overslept but did the Road to Hana instead.