Hawaii Cruise questions

[abja09]

We will be in the March 1st sailing from Honolulu to Vancouver. We were wondering if anyone was on the recent sailing from Vancouver to Honolulu and if you can provide any information such as dining, feedback on excursions, activities on board etc! TIA

 

[NAB]

Not sure what you’re looking at for dinning ….we never repeated a menu if that is what you mean.

We were in Triton 3 times. Started with that and ended with it. One in the middle And for breakfast the last day.

We had a pirate night but not the menu. Formal and semi formal night.

Excursions went fast plus we stayed longer and did stuff on our own. We did the Ranch thing with Jurassic park tour. We enjoyed that ,had a great tour guide. Did the movie part too but didn’t like that as much after doing the other one…lol we did watch the movies before we went.

I‘m still in Hawaii so all the islands and tours are blending together …lol

They change the clock the first three nights to get you used to the time change .

Had trivia , cooking with a chef…this was very popular, it was 5 days in a row on sea days. For some reason they really didn’t have much to do late at night for the adults until we got to Hawaii . No Match your mate just silent disco , 90 dance party. Maybe I missed something. Too tired with time changes anyway…lol

Found it cold the first 2 days or so out of Vancouver so I’m guess it will be still cold going the other way in March. Glad I had my jeans and hoodie with me.

 

[NAB]

The chef one is Anyone can Cook if you look on your app

 

[DisneyConvert]

We will be in the March 1st sailing from Honolulu to Vancouver. We were wondering if anyone was on the recent sailing from Vancouver to Honolulu and if you can provide any information such as dining, feedback on excursions, activities on board etc! TIA

We are on that too . . . please consider joining and posting to:
https://www.disboards.com/threads/m...in-vancouver-kahului-hilo-nawiliwili.3916983/

We did an EBTA a long time ago, and this will be a similar distance . . . 4~5 sea days, warm weather to cooler (layers don't ya know!?), open-jaw flights, etc.
We love the culture of DCL, the ship's ambience, the CM's and yes, guests.
Palo brunch may call . . .

We are arriving and staying in Oahu 2+ days prior, and have an acquaintance there.
Also DW has a classmate/friend in Lihue, Kauai, and I need to reach out to someone who lives in/near Hilo and works occasionally in Honolulu.
We don't usually do DCL excursions (they are ok, but expen$ive).
We saw A LOT of Hawaii on our honeymoon 26 years ago when we had rental cars and younger bodies . . .

 

[Sakura1017]

Dining you repeat each restaurant 3 times. It was hard to predict what dates would be for special events in dining ie drawing, Mardi Gras, but you should be able to find out on board.

Excursions depends on what you want to do. I did all of my excursions privately and some of them were amazing. The least one we liked was the Road to Hana which is pretty much a one and done deal. It is so long and one of my family members was not happy with too many turns. The road was bumpy in certain areas which I also had a family member which was sensitive to that too which didn't help.

The one we really loved the most was in hilo and doing volcano national park.
Last year I did Hawaii and did excursions through DCL since there were limited stuff. Now that tour operators are up and running read the reviews. Find things your party wants to do and go from there. DCL does go to volcano national park but it's like a preview. You don't experience lava tube. You just see a crater from a higher up view and get to experience steam vent. I did a private tour and got to see a lava tube, steam vents, see the crater from a different view from DCL and it was amazing seeing the whole picture of it. I saw black sand beach too.

I highly suggest doing private tours because even though it's a little bit more expensive, they are focusing on what your group wants to do. They will spend more time on areas you want to stay in. Try to find 1 thing your family wants to do and then see if they can add on other things or see if it's already included in the tour.

 

[Distinkt]

We are scheduled to go on the Vancouver to Hawaii cruise in September 2024. Though its early, I have been contemplating excursions as well. If anyone has info on the excursions they took I would be interested. I think we would enjoy private tours more than DCL bc on our recent cruise the DCL excursions seemed a bit rushed and a bit like a cattle call.

I am also toying with renting a car at Nawiliwili and possibly the other ports so that we can explore as we wish. Any advice on car rental, or sights that are "not to be missed" would be appreciated. Any tour company recommendations would also be appreciated, if they are allowed on this thread. I am not really looking for the cheapest ways to tour but more or less the best bang for our buck.

 

[abja09]

Dining you repeat each restaurant 3 times. It was hard to predict what dates would be for special events in dining ie drawing, Mardi Gras, but you should be able to find out on board.

Excursions depends on what you want to do. I did all of my excursions privately and some of them were amazing. The least one we liked was the Road to Hana which is pretty much a one and done deal. It is so long and one of my family members was not happy with too many turns. The road was bumpy in certain areas which I also had a family member which was sensitive to that too which didn't help.

The one we really loved the most was in hilo and doing volcano national park.
Last year I did Hawaii and did excursions through DCL since there were limited stuff. Now that tour operators are up and running read the reviews. Find things your party wants to do and go from there. DCL does go to volcano national park but it's like a preview. You don't experience lava tube. You just see a crater from a higher up view and get to experience steam vent. I did a private tour and got to see a lava tube, steam vents, see the crater from a different view from DCL and it was amazing seeing the whole picture of it. I saw black sand beach too.

I highly suggest doing private tours because even though it's a little bit more expensive, they are focusing on what your group wants to do. They will spend more time on areas you want to stay in. Try to find 1 thing your family wants to do and then see if they can add on other things or see if it's already included in the tour.

Thanks!

We want to do the volcano national park in Hilo as well. What private tour company did you use?

 

[DisneyConvert]

We are scheduled to go on the Vancouver to Hawaii cruise in September 2024. Though its early, I have been contemplating excursions as well. If anyone has info on the excursions they took I would be interested. I think we would enjoy private tours more than DCL bc on our recent cruise the DCL excursions seemed a bit rushed and a bit like a cattle call.

I am also toying with renting a car at Nawiliwili and possibly the other ports so that we can explore as we wish. Any advice on car rental, or sights that are "not to be missed" would be appreciated. Any tour company recommendations would also be appreciated, if they are allowed on this thread. I am not really looking for the cheapest ways to tour but more or less the best bang for our buck.

It was long time ago when DW and I honeymooned on the 4 most popular Hawaiian Islands. Rented car at all of them, but was most useful on Oahu (most populated with many different things to do) and the Big Island which has multiple distinct places to visit/tour that are sizable distance(s) away. We saw a lot.

Late Feb'24, we will arrive Oahu 3 days before cruise, but only rent car for one day and see 2~3 places, plus do some pre-cruise shopping.

Not sure about Maui . . . but I know when we tried to drive to Hana a long time ago, we turned back before we made it half-way.

 

[NAB]

We did this excursion with DLC it was gorgeous. It was nice hearing the bus drive give the history. We had a shopping stop on this one too.

Lots of red dirt on this island reminded me of P.E.I they sold the red dyed shirts there.

 

[NAB]

It is really hard to see everything when you’re only in port so long.

We did do the volcano national park and they show you the rim and the visitors center and across is another view of it.There is so much more to this park. Not sure if there is any tour that goes to the chain of craters and down to the water. Thats we’re you can see a lot of lava rock on the side of the road.

We did do the road to Hanna , not sure if that is an excursion but it is really scary driving can’t imagine being in a bus for that. it takes a long time to do this not sure how many stops a tour would do.

Beaches are beautiful and huge waves that knock you over. I just loved seeing the flowers and different trees.

What do you want to see?

 

[Sakura1017]

Thanks!

We want to do the volcano national park in Hilo as well. What private tour company did you use?

Big Island Vip tours. They were wonderful. They took pictures on our excursion of everything. They also reached out ahead of time asking what else we wanted to do. We were able to accomplish everything but turtles. They were not out and about that day. But I did get to see black sand beach, lave tube etc. So much better than the dcl excursion I did the previous year.

 

[optstud]

Ship building competition is a unique event onboard for longer cruises. We rented a car from the airport at each port and toured on our own. Just be aware that besides Honolulu prearranging transportation from the port to the car rental office is recommended.