The itinerary was we left Honolulu at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Kauai from Mon. morning overnight until 12:30 Tues., Hilo on Wed., Kona on Thurs., Maui Fri. morning until 9:30 Sat. night, disembark in Honolulu Sunday a.m.
My friend and I planned this as primarily a way to scuba dive in Hawaii so 3 of our 5 1/2 days in port were taken up by that. We rented a car on the other days and I felt like we got to see quite a bit. We had 5 hours on Kauai to drive around, a whole day at Hilo and a whole day on Maui. I felt like I got a good overview of every port and now have an idea of where I'd like to go back to and what I'd like to spend more time seeing. (This was essentially my first trip to Hawaii BTW). Also re: car rental, we picked up 2 of our our rental cars the night before (Kauai and Maui) as was suggested by the travel & shopping consultant on the ship. She told us where we could park for the night. It made it much nicer to have the car first thing in the morning and just take off!
I would consider doing the trip again and not scuba diving, just to have more time to sight-see. I thought the ship was fine, pretty w/tropical decor. Our stateroom was fine, also. We had the cheapest cabin, an inside, it was roomy enough although a little tight when all the diving gear was laid out to dry! Really didn't spend much time on the ship at all, only went to one show, mostly in the evening we were tired, ate and went to bed.
The only thing I thought was not good was the food--and I mean NOT good. If I went again I would skip the dining rooms entirely and go to the buffet for all meals. The buffet was OK cafeteria-style food; I just thought of it as fuel. HOWEVER--they had REAL hand-dipped ice cream, which was delicious, and good coffee, both of which I quite enjoyed!
We went to the dining room 4 times--3 of the times the service was extremely slow and the food not good. One time the service was OK and the food not bad--unfortunately they both didn't occur on the same night!
Re: the "freestyle" concept--the first night we were going to try the dining room the wait was 90 minutes! (we didn't stay) The next night we went at 5:30 and were seated right away but waited so long for our food that we left before we got dessert--we were just tired of waiting and decided to go get ice cream. The other nights we went to the dining room about 9-9:30 and again were seated pretty quickly. Never went again at "normal" dinner time. The one morning we went to the dining room for breakfast (because the buffet lines were 20-30 minutes) we waited about 20 min. to be seated. Food was nothing special so we went back to the buffet after that.
On my Disney cruises I've always had late seating so never felt rushed to get to dinner, plus it suited my internal clock as I come from AZ so I'm 3 hours behind eastern time--eating at 9 p.m. is like 6 p.m. for me. Personally, I'd rather have a set dining time and know I'll be seated without a wait--but that's just me.
Summing up and to answer your question: yes, I felt it was a great way to see several islands, there was quite a bit of time to sight-see and I'd do it again.
- but have a great time on your other cruise. Can't wait to hear all about it.
