Thread: Hawaii Advice - Sapphire Princess Oct 2011

looking for advice for Hawaii. We are trying to stay at around $100 per port for each tour.
For Maui, we are thinking the volcano tour looks good, but not sure if it is on a motorcoach bus. would prefer to go with a small group if possible. anyone done the one the ship offers? Princess Cruises : Haleakala Crater . What is better for Maui, an island type tour or a snorkeling tour. Can't really make up our minds on this one.
For Honolulu we are going to do an island tour. My favorite so far is Oahu Private Island Tour - Best of Oahu's Famous Landmarks Island TourIt hits most of the hot spots we want to see and its $100 each which fits our budget
For Big Island we have already booked Big Island Volcano Tours and Excursions Hawaii. We paid $70. the similar tour from the ship is $150
Undecided for Kauai. Every tour seems expensive. We are considerint Paddle Kauai Jungle Streams, Kauai Kayaking & Canoeing | Viator.com or an island tour, if we can find a good rate. Anyone have recommendations for Kauai?

Trust me when I say the best way to visit the Hawaiian ports is to rent a car and do your own thing! Much cheaper, easier, quicker, alot less crowded, and you can do your own thing on your own time.

Check out my cruise review on our Hawaiian cruise to give you some ideas of what we did, where we went, what we saw, and how much we paid.

After having been there done that just a couple of months ago, if we were to go back there, we would do the exact same thing again. The only exception is the Road to Hana. While it was wonderful and we're glad we did it, if we were only going to be there for a day, we would choose not to do it and instead drive up to the crater like we did on the second day there.

But I would much rather pay around $45 a day to rent a car than pay $100 per person to do just one excursion. Plus, if you do your homework ahead of time and know where you want to go, your GPS can easily get you there.

Here's the link; Pride of America User Review | cruiselinefans.com

It's a two-part review, so you'll have to also read the second part of it as well.

Having seen all those tour buses and vans with their crowds of people, we were so glad we did it our way. With a car, we stopped at places a bus or big van could not stop, so we got to go to many more places and see more things than if we would have done excursions. For example, we went to one absolutely beautiful waterfall on Kauai that had no place for anything other than a car, so no excursions go there. When doing an excursion, you're on their timetable, stop where they want to stop, see what they want you to see, and eat where they want you to eat (if that's a part of the excursion), while keeping to their very strict time table.

Plus, we had all the room we needed, so we took our snorkeling gear with us to use when the opportunity presented itself. And we were able to stop and eat where we wanted, when we wanted, for as long as we wanted.

Let me know if you have any questions, but reserving a rental car ahead of time is, in my opinion and without a doubt, the only way to see the ports in Hawaii.

Pete

We did the Princess cruise to Hawaii twice -- in 2005 and last December (on the Golden).

That first cruise was our daughter's (then 8) first time there, but hubby's and mine third (land trips previously) so we tried to think of what would interest her too. We ended up doing three excursions, but booked through Princess, using some OBC we had. Sea Life Park on Oahu, a snorkeling trip off of Maui, a waterfalls tour of the northeast part of the Big Island. We beached it in Kauai.

That one and this last one hubby wasn't interested in renting a car -- he said he wanted to relax and let others do the driving. He also didn't want to do any excursions, but then we booked the cruise just weeks before sailing so we figured many excursions would be booked up.

I did have time to order some freebie brochures off of the tourism websites, and my girl (13 years old) went through them with post it notes for places she was interested in seeing. At least one of them (an astronomy observatory) was closed on the day we would be in Hilo, and the Bishop museum was closed on our Honolulu day. I did some research with some of our old guide books and more Internet research. We ended up using a variety of transportation -- buses, shuttles, taxis, walking, and even a limo which we shared with some others from our ship.

My review, which includes a detail of what we did, is in the review section as well as trip reports and also on my travel blog:

Holiday Aloha II

Of course, I'm not really a physical activity person (no ziplining and the like for me). And we were dealing with a teen.

We did play around with the the idea of renting a car. We have done the rental car thing the three times we have been to europe, but those were all trips where we were there for around 3 weeks each time and we had time to explore. With Hawaii, i really don't even see much of a savings price wise, not to mention the cost of gas and the time it takes to go get the rental, returning it back to the rental office and taking taxis to get the car and back to the cruise ship. And then we don't get a tour guide and we have to fugure it out on our own. Maybe if we were staying on one island for a week or two vacation i might see the logic in it, but when you are only on each island for a few hours, i would rather arrange a tour and have them ready and waiting for us when we get off of the ship.
We have gone ahead and booked Oahu Island Tour - Best of Oahu for $100 each.
I would still like some feed back on Princess Cruises : Haleakala Crater for $99
And still open for suggestions for Kauai.
I will definitely post pics and let you know how our choices turned out!

Originally Posted by GinaLondon

We did play around with the the idea of renting a car. We have done the rental car thing the three times we have been to europe, but those were all trips where we were there for around 3 weeks each time and we had time to explore. With Hawaii, i really don't even see much of a savings price wise, not to mention the cost of gas and the time it takes to go get the rental, returning it back to the rental office and taking taxis to get the car and back to the cruise ship. And then we don't get a tour guide and we have to fugure it out on our own. Maybe if we were staying on one island for a week or two vacation i might see the logic in it, but when you are only on each island for a few hours, i would rather arrange a tour and have them ready and waiting for us when we get off of the ship.
We have gone ahead and booked Oahu Island Tour - Best of Oahu for $100 each.
I would still like some feed back on Princess Cruises : Haleakala Crater for $99
And still open for suggestions for Kauai.
I will definitely post pics and let you know how our choices turned out!

You don't have to take taxis to get to the car rental counter or return - they all have free shuttles, with the exception of Kona. The Budget Car Rental counter is just across the street from where the tenders are. We never waited more than 10 minutes in any port for a shuttle and because we pre-rented ahead of time, our cars were always waiting for us when we got to the rental counter, so we always had a whole day available to explore instead of just a couple of hours via excursions. And since you're in each port for a minimum of 9 hours, it affords an opportunity to see more than just one or two places.

We took our GPS with us and it was great! We also got a couple of free tour books from AAA, so we did all our research ahead of time so we knew what to see and where to go. We programmed those into the GPS unit and it made life really easy. Wished I would have had that when we were in Europe!

And surprisingly, gas is not that much more expensive in Hawaii than it is here. That was a pleasant surprise to us as we expected it to be alot more expensive, but the highest we saw it was about 10 cents more a gallon than here in the DC area. Most of the time, it was only a few cents more.

But if you don't want to rent a car and prefer to spend alot more money on shore excursions, don't think that booking shore excursions through the cruise line is the only way to go. There are alot of wonderful independent companies (like Shore Trips) offering excursions often for less money. For example, we once did a shore excursion that Princess wanted $355 for the two of us and we did the exact same excursion independently for $155!

Sometimes they may be the same price, but almost always they are a whole lot less crowded. We've personally booked with them many times and have had hundreds booked with our clients and have never had any problems - they do a wonderful job and we much prefer them over Princess' excursions.

There are many other independent vendors out there that also do a great job. Personally, I'm just the type that likes to save money on excursions so I can do more of them.

But no matter what you decide, Hawaii is truly an awesome place to visit and I know you'll thoroughly love it.

Pete

Originally Posted by GinaLondon

We did play around with the the idea of renting a car. We have done the rental car thing the three times we have been to europe, but those were all trips where we were there for around 3 weeks each time and we had time to explore. With Hawaii, i really don't even see much of a savings price wise, not to mention the cost of gas and the time it takes to go get the rental, returning it back to the rental office and taking taxis to get the car and back to the cruise ship. And then we don't get a tour guide and we have to fugure it out on our own. Maybe if we were staying on one island for a week or two vacation i might see the logic in it, but when you are only on each island for a few hours, i would rather arrange a tour and have them ready and waiting for us when we get off of the ship.
We have gone ahead and booked Oahu Island Tour - Best of Oahu for $100 each.
I would still like some feed back on Princess Cruises : Haleakala Crater for $99
And still open for suggestions for Kauai.
I will definitely post pics and let you know how our choices turned out!

I can't comment on these tours, but the first time I was in Hawaii, I was on a Tauck tour (my college roomie decided to divorce her hubby so she asked me to take his place on this trip) which included going up to see the crater. If it's clear enough, you'll be able to see some of the other islands. If you have a problem with altitude, you may want to rethink this one as the top is very high up.

Originally Posted by cruisin' chick

I can't comment on these tours, but the first time I was in Hawaii, I was on a Tauck tour (my college roomie decided to divorce her hubby so she asked me to take his place on this trip) which included going up to see the crater. If it's clear enough, you'll be able to see some of the other islands. If you have a problem with altitude, you may want to rethink this one as the top is very high up.

Yep, at 10,000 feet it can be a magnificent view on a clear day, especially while watching the clouds go by below you. The colors in the crater are amazing. I have a couple of pictures that look surreal - almost like they are a painting and not a picture. You can see a live camera of the crater here; Institute for Astronomy - Mees Solar Observatory, Haleakala

It was really interesting to see the differences between Haleakala crater, which is active but dormant since 1790, and Kilauea, which is currently a very active volcano. Truly awesome places to visit.

We really appreciated having a rental car when we went to both these places, because we could pull over everywhere we wanted to take pictures and went to places the tours don't/can't go.

Pete

We are back from our cruise and had the best time! We met so many great people on our vacation and can't wait to start planning our next cruise, maybe Hawaii, maybe caribbean, but we are definitely going on a cruise in the spring! An update for the shore excurisons we booked, the 2 that really stood out are the volcanos tour we did for Hilo that we booked with Big Island Volcano Tours and Excursions Hawaii and the Kauai island tour that we booked at Kauai Island Tour Land and Riverboat. Both this tours were amazing and I give the two huge thumbs up!

Originally Posted by GinaLondon

We are back from our cruise and had the best time! We met so many great people on our vacation and can't wait to start planning our next cruise, maybe Hawaii, maybe caribbean, but we are definitely going on a cruise in the spring! An update for the shore excurisons we booked, the 2 that really stood out are the volcanos tour we did for Hilo that we booked with Big Island Volcano Tours and Excursions Hawaii and the Kauai island tour that we booked at Kauai Island Tour Land and Riverboat. Both this tours were amazing and I give the two huge thumbs up!

Kauai is my "happy place". It's simply my favorite place on the planet. I'm so glad you enjoyed it as much as I have in the past.

Please do add a cruise review when you can. We'd love to hear more about it. Welcome home!

Originally Posted by GinaLondon

We are back from our cruise and had the best time! We met so many great people on our vacation and can't wait to start planning our next cruise, maybe Hawaii, maybe caribbean, but we are definitely going on a cruise in the spring! An update for the shore excurisons we booked, the 2 that really stood out are the volcanos tour we did for Hilo that we booked with Big Island Volcano Tours and Excursions Hawaii and the Kauai island tour that we booked at Kauai Island Tour Land and Riverboat. Both this tours were amazing and I give the two huge thumbs up!

I second the welcome home. So glad you enjoyed it all