We are on that too . . . please consider joining and posting to: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
Thanks!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.
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.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.
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.Thanks!
We want to do the volcano national park in Hilo as well. What private tour company did you use?