Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Tonya Goes to Hawaii - The Planning Continues

Where are we going to eat? What do we want to see and do? Should we rent a car? What is the ship like? Hawaii might be the 50th state but it is almost like going to a foreign country. So much planning - so little time!!

As the planning continues, I decided a good place to start would be cruisecritic.com in order to read some reviews of the ship and the itinerary. The reviews for Norwegian Cruise Line's Pride of America are all over the board. Some people thought it was the best cruise they have ever been on and others thought it was the worst. Some loved the food yet others thought it was inedible. But the one thing everyone agreed about were that the cabins on the Pride of America were tinyyyyy. (EGADS!!!) All this resulted in me managing my expectations but hoping for the best.


The unique thing about the Pride of America is that is registered as an American ship. Apparently this is the only cruise ship that is registered in the United States. With a US registry, the crew must either be US citizens or have green cards which decreases the work force considerably. It also means that everyone makes at least minimum wage and they all speak English (95% as a first language). Some reviewers also suggested that the US work eligibility requirement resulted in a less than stellar service (which I found to be insulting to Americans but that is just me.)

Have you ever noticed that when you are shopping for a new car you suddenly notice the car you are considering all over the place? Well, the same phenomenon happens when you are planning a trip to Hawaii!!! Every time I turned on the television, the food channel was mentioning food from Hawaii. So, I started making notes. One restaurant we wanted to try was Hank's Haute Dogs. I began to follow Hank's on Twitter. Hank happened to retweet a few things that led me to other things. All this following of tweets led me to find thepigandthelady.com and streetgrindz.com. You'll hear about those places in later entries. ;)

(I also found a lot of good ideas for activities and shopping on livingsocial.com.)

One thing that was settled early on in our planning was that Dad was not going to be taking a ride in a helicopter. He was adamant about it. Apparently he had enough of helicopters when he was in the Army and was having nothing to do with them ever again. He still wanted to see the lava flows though. Hmmmmm. That creates a little bit of a problem. Stay tuned for how this turns out.

After reading more reviews on cruisecritic.com it became apparent that a rental car was going to be essential. Most people recommended Thrifty and to become a Blue Chip Member. So, I signed up and began making reservations. I booked a car for pre and post cruise and in almost every port we stopped in. My theory being I could always cancel the reservation but it was better to have a ressie than not have one. I did some comparison of rental pricing and Thrifty was competitive.

My biggest shock was the price of the car rental of the pre and post cruise reservations. Pre-cruise the car cost $45/day (12/15-12/17) but post-cruise (12/24-12/27) the car cost $179/day. What the tarnation?!?!?! Welcome to Hawaii!!! We actually saw a newspaper headline while were were there that said that rental car prices increase an average of 197% over the Christmas holiday. (It seems that the two busiest weeks in Hawaii are over Christmas and New Years.)

I kept getting emails from Norwegian Cruise Line about booking excursions but I was reluctant to book them. Many reviewers suggested that you could do any excursion that the ship offered on your own and save a lot of money. Sounds like a plan!!! I was also reluctant to make too many plans in advance because I wasn't sure what my father would be able to do (he has a few mobility issues) or want to do and I didn't want to over tax my mother either. We had talked about doing the sunrise over the crater and ride the bike down the mountain tour but that sounds better in theory than in reality. (There is the whole having to be there before sunrise thing.) Soooo, no excursions were booked.

Other than trying to figure out what to pack, most of the planning for Carol's Hawaiian Adventure are complete. (I named the trip Carol's Hawaiian Adventure since this trip was all started because of mom.)

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