Planning for the trip is progressing. We have secured rental cars in all four of the Hawaiian Island Port of Calls, some through multiple rental companies at the same port until we can get a better understanding of the pros and cons of the various rental companies. Some have longer lines (according to past reviews), some have shuttle buses to and from the port, and of course, there is price. There are a couple of Hawaiian Travel sites that have links to the rental car agencies, sort of like a rental car broker. These sites actually have the most information on the shuttle availability at the port for the various companies, even providing local phone numbers to verify shuttle services. For most of these ports, the rental car agencies are located at the nearby airports, often a 10-15 min. shuttle ride from the pier.
We have begin to do some of the research on each Hawaiian port to determine what areas we want to see and visit, and to try and determine how much we have time to do. It is a balance of riding in the car to get places, and the time available to actually walk around and see the sights once you get there. We always have to weigh the uncertainty of getting back to the ship in time. Most of the four ports in Hawaii have at least 10 hours of available time, but some, like Oahu, are longer duration. We are in Oahu until about 11:00 PM. However, the total time in port we are using for planning assumes the ship arrives on time, lets passengers off on time, there is minimal time to secure a rental car, and we don’t have to wait a long time on tenders. Luckily, the only port in Hawaii that requires a tender is Maui.
We are also trying to figure out the locations of major grocery stores, we always seem to need a few things, and generally pick up some sodas and wine to take back to the ship. Although we hear that the prices in Hawaii are high, they will most likely still be lower than any of the other ports we visit after Hawaii, since they are even more remote, and we face the devalued dollar in French Polynesia, a double hit. We will have to use the first Hawaiian port, Maui, as a test port on the ability to bring “adult refreshments” back onto the ship through the security. If it is like the Transatlantic cruises we have done on Princess, there will be no problems, we were able to bring anything on board during those cruises. Our only difficulties in this area were on a transatlantic outing with Royal Caribbean, where we had to use the “token” bottle exchange to smuggle our goods on board. They would not even allow us to bring wine on board at ports, which is not usually a problem on Princess. We would purchase the cheapest bottle we could find, usually about 1 Euro, then give it to alcoholic beverage registering crew member after being pointed out by the security. Since there was never any communication between the security and the crew member taking the bottles, we only had to produce one for them to confiscate, the “token” bottle. We would then take the remaining bottles with us to the room. We did not even collect the token collection at the end of the cruise, it was cheap and nothing we wanted to have anyway.
We have changed our cabin one more time, this time upgrading to a Category BB Cabin on the Caribe Deck. It is almost next to the even higher priced Category BA Cabins on Caribe. These are nicer, they have the larger balconies, and we figured it was worth the extra $200 total increase in price. Since these were not available when we made the initial reservation, we had been looking on the Princess website for several weeks hoping one would come open. When one did become available, we went ahead with the upgrade. More than likely, this will be the last upgrade we do, we don’t see any more cost benefit in being a few cabins closer to the middle of the ship from where we are now.
Based on my rough calculations, we have until about June 24 before the ship’s excursions become available, based on the standard 120 days prior to departure opening time frame from Princess. We still do not have a firm plan for either Samoa, or American Samoa, we may look into doing a ship’s excursion at these two ports. We have looked at a couple of local tour companies at these ports also.
That about sums up the recent activities. We will be concentrating on firming up the plans for the Hawaii Ports, looking at suggestions on the internet, and reviewing our guide books for these islands.