My wife and I were on the Wind for the 11-day Hawaii trip in early October of this year. We had a great time and were very glad we decided to take the trip. Some things that might be helpful:
- we booked out the trip, including air transportation, through Expedia just a few weeks before it left. The main problem with this was that we had zero flexibility in our arrival/departure times or dates, so we ended up spending almost zero time in Honolulu (I had wanted to do some sightseeing there).
- My wife thought the two days at sea (each way) getting to and returning from Kiribati were rather boring and uneventful, but I spent the time catching up on some reading and was glad to have some time off from the busy schedule we had on the rest of the cruise. Those four days at sea would have been a bit better if we had a balcony I guess (we had a picture window room). Kiribati itself was interesting to walk around (it's a very small atoll, so you can cover quite a bit of it in a short amount of time), but it was strange to see the native people staring at us wide-eyed and we wondered what they did when a cruise ship wasn't in docked there (the atoll has no electricity, phones, or vehicles, from what I could tell).
- we did shore excursions in Kona (rainforest hike...beautiful), Hilo (volcano hike...amazing), Maui day 1 (a morning boat ride along the coast). For Maui day 2 and Kauai we rented a car, and were very glad we did (we covered a lot of ground driving around, and got to explore some places that seemed interesting).
- our favorite island was Kauai, where we saw a couple of waterfalls, some beautiful canyons, and the remote beach at the end of the road on the west side (we were glad we had a SUV-type rental because the unpaved road was a bit rough). The beach was probably the nicest I've ever seen (huge, wide, beautiful water and waves, and it ends at a section of rocks with very high and dramatic cliffs).
- the food was better than we expected, compared to previous trips on the NCL Sky (food was just ok there) to Alaska (June 2000) and the Royal Carrubean Explorer of the Seas (food was just awful) in the Carribean (April 2001). I would recommend trying The Bistro once (it's a $10 extra charge as I recall, but I thought it was well worth it).
- the entertainment was not that great (probably a bit worse than the two cruises listed above).
- the ship itself is a bit old (especially compared to the Explorer of the Seas), but our room was just fine and the dining areas were great.
|
Linear Mode
