Niele da Kine

What about a cabin directly above the main stage? Depending on the show, it may be noisy? Those shows end fairly early, don't they? BB King is a bit further down, so hopefully not noise from there. We don't have a specific room yet, just a cabin class and they are all pretty much above the main stage. Well, it's still early yet, there's still time for the upgrade fairy to strike, but how concerned should we be?

I've always blamed this sort of thing on the Jones Act instead of Customs, but they could be cahoots for all I know. I was chatting with someone in town today about cruises, luggage, bringing things back and such and we got around to the topic of seashells. They seemed to think there may be an issue with Australia not letting folks take seashells away in their luggage if we left from an Australian airport? I'm sure there would be opportunities to buy shells here and there and it never occurred to me there may be a restriction about taking them in luggage home. I'd always thought the problem would just be sheer room, not regulations. Guess I could Google it, but anyone have any trouble with taking things out of an Australian airport?

True, but where would the fun be in that? Also, sometimes by chatting with folks, one finds new and different questions, too!

Yay on just signing up! I think it's gonna be a lovely cruise no matter where the laundry gets done. I hadn't thought about missing the port entirely! Guess we should just pack everything along to Seattle and start at the beginning. Wonder how little luggage is actually necessary on a two month long voyage? I keep adding things to my 'to pack' list. "Snorkel, fins and underwater camera" were yesterday's addition to the list.

Oh, I hadn't thought about not having gone to any foreign ports, although we will have sailed through international waters. So maybe we can. Yeah, you're right about how a lot of folks think Hawaii is a foreign port. We always try to buy stuff online from the mainland United States just to be told by the seller that they won't ship to a foreign country. Sigh! We don't actually live in Kona, but over on the other side of the island about an hour away. Which might make it more of a hassle than not to get any laundry done. We'd have to have someone come pick us up at the port and then an hour home, then several hours worth of doing laundry, then an hour back to the port. Hmm, it would work although it would be a lot of driving for our friends. This will be nine days into the cruise and it would be a lot more fun to see Kona with some other folks on the ship since things are new and interesting when seen with folks who haven't seen it before. Is it possible to have non-passengers visit the ship? It would be a lot of fun to be able to let our friends come onto the ship, but somehow I doubt that would be allowed. Pride of America is the ship that does the inter-island cruises so it shows up pretty frequently. It just circles the state and might pop down to Kiribati or somewhere for a 'foreign' port. Or maybe they got a dispensation or some other way around the Jones Act, I've not paid attention.

Hmm, that'd be about $357 worth of laundry for the cruise if we did the $7 per day. Guess we will just send in the occasional bag of laundry and do some in the cabin as well. So, I should buy some soap in Seattle before we get on the ship. Guess I'll get the clothespins then, too. I should make a list of all the little stuff to get before we get on the ship. Laundry soap, clothespins, suntan lotion, sunburn creme, etc, the basic little stuff that lives in the medicine cabinet that would be ferociously expensive to buy onboard. Some of our ports would have shops with that sort of things. On this itinerary, it looks like some of them won't. Kona is in the lee of the island and it's almost always calm on that side so it shouldn't be a bad tender port at all. It comes into a dock once it gets into Kona, right where they start the swimming part of the Ironman triathlon. So, should be easy enough to bring another suitcase. It would save on a checked bag from Hawaii to Seattle which runs about $50 these days, I think. For the Kona port, once you get off the tender, you're literally right in the middle of town and Kailua-Kona is the tourist town on the island. Should be a really easy port to just wander around and not have to have an excursion. Honolulu is the same way, although there the cruise ship is at a dock so it's even easier.

Are clothes pins available by asking the room steward or should we bring some? We're gonna be on a 60+ day cruise and not everything will be sent in the bag, although I'm sure some if not most of the laundry will be, but not quite everything. So what's the best way to hang what doesn't get put in the bag?

Hmm, they usually let us lug all kinds of souvenir stuff onboard at each port, so bringing an additional luggage bag would be about the same as bringing a pile of shopping, one would think? That way we could fly to Seattle with just carry on luggage and only have to pay for checked luggage from Sydney back home. Does Kona even have Customs? It's not a big port. Guess I should ask Holland about how much stuff - if any - we can take off the ship at each port. Not that I really want to zip home and do laundry, but it's nine days into a sixty some odd day cruise (we're adding a B2B after the 51 day cruise) so it would seem that laundry is gonna have to be figured out at some point. It's pretty expensive to have it done on the ship, isn't it?

Ratz on the $750 fine. It'd be lovely to have my friend on the sea days since there would be more appreciation for sea days than with my SO. Well, that won't work. There aren't any more passenger ships between the mainland and Hawaii. The old ones ran as passenger ships and not cruise ships, now most if not all passengers show up on airplanes. It would be nice if we had both. I'm hoping to not have to take all our luggage with us on the airline to the start of the voyage if we can pick up part of it in Kona. It would be the usual amount of luggage for a long voyage, just done in two parts instead of all at once. Well, if we forget anything, we can zip home and get it. We're an hour away from the port, but we can see anything on the island when we're home so we'd not need to do any excursions. Maybe drop off any souvenirs from Seattle while we were here to save having to transport them home via air later. It would be nine days into a 51 day voyage at that time. Hmm, it'd even be nice to take all the dirty laundry home and run it through the washer and dryer and then bring it back to the ship. Do they allow that, do you think?

We got a tile with a picture of the ship on it for going to the Mariner's luncheon. If you're a repeat HAL cruiser, you get invited to the luncheons. They also handed out pins with wild abandon at the team trivia, but we we were on a relocation cruise and they were heading to a new cruise region. We also take along a board game and or card game just in case nothing else interesting is going on. As well as lots of digital books in case there's nothing interesting to read on board. You can put the 'Libby' ap on your phone and that will let you log into your local library and download digital books from anywhere you can get a cell signal. They also go back to the library when they're due so no late charges even if the ship is at sea and out of cell phone range.

Ratz! I was hoping to have the ship bring our house sitter to us. But it is a foreign flagged ship hauling a passenger between two U.S. ports so the PVSA would howl. Wonder if just paying the PVSA fine would be less than airfare? Although, we'd still have to get HAL to allow the passenger substitution in the first place. Would a delayed boarding in Hawaii be a problem? Possibly HAL wouldn't even allow that, tho. Well, I like sea days so starting in Seattle is good with me. Guess we will just start at the beginning and do the sea days down to our home port. Can we bring additional luggage on board mid-cruise? That wouldn't be a problem, would it?

Not sure if the rules would be different for different cruise lines, so I thought perhaps the HAL folks would know since we've booked a HAL ship. Is it possible for a passenger to go for a portion of a cruise and then be replaced by someone else part way through the cruise? We've booked a relocation cruise and it goes past our home port early on in the cruise. Our house sitter is near the starting port. Would it be possible for our house sitter to take the early portion of the cruise and then get replaced by the person the cabin was booked for when reaching the port near to us? It would still be the same amount of people in the cabin, it would just be different people than who started the cruise.