Pride of Aloha excursion help please :-)

[jebridan]

My mom and stepdad will be on the POA March 13th to 20th. She has asked me to find out about shore excursions for her because I told her that I know a message board where the people are great and full of information! ;-) I personally have never been to Hawaii but we did download Norwegians shore excursion list.

 

They are in their early 60's and don't do snorkeling or scuba diving or anything like that. They don't want a lot of walking and would be interested in historical and sight-seeing type tours. They are up for an adventure as long as it is "soft adventure". They definitely like to beach it and relax too. It appears from the list of tours that they should plan on seeing some volcanoes from a helicopter in at least one port. Which one is best? Any help you can give us to narrow down the 9 page list of tours offered by Norwegian would be appreciated! Also, they definitely want to do the tours through the ship. We know you pay more but they want the security of knowing they are on a ship-sponsored tour and don't want to book on their own. Thanks so much!!!

[drfrog]

We will be on the POA on the 3/6/ cruise. We received our documents a couple of weeks ago. A book describing all of the excursions offered on this cruise was included with our documents. It has a page of tour symbols (age, weight, activity level, etc.) which are then applied to each tour and its description. I found it very helpful. I also found the shore excursion personnel to be very helpful when I called them. Hope this helps.

[beachgal]

drfrog,

There's a group of 7 of us going on POA on March 6, too. If you're interested in going to Cruise Critic get together, check out the thread under Roll Call!

[jkrislc]

They don't want a lot of walking and would be interested in historical and sight-seeing type tours. They are up for an adventure as long as it is "soft adventure". They definitely like to beach it and relax too. It appears from the list of tours that they should plan on seeing some volcanoes from a helicopter in at least one port.

 

I posted a reply yesterday, but noticed that it never made it. Thus, I'll try again. If they want to do a helicopter tour, the island to do it on is Kauai according to what I heard on the ship. There simply a lot more to see in Kauai in terms of beauty than on Hawaii. I would highly recommend the Volcanoes National Park Tour through NCL. It was a very good value as were most of the tours in my opinion.

 

I'd also recommend the Road to Hana. It's a long tour (9 hours), but beautiful and includes a sit down lunch. The sight seeing is stunning, there's not a lot of walking, and a lot a stops are made to get out and take pictures and/or stretch one's legs. They could also stay on the minibus if they didn't want to get off as well.

 

While we did the Fern Grotto, I felt the tour was very over-priced. It actually cost more than the VNP tour, which was longer and much better.

 

I discuss all of the tours my wife and I did in my review (http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=128465). Except for Diamond Head and snorkeling, I wouldn't say any of them were strenuous.

 

As for beaches, there is one within walking distance from the pier in Kauai (you can hop a free shuttle to the strip mall, too, to essentially eliminate the walk) and right at the dock in Kona.

[bluedevil72]

We were on the POA in July and the first day on Kauai we did the Waimea Canyon and Fern Grotto excursion. It is a long excursion but we did see many things that are not listed in the tour and the guide on our bus was excellent. The walk up to the grotto is a little uphill but my MIL who is over 70 made it just fine. We also made a stop near Poipu beach which had a water spout nearby that was neat to see. A buffet lunch is included in the price.

Our first day on the Big Hawaii, out of Hilo, we did the VNP and Rainbow Falls tour. It is also rather long, but again our tourguide was excellent and very knowledgable. We also stopped at Nani Mau Botanical Gardens and the Mauna Loa Macadamian Nut Factory. The Thurston Lava Tube at the VNP was worth seeing and it is located in a beautiful rain forest. Lunch was part of the price and we ate at a restaurant at VNP (the Firehouse maybe, or something like that). It was really good.

We took a bus over to Lahaina on our first day on Maui. It is a great place to just walk around, shop, eat, sit by the ocean, or do nothing. We ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise where we got a good old-fashioned greasy cheesburger and onion rings. The Banyon tree in the middle of town is something to see.