Aloha~! A Photo Trip Report of the POA - 10/11/14

[Miicah]

We also wanted to walk across the canal (not sure if it was a proper name or anything). Our driver from the airport was telling us how it was man-made to help direct the rainfall back towards the ocean, and how it separated Honolulu on the left from Waikiki on the right.

 

 

 

 

The first hotel we saw after crossing was the Hawaii Prince Hotel, and I liked how the elevators were outside instead of in.

 

 

[Miicah]

We took the bus from a stop nearby, but we missed our stop and got off at the next one, haha. We were able to see our building from another angle, though!

 

 

The Trump Hotel was situated behind us (or in front? Depending on how you look at it). I was surprised it didn’t grab any beach real estate.

 

 

The lobby of our building had a nice display of the Islands of Hawaii.

 

 

For dinner we also “ate in”, haha.

 

 

And that’s it for this day! Things really start happening beginning tomorrow, so stay tuned!

[pizzalady1]

Your condo looks great and I am enjoying your review. Can you direct me to the listing for this condo? Thanks.

[herdingdogmom]

Enjoying your review and photos. We stayed at a hotel near by the week you were on the cruise. We really like that neighborhood in Waikiki. We had two days of heavy rain with Tropical Storm Ana, but On Oahu, it wasn't as damaging as it could have been. We saw on the news that your POA cruise came back to Honolulu Friday night ahead of the storm. Did they do the Napali coast sail by in the morning though? Looking forward to hearing more about your entire trip.

Edited December 8, 2014 by herdingdogmom

[Loucat]

What a great review! Your pictures are wonderful and so is your description of your trip. Impressive for someone new to cruising. It will be interesting to see your review of the ship and ports.

Will be back for more of your review. Thanks so much for sharing your trip.

[MOcruiserman]

We plan to take the POA in 2016 so I'm following your posts closely.

 

Great pics, by the way.

[RareBird]

I'll be back for more too! Planning on Hawaii one day.

 

You have an easy laid back writing style and great pictures! :)

[Miicah]

Your condo looks great and I am enjoying your review. Can you direct me to the listing for this condo? Thanks.

 

Thank you! The condo was awesome. There isn't a listing for the actual condo we stayed in-- they mention it in this listing on the third floor that they have. I'm sure if you contact them (Kai should be the one who responds) and inquire about the 11th floor condo he'll be able to help.

 

Enjoying your review and photos. We stayed at a hotel near by the week you were on the cruise. We really like that neighborhood in Waikiki. We had two days of heavy rain with Tropical Storm Ana, but On Oahu, it wasn't as damaging as it could have been. We saw on the news that your POA cruise came back to Honolulu Friday night ahead of the storm. Did they do the Napali coast sail by in the morning though? Looking forward to hearing more about your entire trip.

 

I'm glad you're enjoying it! Thank you for reading! It really was a nice neighbourhood, right? I'm glad Ana didn't do a lot of damage. We were worried flights would've been cancelled and it was all dark and dreary when we docked on Friday in Honolulu. We were originally told on Thursday that we weren't going to do the Na Pali Coast, but by Friday the coast guard apparently gave the okay as we did end up doing it. I'm glad we did, it was a beautiful sight. I hope you enjoy what's to come! ^^

[Miicah]

What a great review! Your pictures are wonderful and so is your description of your trip. Impressive for someone new to cruising. It will be interesting to see your review of the ship and ports.

Will be back for more of your review. Thanks so much for sharing your trip.

 

Thank you so much for reading! I'm glad you're liking it =) I did read a whole bunch of different reviews of all sorts of ships and cruiselines so I guess I sort of just took what I liked from them maybe? I also personally just like to write so maybe that's it? Haha, not sure but I'm glad I'm not coming off as too much of a newbie! Hope you continue to enjoy my review!

 

We plan to take the POA in 2016 so I'm following your posts closely.

 

Great pics, by the way.

 

Oh wow, you're going to have a fabulous trip! Hawaii is just gorgeous. Pictures can't do it any justice. Thank you for reading!

 

I'll be back for more too! Planning on Hawaii one day.

 

You have an easy laid back writing style and great pictures! :)

 

I hope your 'one day' comes soon! It'll be great ^__^ Thank you so much for your kind words!

[Miicah]

Day 4 – 10/07/14 – Polynesian Cultural Center

 

You can’t go to Hawaii and not go to at least one luau, and after a ton of research I decided to go with the one at the PCC. I think some don’t like the one at the PCC because they don’t offer alcohol because it’s run by Mormons, but neither my mom nor I are huge drinkers so it wasn’t a deal breaker for us. What really sold me was the fact that their show was by reserved seating. With so many people in one place, I was sure it was going to be a nightmare trying to fight for a good seat at another luau, and I loved the order and organization reserved seating gave, so I went with that. It was also nice that they had tours and activities during the day.

 

We ate in again for breakfast, but it was more out of time constraint than anything else. Our pick up from the PCC was at 10AM from the Trump Hotel (it was nice waiting there and pretending we were actually staying there, haha), and I didn’t think we really had the time to go out, wait to be seated, wait for food, etc.

 

 

We were picked up by a small minibus, and since we were the last ones to be picked up we headed straight for the PCC.

 

I just want to point out that our driver was really pushy about tips. You weren’t allowed to tip the employees at the center because the majority of them are students of the connected Mormon university and they had their own pretty neat scholarship thing going on. Apparently for every year they stay on the island instead of returning home, the school would pay 25% of their tuition each year—so after four years, they’d be going to school for free. Pretty sweet set up if you could endure the homesickness.

 

Anyway, our driver was telling us how bus driver’s like himself weren’t a part of that tipping exclusion, and he was very frequent about it (and not at all subtle) that it was just a huge turn off. He also said that the military was the island’s (or the state’s?) largest industry with tourism taking second, and I think if anything, tourism would take top spot. Maybe he got his information mixed up, who knows.

 

Some of the scenery that was passed by on our way to the PCC. Looks like it was election season in the USA as it was back in Toronto.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2014 by Miicah

[Miicah]

 

 

I think our driver mentioned that this area was featured in Jurassic Park.

 

 

This is Ka’a’awa Elementary School, which was featured in the movie “Blue Crush”.

 

 

I didn’t get any pictures of this on this day (rather on another day during a different tour), but on the road leading up to the PCC, there were a lot of signs protesting the building of a new hotel near the PCC (re: 'Keep the country, country. No development'). I can’t remember if it was Hilton or something, but the locals were obviously upset that their neighbourhood was going to be overrun by tourists and whatnot (plus losing their spectacular view, among other things).

 

 

[Miicah]

If you do end up going to the PCC for the day activities, I strongly urge you either do the tour on your own or upgrade right to Super Ambassador. I originally booked us the Ambassador package and regretted not upgrading one more level. Although the PCC and I have different definitions of what a “small group” is, it just felt really disorganized and slow to start. There were a lot of us Ambassadors waiting to be broken up into “smaller” groups and a bunch of student tour guides but they were more interested in conversing with each other than getting the show on the road. My mom and I were just not impressed.

 

 

Wahine is Women in Hawaiian, I believe! Our bus driver had made a funny and told us to try and remember it because if we tried to go by the figure wearing the dress we might end up in the men’s bathroom because they also wore skirts, haha I thought that was cute.

 

 

Lunch is not provided in the day tour, but you could purchase some if you so choose, which we did. I later realized where we had lunch was also where we had dinner later, though there are three different areas you can have dinner depending on what you chose and whatnot. I was not a fan of their fruit punch at all.

 

 

 

[Miicah]

The day mostly consisted of village tours of the main islands that make up Polynesia and watching their cultural presentation.

 

 

Tonga’s consisted of a drum performance, where three men from the audience are picked to participate. Thanks to his lovely wife, one of the guys in our tour group was up there, haha. The South Korean man was especially funny!

 

 

 

 

[Miicah]

Tahiti’s presentation included the cooking of some coconut bread (in the ground!), which we got to taste through the magic of television…err, previous preparation. We wouldn’t have had the time if we waited for it bake live haha It was pretty good.

 

 

 

 

In Hawaii’s village I learned that not only have the majority of people have been pronouncing ‘Honolulu’ and ‘ukulele’ wrong, but that the fast hip dance that Hollywood presents as Hawaii hula is actually Tahitian. It was cool seeing true Hawaiian hula dance and I really liked how they played it first in Hawaiian and then in English, so you can see how the hand and body motions fit with the words they’re singing.

 

 

 

Picture with royalty!

 

Edited December 9, 2014 by Miicah

[Miicah]

At 2:30PM we watched the Canoe Pageant. Those students who push the canoe’s around must really have some muscle (or built some up, haha).

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PathfinderEss]

Beautiful photo's, really enjoying your report.

[Miicah]

 

 

 

Some videos I took of the procession~

 

[YOUTUBE]qJfUiXsq0yo[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]ywV9e_GcK1g[/YOUTUBE]

 

[YOUTUBE]tc0HlRlAP24[/YOUTUBE]

 

You can really see the difference between true Hawaiian hula and the Tahitian dance that Hollywood says is Hawaiian.

[Miicah]

Beautiful photo's, really enjoying your report.

 

Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it so far ^_^

[Miicah]

 

I believe these are what the hard-shelled leis are made of.

 

 

 

 

 

[Miicah]

 

Samoa was by far my favourite village presentation. The guy was hilarious! I was dying of laughter. I wished I recorded his entire presentation, but I only got the coconut tree climber because I thought it’d be my only opportunity in Hawaii to see one (though that was later proven wrong)!

 

 

 

 

[YOUTUBE]pUBueSJDXq8[/YOUTUBE]

[Miicah]

 

 

 

 

After that it was time to eat dinner! I’m not sure if we missed the watching the whole pig in the ground presentation or if they never showed it but that was a bummer. That was definitely one of the highlights of going to a luau, seeing that!

 

 

[Miicah]

We picked the traditional Hawaii Luau dinner over the Prime Rib option, because, well, I could eat the latter anytime. Where else could I get some Hawaiian food but in Hawaii?

 

 

This is the pig that was cooked in the ground. It was pretty tasty!

 

 

Afterwards we were on our own with some time to kill until the Ha: Breath of life show, so we went to the theatre. I want to say it was 4D but I don’t think we had the glasses…there were mist effects though so I guess it was 3D in a way?

 

 

After that we went to the backstage tour. Since you’re not allowed to take pictures/video of the show, this was the only picture I was able to get of the stage. We were in the third row in the center! Pretty nice seats and an even more awesome show! It was a nice story, and the fire part definitely had to be my favourite.

 

 

This was also the night of the blood moon, but this was all I was able to get of the moon before we left the PCC. Although we got back to the condo in time for the real blood moon, I was just too tired to stay up any longer to take any pictures of it sadly.

 

 

 

And that’s the end of this day! More to come!

[Lorey2007]

This is wonderful keep it coming!:) How am I ever going to wait until the end of April.:(

[welly world]

I am loving every minute of your review! We are going in July and that can't get here soon enough! I am glad that you mentioned upgrading for the super ambassador tour. We were debating which one to take but you just helped me decide! Thank you!;)

[Suite Dweller]

Really nice review and great photos. Can I ask, what camera do you use?