Cruising Goddess

I find it easier to review my experience on the ship in one entry, then breaking it up by day. So I’m going to go ahead and review Pride of America now…

Decisions, Decisions
“Let’s go island hop! Hawaii! Let’s go island hop on Maui!” Does anyone else remember these Norwegian Cruise Line commercials from about 5-6 years ago? Well, I do!! When we decided to cruise Hawaii, picking Norwegian Cruise Line’s Pride of America was an easy choice. It is the ONLY ship that sails roundtrip from Hawaii through the Hawaiian islands. All other cruises leave from the U.S. mainland and must stop at one international port, making the cruise 10 or 14 days long with 5-8 sea days! Vacation time is precious to us and we’d rather spend vacation days seeing the islands than at sea. So if you’re looking for a cruise that starts/ends in Hawaii with minimal sea days, you really have no other choice than Pride of America.

I absolutely agree when people say to book as early as you can. We only saw the cruise price go up and up for our sailing! I booked my cruise for November in January and during the course of those 11 months of planning, I read a lot of reviews about how poor the service was on Pride of America due to the American staff, how the food was horrible, and basically think of POA as a floating hotel, not a cruise. I was worried about what I read and kept my expectations low but I’m happy to report it wasn’t too bad.

Pride of America docked in Kahului, Maui

Embarkation/Disembarkation
As I mentioned in my Day 4 post, check-in was a breeze around 11:30 am on Embarkation Day. We had no problems finding a porter to help us with our bags. Security is tight at the port. We have to show our ID’s and cruise docs twice and go through X-ray screening before reaching the check-in area. While we didn’t stay in the waiting area, NCL provided water, entertainment, and chairs. There was also a small table selling leis and other Hawaiian souvenirs. When we came back from sightseeing around 4 pm, we had to show our ID and cruise card and we had to go through the X-ray again. Otherwise, we walked right on to the ship. Along with our suitcases, we also checked in a tote bag with 2 gallons of bottled water and a 6-pack of Coke. We received the bag with our other suitcases with no problems.

Disembarkation was also a breeze. The Disembarkation Talk was held on evening we left Kona at 5:15 pm. We did not attend but we happened to go to Deck 5 right before the talk was over and a table with all of the Disembarkation Luggage Tags were out in the Capitol Atrium. There was a display that showed our choice for disembarkation time beginning with express walk-off to 9 am. Each time had a corresponding colored luggage tag. We quickly grabbed the last possible time and I would recommend that you get your luggage tags early. The latest times were already all gone by the next day! We put 4 suitcases outside the night before Disembarkation and they were all waiting for us when we got off Pride of America!

Disembarkation has not always been this easy for us. On our Alaska cruise, someone accidentally took our suitcase, instead of their own. We now put bright yellow luggage straps on all of our bags as well as luggage stickers so that they will be more easy to distinguish from other suitcases.

Room & Housekeeping

We booked a BD balcony for the price of a BH when NCL was offering a 4-category upgrade sale. Speaking of balconies, everyone wants to know (as I did) if they should book a port or starboard balcony. Here’s the info you need to know to make a decision…

• Maui: The port side faces the ocean and starboard side faces West Maui.
• Hilo: Both sides face land. The port side faces the pier and south side of the island. Starboard side faces the north coast of the island.
• Kilauea volcano sailby will be around 9:45 pm after leaving Hilo and will be viewable from the starboard side only.
• Kona: The ship tenders and while anchored, it rotates so both sides face land or sea at some point.
• Kauai: Port side faces the port area and the town of Lihue. The starboard side faces the southern hill and open water.
• The Napali Coast Sailby occurs around 5 pm after leaving Kauai. It will be viewable from port side first and then ship turns around for starboard.

I originally booked a port-side room but switched to cabin #9056 on the starboard side after reading these tips on Cruise Critic. Our room was on Deck 9 near the Forward elevators.

Having seen photos and reviews of POA balcony rooms, I expected the room to be small and it was. This was our 5th cruise and we have always had balcony rooms. This was the smallest one we’ve ever had. There was just barely enough room to walk through between the bed and the wall it faces. The desk was small and molded to a set of drawers that held up the fridge and TV, which was a small CRT television (not a flat screen TV as we’ve started to see on other ships). The closet was also smaller than we have seen but there were many shelves inside of it too. That being said, we had plenty of room to unpack all 4 of our suitcases into the room. NCL did a great job in squeezing storage space everywhere in the room. There is even a set of small shelves inside the bathroom behind the mirror. The bathroom was typical size. The shower used a shower curtain, where I prefer sliding doors, but it didn’t attack me, like the curtain did on Island Princess. It was also not so teeny tiny that I had to turn the water off to soap and shampoo, like I did on Island Princess. The bed was comfortable but they don’t use fitted sheets so a few nights, the sheets got bunched up after we slept in them. Our stateroom attendant took care of it every morning but I hate feeling the sheets bunch up around my feet while I’m sleeping. The balcony was typical size as well. One thing I loved about the rooms on this ship was the little wheel on the front of the door that told the stateroom attendant when you were ready for the room to be made up, turndown service, or do not disturb! Very cleaver and you don’t have to worry about losing that little door hang you usually find elsewhere.

While the room is small, the space is adequate for 2 adults. I’m not sure how I’d feel about having additional adults or even kids sharing the room though. It may be a very tight squeeze.

Our cabin #9056 with my door decorations

Balcony Cabin #9056

Balcony Cabin #9056

+ See more photos of the room

Our room was a connecting stateroom. The connecting door is not great at keeping out noise and I was woken up a couple of times by our connecting neighbors’ TV and phone calls. (Our neighbor’s airline lost their luggage. Yes, I found that out by listening from my room while trying to sleep!) I would highly recommend that you avoid getting a connecting room, unless you need it.

The room was very clean when we entered it but there were some maintenance issues: 1 of the major ceiling lights flickered off and on, 1 smaller light over the couch was burned out, and the 2 drawers under the fridge wouldn’t open. We only found 1 robe in our closet and needed ice so we called housekeeping about all of these issues. When we came back from dinner, the robe and ice we requested were in our room. The housekeeping staff had to pass along the maintenance issues to fix. The flickering light was driving us crazy because it automatically turned on with the main room lights and the flickering gave us a headache. Luckily, that was fixed the next day while we were in Maui. The drawers were fixed on the 4th day while we were in Hilo. The smaller light was never fixed and we didn’t follow up because we didn’t really need it. These maintenance issues were a really downer though. It’s not how you want to start a cruise but other than that, we didn’t have any other issues with the room.

Our room attendant, Josephine, was wonderful! When room service brought us ice the first night, Chris asked if the room attendant will fill the ice bucket at turndown because we like to drink something before we go to bed and they said it was uncommon for them to do that so if we needed ice in the evening to just call room service. However, we met Josephine the first morning onboard and asked her to refill our ice at turndown. She always refilled for the rest of the cruise. We tipped her $3 every morning (in addition to the auto-tip) and we got wonderful service. (The first morning, she actually didn’t take the money we left her and when we saw her that night, we told her it was for her and she needs to take it! She thanked us profusely.) She always replaced any towels we left on the floor during room clean-up or turndown service. She was very sweet, did towel animals, always got us anything we asked for, but we didn’t have to ask for much because she always did her job well.

Elephant Towel Animal

NCL provides hand soap, shower gel and shampoo in dispensers that are mounted to the wall, so you can’t take them home. But one pretty pathetic nickel-and-diming by NCL is that if you want conditioner, you have to buy it from the shops downstairs! Never seen this on any other cruise line. It really doesn’t effect me since I bring my own shampoo and conditioner but it’s pretty sad. No chocolates at turndown, like Princess and Disney Cruise Line, either.

Food

We had breakfast in the Aloha Cafe buffet every morning, except for Disembarkation Day. This is my 5th cruise and 4th cruise line I’ve sailed. Every ship I’ve ever been on, when you walk into the buffet, the food and the line is right in front of the entrance. When you walk into Aloha Cafe, you see a bunch of tables. I was confused for about 30 seconds. Where the heck is the food? You have to turn left, walk past the tables, and then you’ll see the food. That immediately put me off. No one wants to get breakfast in the morning half awake and be confused about where the food is. The buffet was very crowded every morning and, as the week went on, it seemed to get busier. Each morning, we had to go further back into Aloha Cafe to find seats but we were always able to find a seat. The food was your standard breakfast fare and it didn’t change from day to day. I liked the breakfast buffet on Island Princess a lot better because it offered more options, varied dishes each day, and just seemed more organized. This was also the first cruise I ever sailed where they didn’t have corned beef hash!! I look forward to eating corned beef hash every morning when I cruise and couldn’t do it on this one! Well, they had something they called corned beef has but it wasn’t recognizable to me and tasted horrible. Lastly, I was not crazy about the decor and the plastic seats. It just reminded me of a dirty, old diner. That all being said, the buffet was adequate and for the most part, the food was good.

As others reported, there is a station with sandwich meats, mayo, mustard, tomatoes, cheese, and onion. You just have to snag some bread from the toast station, bring your own baggies, and you’ve got lunch for the day! We packed sandwiches on the day we were in Hilo and it worked out really well.

We did not have lunch on the ship during the cruise. For dinner, we ate at the Skyline Dining Room every night, except Dress Up Or Not Night, which we spent at Liberty. You are allowed to wear shorts to the Skyline Dining Room. No shorts are allowed in Liberty Dining Room so we found ourselves in Skyline every night because Chris didn’t want to wear pants. =) I wore sundresses every night. We were happy with the food in the main dining rooms and didn’t feel the need to go any of the specialty restaurants. We did spend the 2 overnight dinners (Maui and Kauai) at port though so we really only had dinner onboard 5 times. We ordered an appetizer, soup/salad, entree, and dessert every night. On Lobster Night, they only served half a tail with fish. Our server said we could order another one after finishing the first one, which we both did, so we walked away with our whole lobster tail. The half tail thing was pretty disappointing for us. We’ve never been served half a lobster tail on any other cruise line on Lobster Night. On Princess a few months before, we got a whole lobster tail with shrimp, none of this half tail and fish crap! It seemed like the seafood entrees were a bit on the small side too.

Day 4 Dinner – Scallops

Lobster Night

On “Dress Up or Not Night”, I wore a short dress and Chris wore an aloha shirt with slacks. We did not see many people who were dressed very formally at all. Mostly, resort wear or not dressed up at all. It was nice not having to worry about bringing formal clothes on the trip. If this was a cruise with more sea days, I probably would have missed having a Formal Night though. For this cruise, I didn’t miss it.

Dress Up or Not Night

The iced tea, which is my drink of choice, was as horrible as I read on the Cruise Critic NCL Forum. It was very, very bitter. Luckily, our travel agent gave us a bottle of wine as a gift and we also brought our own Coke, so we drank those. No servers gave us a hard time about bringing our own Coke either and were glad to bring us glasses with ice to drink it.

The service in the dining rooms was good. Just like any “anytime dining” program on other ships, sometimes you get decent servers and other times you get excellent servers. The first night, we had our worst server. She just seemed very grouchy. Not rude but just not friendly. She was the worst so it really wasn’t that bad.

We also never had to wait more than one party to be seated and usually we could walk right up and be seated. Since there were no sea days for us to rest during this cruise and we had to wake up early every morning to get off the ship, we ate dinner around 6 pm. While we ate, we could see lines forming and people being asked to wait so it seemed like 6 pm was a good time to avoid lines.

Entertainment

Since the itinerary was so intense, we chose going to bed early, rather than staying up for the shows. The only entertainment I did was participating in the Kukui Nut lei and orchid lei classes. It was a bit tiring to go straight to these classes right after spending the day sightseeing but I’m glad I did both of them. There were several opportunities to buy the nut lei kits after the class and I decided to buy enough kits to make gifts for my family. They turned out to be wonderful and inexpensive gifts! My family was so impressed that I made the leis too!

Making a Kukui Nut lei

The orchid lei was also fun to wear for professional photos and we got a bunch of great photos! It’s also fun to look at the photos and remember that I made the lei!!

Making an orchid lei

Professional photo with me wearing the lei I made

Ship

With no sea days and 2 overnights, it felt like we were barely on the ship! When we got back onboard on the 2nd day in Kauai, we finally spent some time exploring the ship and there were all these places we never saw the whole week! LOL! It’s truly a different cruise experience than any other cruise we’ve been on. We didn’t spend much time on any part of the ship, except for Deck 5 since that’s where the Skyline Dining Room, shops, Guest Services Desk, and Photo Gallery are. She is a beautiful ship and I didn’t see much wear on her. I found the layout a bit confusing but that could be because we didn’t get to spend much time getting used to her. I would have loved more time to really enjoy the ship but the Hawaiian islands call!

Upper Decks

The Conservatory

Chris did get to hit a few golf balls in the driving net, which he enjoyed. I also partook in the last day sale in the shops. Get there early because it gets crazy!!! I had my own little Black Friday on the ship!

Golf Driving Net

Sale Shopping

I usually take more interior photos of the ship but this cruise went by so fast, I didn’t remember!

One thing to note is that only the midship elevators goes to the gangway, which is located on Deck 3. So when you leave your cabin, go to the midship elevators to get down to Deck 3. You can tell you are at the midship elevators because the carpet has blue stars, whereas the aft and forward elevators have red stars. Also, there are 2 sets of elevators at midship and only one set goes down to Deck 3. Check the signs next to the elevators to make sure you get on the right one.

Another thing to note, our cruise had VERY rough seas. The crew said that the winter months usually have rougher seas but our week was unusually rough. The captain even made an announcement to warn everyone to hold handrails when walking around and take precautions. The roughest night was from Kauai to Oahu but every night we were sailing was pretty rough. We even had things fall off the shelves in our room! Fortunately, neither of us got sick on the cruise ship itself. We always take Bonine every morning no matter what. See my tips on preventing seasickness.

Overall Thoughts
I definitely don’t think Pride of America was as bad as some of the reviews I’ve read. Then again, it wasn’t the best cruise experience either. I think having the attitude that you’re on a floating hotel and you’re really here to make the most of the Hawaiian islands is your best bet! I hope I don’t sound like this was a bad experience because it wasn’t. I do feel that other cruise line provide a better experience but I hear that Pride of America is not a good example of what a real NCL cruise is like and you can’t beat the itinerary that Pride of America offers! It was a good cruise and I’d do it again in a heartbeat!

+ See all Pride of America photos
+ Read more about my Hawaii 2010 trip

Saturday, November 27, 2010

We had a reservation for a guided tour of Iolani Palace this morning at 8:45 am but we were already getting exhausted with the early mornings and we’d have to wake up even earlier to pack, check out of the hotel, and eat breakfast to be at Iolani Palace by 8:45 am so I called and canceled our reservation yesterday. We winded up waking up around 9:30 am and had breakfast at Duke’s again. By the time we finished packing and checked out of the hotel, we were on the road again around 11 am. We made a quick, illegal parked stop at the Duke Kahanamoku Statue and got our photo with it.

Duke Kahanamoku Statue

We decided to drop off our luggage at the pier before sightseeing in Historic Honolulu. Our rental car was a Dodge Caliber, which has a tailgate-style trunk so people can see what is in your trunk if you do not pull the trunk cover over your stuff. Unfortunately, we could not pull the cover over our 4 suitcases so we didn’t want to park the car while sightseeing with our luggage visible in the back. This is something to keep in mind when you pick up your rental car if you plan to drive around with a lot of luggage in your car. We reserved Compact cars at Thrifty at every port and always got a Dodge Caliber, except in Hilo, where we were given a Ford Focus.

I set my Garmin to Aloha Tower, even though I knew that Pride of America was docked at Pier 2. We missed the street for Pier 2 the first time and went back around. It’s not the easiest to find. So for everyone’s reference, Pier 2 is on Channel Street off Ala Moana St. There is a very small parking lot of the cruise terminal. If you plan to drive yourself there to drop off your luggage, bring quarters for the meters. The cruise terminal wasn’t busy yet and we easily flagged down a porter to help us with our bags. We were just planning to drop off our bags but the porter advised us to go ahead and check into the cruise because it would get A LOT busier when we came back after sightseeing so we took his advice. To enter the terminal, you need to show your ID and cruise docs to port security. We had to show them again to enter the X-ray screening. The terminal was really big and there wasn’t many people there yet. They were setting up for a little hula show and already taking embarkation photos. The line had maybe 5 people in it so there wasn’t much of a wait at all and we had no problems getting our cruise cards.

By the way, Aloha Tower did not seem as close to Pier 2 as some people made it sound. It’s actually over a 1/2 mile away, which is questionable walking distance to me, especially in the heat, and probably not really walking distance to people with limited mobility.

We got back in the car and drove to Iolani Palace in Historic Honolulu, arriving there at noon. The guided tours were done for the day so we did the self-guided audio tour. We asked the cashier for change to get quarters for the meter and he told us that if we parked inside the gates, the meters were free since it was Saturday! We didn’t enough realize we could drive inside the gate. The audio tour is a timed ticket and we had some time before our tour so Chris went back outside and moved the car inside so we didn’t have to worry about it. We still had some more time before our tour so we walked around the basement of the Palace, which you don’t need the timed ticket to see. The Palace’s kitchen and servant areas were there, as well as some artifacts from Hawaii’s Royalty.

When we gathered for our audio tour, they ask you to wear shoe covers so that your shoes don’t scuff or dirty the floors they spent so much time and money restoring. I’d recommend that you don’t wear high heels or bulky shoes because you might have hard time with the shoe covers. I wish I had photos from inside Iolani Palace but we were not allowed to take photos. The tour was fascinating and extremely educational. We learned about the lives of King Kalakaua, who built the palace in 1882, his wife, and his sister and successor, Queen Liliuokalani. Queen Liliuokalani was the last royal of Hawaii and we also learned about her overthrow. The story of Queen Liliuokalani losing her throne is sad but at the same time, I’m glad Hawaii is part of the United States so it’s bittersweet. We saw the quilt the Queen made when she was imprisoned in a room within the palace for 5 years. Seeing the Palace was really cool too. We love seeing old houses, furniture, and how people used to live.

Aliiolani Hale (Hawaii Supreme Court) and King Kamehameha Statue

Iolani Palace

Hawaii Capitol Building

We left Iolani Palace around 2 pm and headed over to Chinatown for lunch. We parked in the public parking garage on Maunakea Street between Hotel & King Streets. Next door was Cindy’s Lei Shoppe. Originally, my plan was to buy a lei in Chinatown to wear for our embarkation photo but we received orchid leis at the Polynesian Cultural Center the day before and I stored them in the refrigerator in our room overnight. They held up pretty well so I decided just to wear those leis again. We peeked into Cindy’s Lei Shoppe anyway to take a look at the gorgeous leis. They have a wide variety of leis. The cheapest lei was $3 and the most expensive that they had ready made was about $25. Some of them were so elaborate and beautiful! This is definitely a good place to stop by if you are looking for an inexpensive or unique lei!

We decided to have lunch at the Food Court inside Maunakea Marketplace. They have stands for Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese food! Chris had roast duck wonton soup and I decided to try my hand at Filipino food, which I’ve never had before. I didn’t really know what anything about Filipino food so I just picked 2 dishes, a veggie dish and a beef tripe dish, that looked good to me, along with some roast pork, which I LOVE! The roast pork and beef tripe were delicious but the veggie dish had a very bitter vegetable that I wasn’t crazy about. I picked around it though. I have to admit the food court is not the cleanest place in the world but the food was very authentic and good!

Maunakea Marketplace in Chinatown

Maunakea Marketplace Food Court

Roasted duck wonton soup

We left Chinatown a little bit after 3 pm and headed to Costco to get gas for the rental car before returning it. The line at Costco was really long but we weren’t in a major hurry since we had already checked in for the cruise. While in line for gas, we saw vehicle identity crisis in the form of a Toyota Sienna mini-van with a license plate that said “JEEP”! LOL!

We returned the rental car to Thrifty and we didn’t have to wait 5 minutes for their shuttle to take us back to the pier. There was a separate entrance for passengers who have already checked in so we didn’t have to wait in line, except to go through the X-ray machine again. We were onboard the ship around 4:15 pm and we went to our room, where our luggage was already waiting. The Muster Drill was at 4:30 pm so we didn’t have much time to do anything before it. We were required to bring our life jackets and stand outside at our stations.

After the drill was over, we headed up to Deck 12 to take some photos of Honolulu before the sunset. There were some awesome views of Diamond Head and One Waterfront Towers!

View of One Waterfront Towers and Diamond Head from Pride of America

View of One Waterfront Towers and Diamond Head from Pride of America

After taking some photos, we headed back to the room to unpack. We had dinner in the Skyline Dining Room a little bit before 7:30 pm and watched from the window as we sailed away from Honolulu.

Aloha Tower while sailing away from Honolulu

Coming up next, my review of Pride of America!!

+ See all Oahu, Hawaii photos
+ Read more about my Hawaii 2010 trip

Friday, November 26, 2010

Instead of having breakfast at Duke’s again, we decided to get us some of those famous malasadas! We arrived at Leonard’s Bakery a little bit before 8 am. We each got a Portuguese sausage wrap and original malasada. I also tried a Haupia filled malasada and Chris tried a custard filled one. We ate outside the bakery on a bench. I really liked the Portuguese sausage wrap and original malasada but I’m not a fan of cream or custard so I didn’t like the Haupia filled one very much. It’d love to have another original malasada right now!! Yum! Chris liked his custard filled one though. We came at the right time because a Japanese tour bus pulled up and unloaded all its passengers right as we were leaving.

Leonard’s Bakery

Malasadas from Leonard’s Bakery

Our next stop was Sea Life Park, where we had the Dolphin Encounter booked! Our confirmation told us to be there at 9 am and we got there around 8:50 am. The park doesn’t open until 10:30 am and there were only a few people waiting at the entrance with us. I found out that other people’s confirmation said to be there at 9:15 am! We could have gotten at least 25 minutes more of sleep! Anyway, we walked down to the restrooms and it was weird to see all the shops and food counters closed. It was like walking around in an abandoned amusement park! When they finally let us in, we walked past a huge aquarium, sea turtles, and sea lions being fed. The sea lions are so noisy and funny! AR AR!

Sea lions getting their breakfast

After checking in at the Dolphin Gift Shop and buying a coin to use the lockers, we put our stuff in a locker and then donned a life vest. We were taken out to the Dolphin Pool in groups. We entered the Dolphin Pool in a line and the water was FREEZING!!! For the Dolphin Encounter, you stand and stay on a platform so the water only goes up to your waist. It’s perfect for small kids and people who prefer to be in shallow water. We picked the Dolphin Encounter because my husband does not swim so it was something we could do together. The platform was a bit slippery and had a slimy feel to it, as something that has been underwater for a LONG time would probably feel like. Chris was worried that he might slip but he never did.

The trainer used a whistle to communicate with the dolphin and one came swimming to us. We were lucky enough to interact with Kekaimalu, 1 of only 2 wolphins in captivity! Her mother was a dolphin and her father was a whale! The other wolphin in captivity is her child. Kekaimalu was HUGE compared to the other dolphins and it was a shock to find out her dolphin mother had to birth her! She was adorable too. After every trick, she would come back to the trainer and open her mouth to say “Feed me now!” LOL! Each of us got to touch her and we took photos of her kissing us, us kissing her, and “dancing with” her (she would stand upright out of the water and we would touch her fins). In between, she did tricks like splashing us, sticking her tongue at us, and nodding. The trainer would also tell us about Kekaimalu and dolphins in general. It was a wonderful experience! Obviously, I’m not an expert but I never felt like the dolphins there were “sad”, as the “Oahu Revealed” book suggested. Their pool is very large as you can see in my photo and they seem pretty content to me. I would not hesitate to recommend this activity to anyone! It was a lot of fun and a wonderful experience!

Gorgeous backdrop for our Dolphin Encounter

Dolphin Encounter

Chris’ Dolphin Encounter

After the Dolphin Encounter, we went cleaned up and got changed. There are several changing rooms and 3 open showers. We spent about 30 minutes walking around the park to visit the sea lions, penguins, and feed the sea turtles! Unlike the Dolphin Pool, the exhibits for the penguins and sea turtles looked a bit small. They could definitely use more space. The park is pretty small, compared to Sea World or even a regular theme park. I personally wouldn’t recommend a visit unless you plan to do one of the dolphin programs. Feeding the sea turtles was fun though! They were so excited to get their veggies!

Chris pretending to eat the sea turtle food

Sea turtles

Sea turtle

Penguins

This was the only morning on our entire trip that we did not apply bug spray before leaving the hotel/ship. We didn’t want to wear bug spray knowing we were going into the water where the dolphins swam. I was bitten 7 times and Chris was bitten 4 times by the time we returned to the Sea Life Park parking lot! We liberally applied bug spray in the parking lot before leaving. We were on the road again around 11:15 am.

For lunch, we stopped at Zippy’s in Kaneohe around noon. We spotted chickens in the parking lot so the place instantly got Chris’ seal of approval. When we walked into the restaurant, we walked right up to the fast food counter. We both ordered the Korean fried chicken and lilikoi (passion fruit) drinks. Chris really liked the Korean fried chicken but I found it to be a bit too saucy and salty. I liked the lilikoi drink though, despite my aversion to passion fruit. We didn’t realize that there was a sit-down section of the restaurant, where waiters actually serve you. It would have been nice to go there if we knew about it but we didn’t really have that much time anyway. We left at 12:45 pm.

Zippy’s

Korean fried chicken at Zippy’s

We arrived at Laie Point at 1:30 pm. It was definitely a nice stop! The sea arch was beautiful and the waves were really strong. We noticed someone built a rock pile on top of the sea arch too. CRAZY!

Laie Point

Big waves at Laie Point

We arrived at the Polynesian Cultural Center at 2 pm. We pre-booked the Ambassador Ali’i Lu’au package. After exchanging our vouchers for tickets, we were asked to wait in a waiting room for our guide. Instead of a guide, a staff member told us we were going to join a tour that just started. She gave us and another couple our shell leis and took us to our guide and our group, who were seated for the Canoe Pageant. The seating was really good and right up to the water. The bad thing is that the sun was beating down on that side of the river so it was hot when the clouds weren’t blocking the sun. Before the pageant started, a canoe went by that was selling ice cream and fruit. I think it cost $5 but I don’t remember exactly. They sell this ice cream everywhere throughout Polynesian Cultural Center and at every presentation. Our guide made a joke that we’ll be so sick of ice cream by the time we leave! The ice cream and fruit mixture was good though! I had fresh pineapple and canned peaches. This is the same dessert that is served during the intermission of “Ha: Breath of Life” and is included with the Ambassador packages.

The “Rainbows of Paradise” Canoe Pageant was great! The dancing and costumes were beautiful and really helped me appreciate the culture of all the islands presented: Hawaii, Tonga, Aotearoa, Samoa, Tahiti, and Fiji. It was also interesting to see how similar the cultures were but also see the differences. It was also shocking to see the Samoa dancers rock their canoe so much that their driver fell into the water!! Our guide said that the drivers know if you get the Samoa canoe, you’ll probably end up in the water. LOL! Poor guy!

Rainbows of Paradise Canoe Pageant

Samoa canoe driver in the water

After the Pageant, our guide took us the Samoa village to watch the presentation there. This presentation was probably my favorite part of the whole experience at Polynesian Cultural Center and made our trip to Polynesian Cultural Center worth it! It started with a young Samoan who cracked some jokes to warm up the crowd, followed by some live music. Then the “chief” came on to give the presentation. This guy was SOOOO hilarious!! We were literally crying from laughing so hard! He just had awesome jokes, his timing was perfect, and he had some great facial expressions! Other than being a comedian, he made fire using wood and coconut husk. He also showed us how they shelled a coconut, split it in half by hitting it once with a rock, carved the coconut meat out of the coconut, and made coconut milk!! Wow! After all that, another Samoa climbed this SUPER tall tree to show us how they would get the coconuts! It was such a wonderful presentation and definitely the best one we saw out of all of the villages!

Making fire in Samoa

Tree climbing in Samoa

After the Samoa presentation, our guide took us the Canoe Landing and we took a canoe ride through the villages. The canoe ride was lovely and the scenery was very nice. We landed in Tonga and our guide helped us great seating to the Tonga village’s presentation. At Tonga, we watched the Tongans demonstrated the nose flute, blowing conch shells, and drums. After the demonstration, they called up three volunteers to learn how to drum and it was funny watching tourists try to imitate drumming and yelling the native chats!

Canoe ride

Drumming demo in Tonga

The last village we visited was Aotearoa Village, which represents the native people of New Zealand. At the Aotearoa Village, we tried our hand at twirling poi balls, which we had see the Aotearoa people do in the Canoe Pageant. It’s much harder than it looks!! After that, we tried the Maori stick game, which was used to develop hand-eye coordination for their warriors. We also visited an exhibit of portraits that showed the different facial tattoos worn by the Aotearoa people. Finally, we had an opportunity to get our own temporary ink tattoo!

Aotearoa Village

Twirling poi balls in Aotearoa Village

Temporary tattoo from Aotearoa Village

Our guide then escorted us to our dinner locations. For the Ali’i Luau, there are 3 different luau locations but we were told they are all the same. It’s just to spread out the number of people. We were assigned to the Hale Ohana location and by itself, it was pretty huge! I can’t even imagine how many people they feed in one night at all 3 locations, plus the non-luau buffet and Super Ambassador dinner!

The line into the luau was a bit long but it moved quickly. We were greeted with a fresh orchid lei and took a photo with our greeters. We were then taken to our table. We had a table right in front of the stage, which was really nice! The show itself was fairly short and not all that impressive. It was hard to concentrate on the show when you have to go and get your food and people walking around all the time. There was some singing and some hula. Not much to miss if you saw the Canoe Pageant or will see “Ha: Breath of Life”.

The buffet included all the traditional Hawaiian dishes, like poi (taro paste), lomilomi (raw salmon salad), kalua pig (pork cooked in an underground oven), and poke (raw, marinated tuna). I really liked the poke, lomilomi, and chicken long rice (glass noodles with shredded chicken)! The rest of the food was a bit bland. I read the reviews of the luau so I didn’t expect much so I wasn’t really disappointed. Plus, it’s hard to make anything taste spectacular when you’re cooking for that many people! I ordered a virgin pina colada and it came in a hollowed-out pineapple! That was a lot of fun to drink! (A lot of people don’t like the fact that Polynesian Cultural Center doesn’t serve alcohol but we are not big drinkers so this didn’t bother us at all.)

Ali’i Luau

Hula dancing at Ali’i Luau

Ali’i Luau food

After we finished dinner, we took the “Ha: Breath of Life” Behind the Scenes Tour. We got to see the actors rehearsing and props and costumes used in the show. We saw the ti-leaf skirts the actors wore when they sit on fire and we learned that ti leaves have so much moisture that it takes longer for them to catch on fire. It was a short tour but pretty neat.

“Ha: Breath of Life” actors rehearsing

“Ha: Breath of Life” Props

We took our seats in the theater. Premium seating is part of the Ambassador Luau package and I liked our seats a lot. We were right in the center of the stage about halfway up the seats. The Super Ambassadors have seats closer to the stage but I’m not crazy about sitting close to a stage. The theater was more like a stadium to me! It fits 2,675 people! It was definitely a large crowd!

“Ha: Breath of Life” is a man and his life as he travels to the different Polynesian islands. There is a long scene for each island that is represented at the Polynesian Cultural Center. I heard a lot of good things about this show but I personally thought most of it was boring and we almost fell asleep several times. It was a very long, 1.5-hour show with the highlight being 5 minutes of firedancing. The dancing was beautiful and very impressive but the scenes were waaaayyy too long for each island. It started to get old. The fire twirling was very cool but I don’t think it was worth sitting through the whole show for the few highlights. After the show was over, some of the actors were outside to take photos with. We did a little souvenir shopping and before heading back to the hotel.

Video of “Ha: Breath of Life” wedding scene

Video of “Ha: Breath of Life” fire twirling

Two nights later, we attended Old Lahaina Luau in Maui so naturally, we would compare it with the Polynesian Cultural Center. The experiences were very different since the Polynesian Cultural Center has the villages. We are glad we went to both but I would say overall, Polynesian Cultural Center was a bit disappointing to me. The food at Old Lahaina Luau was much better than the Polynesian Cultural Center. The Polynesian Cultural Center show was longer and had fire dancing but the Old Lahaina Luau show seemed to flow much better and the traditional dancing seemed much more interesting. The only reasons why I don’t regret going to Polynesian Cultural Center is because of the hilarious Samoa presentation and the 5 minutes of fire dancing but I question whether or not those things are really worth spending almost a whole day at Polynesian Cultural Center and the cost. If someone was choosing between Old Lahaina Luau and Polynesian Cultural Center, I would highly recommend Old Lahaina Luau over the Polynesian Cultural Center. If you really want REALLY good traditional Hawaiian food, go to Ono Hawaiian Foods in Honolulu! Their food blew both luaus out of the water!

When we returned to the hotel, we made another stop at the ABC Stores across the street. Chris bought a spam musubi there for a snack. It was 11 pm when we got back to the room. Time to shower up and sleep! Next day, Historic Honolulu and embarking Pride of America!!!

Spam Musubi from ABC Stores

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