cruising hawaii

[ozziemuzza]

do you know of a good way to buy a cheap cruise around hawaii .

if you know of a good agent or direct whoelsaler who wants my business can you let me know please

thanks

best regards from perth
murray

 

[GT351]

Have a look at www.cruise.com.au

or silver sea cruise


I like cruising aroung Hawaii. Great way to get a taste of the islands

GT

 

[sinophile888]

I frequently check bestflights / bestcruises to see what is on offer.


I also like vacationstogo, a US site. At present the A$ is great for booking on US sites. Vacationstogo offer a fully refundable deposit. We used this refund facility for a cruise we booked in May 2009, when the A$ fell from 90+ cents to 60+ cents. We actually made a profit on the refund.

Another site I like is seascanner, a German site. We used them to book an eastern Mediterranean cruise in January and found them to be super-efficient.

 

[dom_tyro]

do you know of a good way to buy a cheap cruise around hawaii .

I have actually just this week been researching the same thing and it turns out that NCL Pride of America is the only ship to start/finish in Hawaii.
Checked a lot of forums (take a look at cruisecritic.com, very good for feedback/reviews) and after speaking to my aussie TA who concurred, decided to give them a miss due to bad rep with food/crew/price. Ended up with a Mexican Riviera cruise with Carnival and got the Grand Suite (best on ship) for the same price as a half-decent balcony cabin on the Pride of America. But if your not hitting mainland USA, then that's your only option.

if you know of a good agent or direct whoelsaler who wants my business can you let me know please

I just booked my cruise only an hour ago, mentioned above, with Vacationstogo.
Entered a request for a quote and the TA actually called me from the US, we haggled...I got OBC and all port charges, taxes and gratuities taken care of and all for $600.00 less than a quote from flightcentre (which I only got as a starting price). Even the carnival website price was good after conversion.
priceline.com, cruise.com, cruisevacationoutlet.com and lastminutecruises.com were a few other sites I had running around for me and all had good pricing and extras too but the phone call; and the fact that there were only 2 Grand Suites left for the date that I wanted (watched it drop from 4 available yesterday) sort of made me take the deal. So there are a few TA's out there if you do some groundwork.

Also, if you haven't already booked flights to Hawaii yet, check out priceline.com. I have managed to get 2 J seats OW, LAX-HNL-SYD for $1535AU each!! And once the booking went through it shows up as F seats for both legs... Bonus ! (the reason I logged on tonight was to post this info).
The trick is that it only seems to show up on certain dates/days. LAX-HNL was Tuesday 30th Aug and and HNL-SYD was Wednesday 31st Aug. I checked a few options for Aug and the Tuesday flight always came up - 16th, 21st and 30th Aug LAX-HNL and 17th, 22nd and 31st Aug HNL-SYD all showed as $1604USD.
So maybe worth a look, didn't check SYD-LAX run as I already have QF J's booked with points. I'll post the details on how exactly to find these flights in another post.
What a bonus, return USA run in J/F seats and has only cost me just over $3500.00 for Senorita Tyro and myself

If I can help in any way mate, just message me.
Cheers,
Dom

 

[straitman]

I have actually just this week been researching the same thing and it turns out that NCL Pride of America is the only ship to start/finish in Hawaii.
Checked a lot of forums (take a look at cruisecritic.com, very good for feedback/reviews) and after speaking to my aussie TA who concurred, decided to give them a miss due to bad rep with food/crew/price.
Cheers,
Dom

We did the Pride of America cruise last November and our experience was nothing like what you suggest.

There were 11 in our group and they varied between first time cruisers (us) through to people who have cruised many times and one who is quite high up in the Flight Centre empire. No body had anything bad of significance to say and there were many good comments made so I'm not sure where the food/crew/price comments come from.

Food varied by restaurant from buffet through to quality linen service. Crew were excellent at all levels and the price was very competitive. My major criticism was that they didn't really know how to make good coffee, but we even educated them on that.

 

[dom_tyro]

Good to hear you enjoyed it Bill.
I read a lot of forum entries, both good AND bad regarding food/crew/price and the concensus was it wasn't worth what people paid for in comparison to other cruiselines they had been on.
Long lines for buffet meals, poor quality meals at the "extra-charge" restaurants with one being a sectioned off part of the buffet restaurant.... I read none of these types of complaints from the Carnival reviews and so made a judgement call based on that. I'm happy to live with that but am also glad that not all customers on NCL's Hawaiian cruise agree with all comments made, else the cruise wouldn't exist.

The biggest gripe seemed to be that the crew of mostly American citizens and due to the on-board gratuity system, most disgruntled cruisers believed that the waiters/stewards/maitre de's etc didn't provide the typical service as is the case on other NCL ships as there was no "greasing-of-palms" occurring at the point of service. I am truly glad this wasn't the case with your cruise but can understand the issue; as Mrs Tyro is American and if I only tip her once a week I get a slap upside the head

But, we make our own decisions based on information gleaned from others and perhaps ozziemuzza may take the trip based on yours and hopefully enjoy it as much as you have.

 

[Aggi]

We cruised around Hawaii on the Pride of Hawaii (a sister ship of Pride of America) back in 2007 and the cruise was fantastic. Would highly recommend eating at the ship's surcharge restaurants as for an extra $15 to $20 per dinner the meals were first class. The Hawaiian islands are spectacular and the advantage of the 7 day cruise is that you cruise at night and spend each day in port. Booked it through vacationstogo.com, they were excellent and offered a much better price than any Aussie travel agent.