We
flew to Honolulu in 2008 and spent several days touring Oahu prior to boarding the
Carnival Spirit. Read about our pre-cruise experience in the article on
Oahu.
The boarding experience in Honolulu wasn’t as good as other locations.
The computers weren't hooked up to the registration system, so it took a little longer.
You also couldn’t drop your bags immediately on arrival, as you do in other ports.
This cruise is a bit unusual, as the first night you stay in port and you can head in to Honolulu and Waikiki for shore excursions the next day.
I chose to go surfing:
Diamond Head from the Carnival Spirit
Surfing Waikiki
Our first cruise day allowed us to head to Waikiki, as the ship didn’t
set sail until that evening. We took a free shuttle to the Maui Divers factory and got to see how they produce black and gold coral jewelry.
From there, we took their free shuttle to Waikiki and I signed up for a surfing lesson
Surfing was a highlight of the trip for me. My 46 year old instructor Kevin looked like a much younger Hawaiian.
He took 3 of us out, including an 8 year old. I was surprised how much effort was involved in paddling out, having waves pour over my head and having the salt sting my eyes. It’s hard to keep your head up to look where you’re going and the board was coarse against my chest.
On my second run, I kept low to the board and was surfing! I began to fall to the left, but corrected my weight.
I could feel the power of the wave when I leaned left, so I continued to do so – and I took off down the wave.
I kept going and going on one of the longest runs anyone could do out there.
When I finally splashed into the water, Kevin was very excited about my run and gave me a high 5.
After a few more runs, I was exhausted and headed back to shore, where I kept wandering up and down the beach in an excited state of joy over my experiences
surfing in Waikiki.
Waikiki
Cruising
Carnival Spirit
The evening after my surfing adventure, the cruise portion of the trip really began.
The Spirit is typical of most Carnival ships. Some of the stats from Carnival on the ship are:
Launch Date
- 2001
Total Staterooms - 1,062
Private Balcony Staterooms - 750
Decks - 12
Passenger capacity - 2,124
Total crew - 930
Tonnage - 88,500
Ship length - 960
The Spirit cruises Alaska in the summer, the Mexican Riviera in the winter and the Hawaiian Islands during repositioning.
Facilities include:
9 Level Domed Atrium
Pharaoh's Palace Show Lounge: 1,167 maximum guests
Dining Room: Promenade deck 508 guests, Atlantic deck 718 guests
Cabaret Lounge
Jazz Club
Dance Club
Shanghai Piano Bar
Wedding Chapel
Card Room
Conference Center
Champions Sports Bar
Chippendale Library
Internet Café
Nouveau Supper Club
Two Saltwater Swimming Pools
Three Saltwater Hot Tubs
Walking Track
Gym
Basketball court
Mini Golf
Ping Pong
Waterslide
Casino
Lido Deck
The floor plan of Carnival ships is the same on each ship, but the décor is unique to each ship.
The Spirit has a Renaissance theme. If you’ve been on board another Carnival ship, you’ll feel right at home the second you board the ship.
Activities
The activities on Carnival ships are standardized and not dissimilar to other cruise lines.
Activities while on board include a wide variety such as nightly shows, live music, comedians, discos, hairy chest contests, trivia games, newly wed games, scrap book sessions etc etc.
The Spirit was repositioning from Hawaii to Vancouver with passengers who were mainly seniors, so activities and even shipboard music were frequently geared to the 60’s.
After a while it became a little annoying.
When in port, there is always a full slate of options for excursions.
These include snorkeling, kayaking, sight seeing, fishing, shopping and many more.
Many of the tours involve buses and we found that we would have done better to rent a car and tour each Hawaiian Island on our own instead of taking the tours, not only for price but for the freedom.
Meals
There is assigned dinning each evening as well as unassigned seating for breakfast and lunch in the dinning room.
The lido deck also has buffet servings for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The dinner includes one or two choices from the dinning room menu. In addition there is 24 hour pizza and 24 hour ice cream.
Specialty sandwiches and Asian foods are also available daily. Surprisingly, soda
and soft drinks are not included and must be purchased separately. A beverage card for unlimited use can be purchased, but it may not be a better deal than paying as you go.
Also, pay as you go provides a full can each time, while the card gives a full glass (partial can).
Meals in the dinning room are very good and include several options each night, such as steak & lobster and prime rib.
The chocolate melting cake for dessert is a Carnival trademark. Around 5:30 by the swimming pool
you can have a made to order minute steak and French fries. After a day on land, it’s great to arrive back on ship and have this cooked for you immediately.
Cabins
Cabins are approximately 200 square feet and are well designed. There are typically 2 single beds that are placed side by side to create
the effect of a double bed. There is ample storage space. Suitcases
slide under the beds. The seating area makes into a single bed and some
rooms have a Pullman for additional sleeping. The washrooms are very
small, but include a workable shower in addition to the somewhat noisy
vacuum toilets. One of the great features is the safe in each
room. It can be locked by your room key or any credit card and will
only open with the same care that was used to lock it.
Over 75% of the cabins have balconies. Two downsides with balconies are that you often hear slamming balcony doors from the cabins nearby and you experience smoke from cigarettes of
neighbors when out on your balcony.
Staff
All the staff on Carnival ships are extremely friendly and courteous.
They are continuously on duty and maintain high levels of cleanliness.
Staff represent numerous countries around the globe with many come from south east Asian, particularly Indonesia.
Direct tipping at the end of the cruise is not necessary, as a fee of $10 per day per person is automatically added to the bill to cover dinning and room services.
View
Hawaii in a larger map
Ports of Call
The farther south in the chain of islands, the newer and more active the volcanoes are, with the Big Island being the newest, biggest and most active. We visited the following:
Nawiliwili, Kauai
Cruise Day 2 found us in Kauai at Nawiliwili. This was the most beautiful island we visited in the Hawaiian Islands.
It was lush due to over 400 inches of rainfall in some locations. Bougainvilleas were growing wild in large numbers.
The island is very small and sparsely populated. There are less than 100 miles of road. We went to the Waimea Canyon and the Spouting Horn on a tour bus.
The canyon was lovely, but light showers kept streaming through it. I’d thought earlier about a helicopter tour of the island, but this wouldn’t have been a very good idea with all the rainy areas.
It’s unlikely the chopper would have been able to see much of the famous Napali coast, where heavily ridged cliffs plummet into the sea.
I n fact, I’m not sure that a helicopter ride would work well on the other islands either, as there is a significant build up of clouds each day.
In future, I’d rent a car at each location. While it’s less stressful to go on tour and you get a lot of history and inside information from the guide, the tours are too slow a pace for me and are over priced.
On Kauai, all the major car rental companies will pick you up at the cruise ship.
We could have easily added on a trip to the east side of the island and covered all the roads on the island.
In the afternoon, we walked to the beach at Nawiliwili. The Marriott
owns most of the property and their lawn fronting the beach was immaculate.
For next time I'm in Kauai, I'd like to try Kauai
Backcountry Adventures for a tube ride that includes going right
through several natural lava tubes on the tube ride.
Nawiliwili Harbor
Kauai Spouting Horn
Waimea Canyon
Kona, Hawaii (Big Island)
Kona, on the big island called Hawaii, was more than an adventure. We went on the Captain Zodiac snorkel tour to Kealakekua Bay.
The ride turned out to be 45 minutes each way at a rapid rate of speed with everyone holding on tight as we flew through the air over the waves while spray drenched us to the bone.
Your hands got tired holding on and the people in front of you kept sliding backward and crushing those behind them.
If the zodiac stopped it bobbed up and down and made you sea sick.
Kona
Kealakekua Bay has a monument which is sovereign British land in the middle of the State of Hawaii.
It commemorates the battle that Captain Cook’s crew got in to with the natives in 1779. In the fight, Captain Cook was beaten to death.
The snorkeling at Kealakekua Bay was phenomenal and worth the trip there, but just barely.
The coral is in excellent condition and there are lots of fish. The coral drops off quickly over the space of about 25 feet to a depth off more than 100 feet.
It is very eerie to go from the beautiful coral setting to the deep blue unknown within such a short distance.
We got lots of great shots of fish and a special underwater self portrait of my wife and myself.
Kealakekua Bay
Captain Cook Monument, Kealakekua Bay
Captain James Cook was killed here in 1779
The way back was more tiring, wetter and a bigger mental challenge than the way there.
I kept looking back at my wife, through the salt stinging my eyes and dripping off my face, trying to make sure she hadn’t fallen overboard.
If she had I would have jumped in and sunk with her, as I had no energy left to swim.
Luckily we eventually made it back to the ship and it seems likely that we will make a full recovery.
My wife will never ride a zodiac again though.
Hilo, Hawaii (Big Island)
Next we did a night sail past of the active volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Although we only saw red dots in the distance, we were close enough to see them double is size at times.
It was amazing to see the earth creating new land right before our eyes.
Hilo is famous for having had 39 inches of rainfall in one day a few years ago.
It was raining for our visit and Mauna Kea (the white mountain) was covered in cloud.
We took a tour of a macadamia factory and the Volcanoes National Park. At the Volcano, we walked through the Thurston Lava Tube.
Lava tubes are common on the islands. These are areas where flowing lava gets encrusted by cooler rock above.
When the lava flow gets blocked and empty tube is created.
Kilauea Volcano
When we reached the crater at the visitor site, Kilauea was pouring out steam and the seismometers were registering small tremors.
The park staff said that in 1969, the crater we were looking at had filled completely with molten lava and that is was a great debate among scientists as to whether it would do so again with this eruption.
Lahaina, Maui
The last two Hawaiian cruise days we were at Lahaina. There is no dock, so we tender in small boats to shore.
During the first night, the Spirit lifts anchor and cruises back and forth among the islands to save on anchor fees.
The first day we went up to Haleakala. This is a dormant crater extending from sea level to just under 10,000 feet.
The bus goes all the way up. Each day by noon, Haleakala is shrouded in clouds, but at the summit you are above the clouds.
The crater was spectacular. Unfortunately the view down was shrouded in clouds, so we couldn’t see the islands to the north.
We did see the snows on Mauna Kea on the Big Island to the south though.
Ironic that I had to go to another island to see it. On the way down, the constant breaking on the 15 mph switchbacks for nearly 1.5 hours made me quite ill.
Add on a bouncy tender ride and I was actually in worse shape than the snorkel trip at Kona.
Haleakala Crater
Lahaina, Maui
Lahaina, Maui
On the second day we took a tour to the Maui Ocean Center. The aquarium was fabulous, but even with all my picture taking, we were ready to leave an hour before the tour was done.
We told one of the passengers to let the bus driver know we wouldn’t be returning on the bus. We then called a cab and went to the Iao Valley
State Park and back to the cruise ship.
So we doubled our tour time and go away from the tour bus. The Iao Valley was lovely.
In future, I’d rent a care and double the amount of sight seeing that can be done in Maui too.
Iao Needle, Iao Valley, Maui
Iao Valley State Park
Maui Ocean Center
Maui Ocean Center
Repostioning to Vancouver, BC
The repositioning portion of the trip was pleasant, but not something I’d recommend.
After a great Hawaiian adventure, 5 days at sea made me impatient to be home.
I brought my laptop and kept myself entertained, but I did run up $100 in internet charges.
The weather pattern was very predictable. Two days of easterly trade winds.
Day three in the doldrums between the trade winds. Then two days of light westerly winds. It was disappointing to return to rain, cold and poor visibility on the westcoast.
No views of the Olympics or the North Shore mountains in Vancouver. The tops of the downtown skyscrapers disappeared into the clouds.
Recommendation
As a way to get an overview of the Hawaiian Islands for the first time visitor, I highly recommend cruising. Carnival provided a great experience.
I wouldn’t cruise in Hawaii again though. I’d plan some land based experiences the next time around.
