Planning: Hawaiin Soothing Vibes 2019
What started last year as an twinkle of an idea for a girls' trip to Paris and Amsterdam in May 2019, quickly morphed into let's go back to Hawaii. Why you ask? Well 1st off I started the year with torn medial and lateral meniscus and had to have surgery, I also ended up with several other health scares and issues for the first 5 months of the year that postponed any trips. Then my daughter got very unexpectedly laid off - folks were shocked as all get out when half the company was let go on a Tuesday, including my daughter's whole department. I thought she was joking when she called to tell me. I think I was more mad that she wasn't mad, at first, the mad came later. But hey, I can hold a grudge with the best of 'em so my pistivity (yeah I like to make up words) level was more than enough for the both of us. So all of that shifted our trip to September. Then of course folks in Paris wanted to start showing out and acting crazy and with my lingering health things, we decided to stay domestic but relaxing. Enter Hawaii. Aloha!
I checked the location off my bucket list in 2015 during an 11-day cruise on the Carnival Legend with my BFF, Nikki (you met her in my intro post). We flew to Oahu, stayed over night then boarded the ship, which stayed in port over another night then we proceeded to be wayfarers cruising the Pacific Ocean putting in at The Big Island - Hawaii (both Hilo and Kona), Maui and then my favorite Kauai. Once we finished pillaging the islands, we made a run for Canada, Vancouver to be exact. During those 6 days at sea, we realized we were about the youngest people on that there dinghy. I love older folks, they really don't give a sh....shiza. Made for a very interesting 6 days.
I next went to Oahu when my only crotch fruit, Teyonna, graduated from college in December 2016 (she graduated early I might add - woohoo for getting her off my payroll sooner!). That was her graduation gift.
I know, I know - I am awesome, rolled in awesome and dipped in awesome. But I said all that to say, we knew how much Hawaii speaks to me and we both had a rough year and needed some good vibes. Hawaii is chock full of those. My niece, Kapree was supposed to go on the Paris-Amsterdam Divas Traveling Wild Tour with us but she was all for Hawaii as she had never been.
This is when I called up the bestie and explained what I wanted to do and when. I had 2 hotels in mind, The Hilton Hawaiian Village - hey I am a creature of habit and had already stayed there twice with-out them kicking me out, and Moana Surfrider. Both resorts are in Waikiki because I knew the girls would want to go clubbing at night so instead of the more quiet and chill East side of the island or even North Shore, we stayed in the heart of tourist world. A lot of my co-workers were a bit horrified that I would stay somewhere so busy and commercial. Which actually cracked me up. You see I grew up on Cape Cod...so every Friday of every year from May to September, the traffic to get over either of the 2 bridges to the Cape would be hours long. The beaches and stores and roads were congested all weekend long and you just stayed low if you were a local as much as possible, or you went to the few spots only we knew about. Then I moved to Pinellas County, Florida (Tampa Bay area). Lets just say that Clearwater Beach can be an absolute nightmare! I can honestly say that of the 3 times I have been to Oahu, while the traffic can be hell on earth, I really did not find Waikiki beach, or at least the section we were on all that crowded at all, except for during Friday night fireworks. And honestly it is easy enough to get to a chunk of shoreline on Oahu where you are the only ones there.
I ended up booking a United Vacation Package. I will say this...never, ever again. I don't care if I am on the second coming of the Titanic and United Vacations is the only way off the sinking ship. I will grab a bottle of whiskey (55 yr old Macallan), hum "Truth Hurts" by Lizzo and go down with the damn ship. They so DID NOT want us to be great. We were originally booked to connect through San Francisco (SFO) both ways. My nieces was flying direct from Boston on Hawaiian air, no stops, ugh. The more I thought about those crammed up seats and how tall both my daughter and I are, I decided to price up upgrading to the Economy Plus seats with the extra leg room. This was around the end of June, we were flying out August 31st. Good thing I did, as they had cancelled our return leg from SFO into Tampa (TPA) and instead had us flying SFO to Washington Dulles (IAD) then from IAD to TPA. SO that added a leg, time and expense for upgrading seats. Lets just say my trusty travel agent called United Vacations and got a bit of run around (would not be the last time). We ended up staying with those flights as all the alternatives were either too long of a flight for me (Honolulu to IAD then TPA) or had 4-6 hr layovers. Of course this changed again about a week and a half before leaving as I got an email that SFO had a major runway closure during my return flight time and United recommended that I try to fly a different day or reroute through a different connecting city. More runaround and we ended up leaving Honolulu 7 hours later than originally planned and having a 4.5 hr layover in cold ass Denver. Whatever we made it.
As for activity and tour planning, the girls and I had a shared Google Doc that had all of our flight and hotel info plus links to places, restaurants, tours, clubs etc that we had found and had some interest in. I am a huge fan of Google Docs, especially for group trips. Gives a central spot for all of the data and for planning. I will cover what actually happened in Hawaii in a trip Summary post and do separate restaurant and Tour posts. But to give an overview of our planning we decided on The Premier Movie Tour at Kualoa Ranch, they have many other tours also like ziplining, ATVs, horseback etc. We also wanted to do a private island tour to the North Shore. My first time in Hawaii, Nikki and I did a group tour not booked with the cruise line but through Roberts Hawaii. It was a special shore tour they offered to cruise ship passengers as a condensed Island Circle Tour. (They actually offered a special for cruisers where you could get a reduced price the more tours you booked with them so I think we booked tours for 3 of the 5 ports and got a great price. But they also do tours for people staying on the island that aren't as pressed for time.) Our guide was great and I would recommend them if you are not wanting or willing to pay for a private tour.
When Tey and I went, we did a private tour, which we enjoyed better as we did not feel like we were being herded on and off the bus like cattle and we got more of a say in what we saw and how long we got to stay at each spot. Plus go to see more local spots not just tourist traps. That time we used Escape Waikiki Tours. The owner and only tour guide, Kevin, is great. A very nice guy and he played paparazzi for us and then sent us a file with a tons of photos of us at amazing vistas around the island. I waited too late to book Kevin this time so sadly he was booked so I researched and found another company that does private tours - Oahu Private Tours. You will find out all about them in a future post, but it was amazing. While Kevin was really good and I have sung his praises for the last 2.5 years, this one was a bit better, and it cost less. You really can't go wrong with either company though. Just Oahu Private Tours has about 4 guides, including the owner - who we had, so they may have more availability than Escape Waikiki.
The girls knew they wanted to check out Ala Moana Mall, which has over 350 stores and restaurants over 4 floors. It is the world's largest open-air shopping center and the 9th largest mall of any type in America. We also talked about renting a cabana by the Tapa Tower pool one day of the trip and picked out a couple of other spots we wanted to check out. The only other thing we actually booked before leaving was a nice dinner at Top of Waikiki. Which is a farm to table spinning restaurant with stunning views. We wanted to do a luau but ran out of time trying to decide on one before we left for Hawaii, so decided to pick one once there....stay tuned to see what happened with that!
I checked the location off my bucket list in 2015 during an 11-day cruise on the Carnival Legend with my BFF, Nikki (you met her in my intro post). We flew to Oahu, stayed over night then boarded the ship, which stayed in port over another night then we proceeded to be wayfarers cruising the Pacific Ocean putting in at The Big Island - Hawaii (both Hilo and Kona), Maui and then my favorite Kauai. Once we finished pillaging the islands, we made a run for Canada, Vancouver to be exact. During those 6 days at sea, we realized we were about the youngest people on that there dinghy. I love older folks, they really don't give a sh....shiza. Made for a very interesting 6 days.
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| Fuzzy but love this pic, captures our devilishness |
I next went to Oahu when my only crotch fruit, Teyonna, graduated from college in December 2016 (she graduated early I might add - woohoo for getting her off my payroll sooner!). That was her graduation gift.
This is when I called up the bestie and explained what I wanted to do and when. I had 2 hotels in mind, The Hilton Hawaiian Village - hey I am a creature of habit and had already stayed there twice with-out them kicking me out, and Moana Surfrider. Both resorts are in Waikiki because I knew the girls would want to go clubbing at night so instead of the more quiet and chill East side of the island or even North Shore, we stayed in the heart of tourist world. A lot of my co-workers were a bit horrified that I would stay somewhere so busy and commercial. Which actually cracked me up. You see I grew up on Cape Cod...so every Friday of every year from May to September, the traffic to get over either of the 2 bridges to the Cape would be hours long. The beaches and stores and roads were congested all weekend long and you just stayed low if you were a local as much as possible, or you went to the few spots only we knew about. Then I moved to Pinellas County, Florida (Tampa Bay area). Lets just say that Clearwater Beach can be an absolute nightmare! I can honestly say that of the 3 times I have been to Oahu, while the traffic can be hell on earth, I really did not find Waikiki beach, or at least the section we were on all that crowded at all, except for during Friday night fireworks. And honestly it is easy enough to get to a chunk of shoreline on Oahu where you are the only ones there.
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| Quiet Beach on Oahu |
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| Waikiki Beach |
I ended up booking a United Vacation Package. I will say this...never, ever again. I don't care if I am on the second coming of the Titanic and United Vacations is the only way off the sinking ship. I will grab a bottle of whiskey (55 yr old Macallan), hum "Truth Hurts" by Lizzo and go down with the damn ship. They so DID NOT want us to be great. We were originally booked to connect through San Francisco (SFO) both ways. My nieces was flying direct from Boston on Hawaiian air, no stops, ugh. The more I thought about those crammed up seats and how tall both my daughter and I are, I decided to price up upgrading to the Economy Plus seats with the extra leg room. This was around the end of June, we were flying out August 31st. Good thing I did, as they had cancelled our return leg from SFO into Tampa (TPA) and instead had us flying SFO to Washington Dulles (IAD) then from IAD to TPA. SO that added a leg, time and expense for upgrading seats. Lets just say my trusty travel agent called United Vacations and got a bit of run around (would not be the last time). We ended up staying with those flights as all the alternatives were either too long of a flight for me (Honolulu to IAD then TPA) or had 4-6 hr layovers. Of course this changed again about a week and a half before leaving as I got an email that SFO had a major runway closure during my return flight time and United recommended that I try to fly a different day or reroute through a different connecting city. More runaround and we ended up leaving Honolulu 7 hours later than originally planned and having a 4.5 hr layover in cold ass Denver. Whatever we made it.
As for activity and tour planning, the girls and I had a shared Google Doc that had all of our flight and hotel info plus links to places, restaurants, tours, clubs etc that we had found and had some interest in. I am a huge fan of Google Docs, especially for group trips. Gives a central spot for all of the data and for planning. I will cover what actually happened in Hawaii in a trip Summary post and do separate restaurant and Tour posts. But to give an overview of our planning we decided on The Premier Movie Tour at Kualoa Ranch, they have many other tours also like ziplining, ATVs, horseback etc. We also wanted to do a private island tour to the North Shore. My first time in Hawaii, Nikki and I did a group tour not booked with the cruise line but through Roberts Hawaii. It was a special shore tour they offered to cruise ship passengers as a condensed Island Circle Tour. (They actually offered a special for cruisers where you could get a reduced price the more tours you booked with them so I think we booked tours for 3 of the 5 ports and got a great price. But they also do tours for people staying on the island that aren't as pressed for time.) Our guide was great and I would recommend them if you are not wanting or willing to pay for a private tour.
When Tey and I went, we did a private tour, which we enjoyed better as we did not feel like we were being herded on and off the bus like cattle and we got more of a say in what we saw and how long we got to stay at each spot. Plus go to see more local spots not just tourist traps. That time we used Escape Waikiki Tours. The owner and only tour guide, Kevin, is great. A very nice guy and he played paparazzi for us and then sent us a file with a tons of photos of us at amazing vistas around the island. I waited too late to book Kevin this time so sadly he was booked so I researched and found another company that does private tours - Oahu Private Tours. You will find out all about them in a future post, but it was amazing. While Kevin was really good and I have sung his praises for the last 2.5 years, this one was a bit better, and it cost less. You really can't go wrong with either company though. Just Oahu Private Tours has about 4 guides, including the owner - who we had, so they may have more availability than Escape Waikiki.
The girls knew they wanted to check out Ala Moana Mall, which has over 350 stores and restaurants over 4 floors. It is the world's largest open-air shopping center and the 9th largest mall of any type in America. We also talked about renting a cabana by the Tapa Tower pool one day of the trip and picked out a couple of other spots we wanted to check out. The only other thing we actually booked before leaving was a nice dinner at Top of Waikiki. Which is a farm to table spinning restaurant with stunning views. We wanted to do a luau but ran out of time trying to decide on one before we left for Hawaii, so decided to pick one once there....stay tuned to see what happened with that!
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| El kiddo and niece in "Jurassic Valley" of Kualoa Ranch |
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