riofriotex

Hi - I'm considering CV for me & mom, but we're in port just 1p-6p and I'm concerned about time... I've read every post above, and did't see anyone say how long one loop around takes on CV. I did see that the conch train is about 90 minutes.

 

Could someone please advise the time for 1 loop on on CV? The last pick-up on CV is apparently 4:30, so we'd have just 3 hours or so.

Would we do better to take the train instead, then just wander Duval, etc., on foot?

Any suggestions most appreciated. :)

Thanks!

We were in Key West on January 3 from 12-5. We had NO problems taking the CityView Trolley all the way around in that hour, AND that included getting off and walking around at three stops, and waiting for another trolley to come to get back on. Plus we had time at the end of the loop to walk around some more. My husband has some health issues so the trolley was a great way to get around to see some things without as much walking.

Just to give you an idea - the time stamp on the first photo I took after boarding the trolley was 12:18 PM. The first photo I took after going all the way around, including getting off and back on at three stops along the way (one of those stops was to eat Key Lime Pie), was at 3:10 PM - and that picture was taken after a little shopping, so the round trip probably ended a bit sooner. Looking at the time stamps for photos we took in between, at our stops - I would say we were off the trolley for almost two hours - so I am thinking the round trip only takes an hour at most - definitely NOT two hours!

I personally would recommend the CityView trolley - you could make a complete trip around for an overview tour if you wanted first, then go back around to get off at any places that interested you (or just walk to them if they are close enough).

Magic is scheduled to dock at The Westin Hotel pier (from 1130-600pm) which is an easy walk off and everything will be open as usual on Sunday.

 

Mike:)

Thanks, Mike, to you and others who provided great advice here! Looking forward to a great day in Key West!

We'll be arriving on the Disney Magic on Sunday, January 6. Can you tell me where they dock?

Also - are any of the sights closed on Sundays? We're supposed to be in port 12:30 to 5:30.

Thanks for all the good advice here!

Donna, I'm so sorry about your mother. I'm glad you were able to share your Hawaiian adventure with her as you have with us before she passed on.

We have a starboard balcony cabin on Deck 9 so I'm debating whether or not I should watch the lava sailby from Deck 14, as you did, or just from my own balcony. Do you think I'll be missing out on anything if we stick to our balcony?

 

Did you go to the same place for the Napali Sailby?

I don't think you'll miss anything. We had a starboard balcony cabin on deck 8. I liked being able to watch the lava sailby in my bathrobe and go to bed right afterwards as I was exhausted!

For the Na Pali sailby, my dad and I went up to deck 12 for the first half, also hoping to hear the narration (why NCL doesn't broadcast it on the TV, I don't know), but we could not hear. Went back down to my cabin to watch after the ship turned around. It does go faster after turning around, but Na Pali sailby happens earlier so we did not mind going up to watch a while first.

We drove back to the Anchor Cover shopping center and paid $20 to park for the night, and then we waited for the ships shuttle, and waited, and waited…

This part really cracked me up, because y'all are obviously in good shape and it's a very easy walk from Anchor Cove back to the ship. :D

Although I realize you didn't take the Thrifty shuttle from the Waikiki drop-off location do you know whether there was a charge and, if so, how much it might have been?:confused:

The Thrifty shuttle is free for Thrifty customers. However, when I picked up my car at the airport location, I was told that the shuttle does not go to the Waikiki location regularly as it does at the airport location; there would be a longer wait. Between that and having to pay a $30 drop charge for picking it up at the airport and dropping it off at Waikiki, we opted to return our car to the airport location and take the shuttle from the pier from there. The pier is pretty equidistant from both points, and between the possibility of a longer wait and the bad traffic in Waikiki and downtown, it also made more sense to us to use the airport.

Our hotel (Aston Waikiki Circle) held our luggage at no charge while we went to Pearl Harbor and Punchbowl that morning (and stopped at a Walmart), then we picked up our bags, dropped my parents and aunt and all our bags off at the pier around 3 PM. My husband and I returned the Thrifty rental car at the airport and took their shuttle back to the pier, arriving about 4 PM. As we are Latitudes members, it was a breeze boarding the ship, we got our bags into our rooms, and made it to our safety drill at 4:30.

OK, so what happened to the palm frond fish? Or was that another day?

It was about a 45 minute drive to Lahaina. I have heard parking can be a problem in Lahaina but we didn't have any problems. When we got to Lahaina we stayed on Hwy 30 until we got to Papalaua St, where we turned left. Hilo Hatties is on the corner at the next intersection (Papalaua and Wainee St.) Just past Hatties you can turn right into the parking lot. Hatties will validate your parking ticket. Actually I think any shop in the center will validate. This was the first Hilo Hatties that we had been in and I was not that impressed. They do give everyone coming in the door a shell lei and there are samples. There prices weren't any better than I'd seen in other places. In fact we went in some of the other shops and saw some of the exact same clothing for less. I did buy another ornament, some Christmas cards and calendars for stocking stuffers. I had a coupon for a free sarong or mug with a $15 purchase. I took the sarong to give to my niece. Our travel agent had given us coupons for a free towel with a $30 purchase and DFW got that. It was an inexpensive, thin towel. After Hatties we wondered in a couple of the other shops and over to the Hard Rock Cafe. DH and I are Hard Rock fans. We try to collect pins and beach towels from Hard Rocks in all the places we visit. The Lahaina HR had a nice pin with a Honu on it, but unfortunately their beach towel was the same exact design as the one we got in Cozumel last year. We did get shirts for DH and our son. We enjoyed a drink while looking out at the water and had a nice visit with some of the other patrons. By the time we finished our drinks it was almost time to start back to the ship and we hadn't even gotten to walk down Front St. So we sent DH back to get the car, while DFW and I started off for a power walk down Front St. DFH would go with us and stay on the sidewalk so that when DH pulled up, DFH could pull us out of whatever shop we were in. We really didn't have any time to give any of the shops more than a quick look through the window. Before we knew it DH was pulling up and we were headed back to Kahului. If we ever make it back to Maui, we definitely want to spend more time in Lahaina.

I'm thinking that if one skipped Hilo Hattie's and the Hard Rock Cafe, there would probably be more time to explore the stores along Front Street. ;)

I tried the way to described to do the word link, but do not see a link symbol above the message box. I use Google Chrome. Does that make a difference?:confused:

Don't know if that makes any difference or not, Ginny, but FWIW I use Mozilla Firefox. There are all kinds of tools that pop up for editing text, inserting images, etc. above the message box; smilies to the right, and post icons below the message box.

how to make a word be a link, like riofrio does in her posts. That's much cooler than the way I do it which is just posting an entire link.

Select the word or words by highlighting it/them, then click the link symbol in the tools just above the message box, then enter your URL in the box that appears. I usually have another window open with the page I'm linking to, so I can just copy the URL from there and paste it in to the box.

For example, here are photos from the first half of our Hawaii cruise.

Halfway to Hana Stand

Once you come off the Ke’anai Penisula and turn left back on the highway, you will come to the Halfway to Hana stand pretty quickly on your right. We stopped here to buy some of their world famous banana bread and to eat our lunch on one of their picnic tables. I was not that impressed. There are no competing businesses in the area, so they have the banana bread market covered I guess. They also have sodas, chips, and coconut candy. NOTE - They don’t have bathrooms. We bought some banana bread, a small bag of coconut candy chips, and a post card and it was $13. Definitely overpriced I thought. The bread and candy weren’t bad, but they weren’t to die for either. We wound up throwing both away when we packed to go home. It was pleasant to eat our picnic there. They have two tables under a cover and one that is not.

The bold, italicized sentence above is my emphasis. I don't think this is where we stopped. We stopped at the Ke'anae Landing Fruit Stand which is near the boat landing near the entrance to the Ke'anae Peninsula, and features Aunt Sandy's banana bread. Our private tour guide, Greg, said it was the best on Maui. We bought two loaves right out of the oven. Now, my mom makes a mean banana bread, and I don't think this was better than hers, but it did taste good on a cool, rainy day!

I have a multi-pocket folder, and each pocket has an envelop pocket on front of it. It's kind of hard to explain but basically there is a pocket and a half for each day. (I may take a picture of it and post later.) In each day's pocket I keep that day's itinerary along with any confirmations, tickets, maps & directions, etc that we may need for the day. In the envelope pocket I put anything collected during the day - ticket stubbs, brochures, receipts, key cards, business cards, etc. So when I get home and go back through the folder, it is easier to remember what we did when.

I do something very similar. I buy two-pocket folders with fasteners (similar to these except that I usually get the ones made of cardstock that are usually on sale at back-to-school time) in different colors, one for each port or destination. I put as much stuff as I can in the three hole fasteners, use one pocket for maps and stuff that won't fit there, and the other pocket for things I collect (although I like your idea, kwbound, of sticking a large envelope back there for that, or at least for the little stuff). Just wanted to offer an alternative for those who might have trouble finding what you use.

Also, when taking photos it helps if you take a lot of pictures of signs - town signs, store signs, museum signs, etc. If you take a sign picture indicating the location you are in first, and then pics of that location, then all of your photos should be in order and it is easier to remember where each photo was taken.

I do this too. It also saves a lot of time in my photo albums/scrapbooks later as a lot of the info I might put in captions is in the photo.

At the end of each day I try to make notes on the itinerary about the day, but usually after the first day or two I'm either too busy or too tired to make too many notes.

I did all the driving so was not able to take as I would have liked (and like you was very tired at the end of each day), but was blessed with a mother who took copious notes throughout our Hawaii cruise!

Really appreciating your review and regretting now that I did not have the time to write up one as detailed and interesting as yours has been!

Question - was there a particular reason your cruise went to Hilo first rather than Maui, as most of the PoA cruises do? I know the order gets changed up around the time of the Ironman World Championship in Kona - was that the case for your cruise?

Hey riofrio - Just want to say thanks to you for all the information you've posted the last few months. You've provide a lot of information that I'm sure helped many.

 

We're planning a few days on the Frio this summer...staying at Neal's in Concan. We're looking forward to it.

Ahh, Neal's - lots of good memories there! Have fun!!!

Loving your review - the part about Homer is hilarious! Great photos, thanks for sharing!

I've been looking at the Aston Waikiki Circle Hotel but have read reviews that indicate the rooms are very small. I'm not sure this really matters but I don't want to be tripping over the bed either. Would love your opinion on the room sizes.

The rooms ARE very small, but we weren't tripping over the beds. We stayed there May 21, one night pre-cruise. We got an ocean front room for $120. I loved being able to look out the big sliding glass window-door and watch surfers, and sit out on the little balcony early the next morning, and walk across the street that same early morning to the beach and go for a swim (hotel provided beach towel).

We all (our group had three ocean-front rooms) thought this hotel was just fine for a one-night stay. We got in fairly late on that Friday (I know it was after 6 PM) and walked a few blocks down to Tiki's for dinner. We weren't all that hungry (it was 5 hours later in our home time zone!) so we all had some pupus, but they were great.

I was also very pleased because parking was not that expensive ($12, although at times they run out of space) AND they stored our bags for free after we checked out the next morning, while we went to Pearl Harbor.

The rooms had two double beds, a shower (no tub) in the bathroom (not a problem for me), and a small desk area with a small fridge in the room. The window unit AC was a bit noisy, but then being right on Kalakaua Avenue is noisy, until at least 2 AM! We were tired from our travels though and slept fine.

If you are looking for a resort, this is definitely NOT the place for you, but it was great for us - a taste of Waikiki, great view of and proximity to the beach, all at a very reasonable price.

prices are purposely low because they got ticked off when NCL had bought Polynesian Adventure tours a few years ago.

This isn't that uncommon. Carnival (which owns Holland America Line, Princess Cruises and The Yachts of Seabourn in North America; P&O Cruises, Cunard Line and Ocean Village in the United Kingdom; AIDA in Germany; Costa Cruises in Southern Europe; Iberocruceros in Spain; and P&O Cruises in Australia) also owns Holland America Princess Alaska Tours in Alaska and the Canadian Yukon.

If you are on NCL, they use a totally different tour company. It was Polynesian something . . .

Polynesian Adventure Tours. NCL OWNS them!;)