I'm not live but i was there..24 days of voyager of the seas and celebrity solstice

Greetings fellow cruise critic viewers. I am finally getting around to posting a review of our recent trip to the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand (with Hawaii strategically placed in there).

We departed Toronto, Ontario on January 16th and returned on February 23. I am Steve and my wife is Vanda. Come the end of this journey, I will have cruised 20 times and Vanda would be at numero 21. We are both in our early 50's and would be meeting up with our good friends who live in Australia who have also cruised over 24 times. Its a shame we really are not that loyal to one cruise line otherwise we would have had all those great perks the frequent flyers get. We tend to look at the itinerary when deciding what cruise to book. This would be our 2nd cruise with Royal and based on our experience on the Navigator last year, Royal cruises are always a place we now look when thinking about a cruise. If you're interested in a shameless plug, here is my Navigator review. We would spend 24 days between both ships this time.

So as I mentioned above, we departed from Toronto. However, rather than sitting on a plane for over 20 hours we decided the best path to Australia would be through Hawaii. Yep, that's right Hawaii. So what does that mean? Well, our cruises would embark in Sydney and the Solstice would make us leave in Auckland. So, with that in mind, I booked a return flight, Toronto to Honolulu and then a flight from Honolulu to Sydney and then following Solstice we would have another one way flight from Auckland to Honolulu. The beauty of that one was we got to have the same day twice.

So why did we do it this way? A couple of reasons. First off, we love Hawaii. Secondly, between Honolulu and Sydney there is a 20 hour time difference, one day ahead. This helped to eliminate any possible jet lag or at least that what we wanted to think. We would have a total of 8 days in Hawaii, 4 before and 4 following our cruise.

So our original itinerary would be as follows:

Toronto to Hawaii - 4 days

Fly to Sydney to meet up with Voyager of the Seas

Voyager would take us for 10 days as follows:

Noumea, New Caledonia

Mystery Island, Vanuatu

Vila, Vanuatu

Lifou, Loyalty Island

Mare, New Caledonia

We would spend a day in Sydney following this cruise and then board Solstice to the following destinations:

Sydney

Melbourne, Australia

Hobart, Australia (Tasmania)

Milford Sound, New Zealand

Doubtful and Milford Fjords

Dusky Sound, New Zealand

Dunedin, New Zealand

Akaroa, New Zealand

Wellington, New Zealand

Napier, New Zealand

Bay of Islands, New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand

We then we head back to Hawaii.

What you can expect from this review. I will try to answer whatever questions you may have. If you are looking for food pictures...move on, I don't have any (just kidding you don't have to move on). Having said that, I have a ton of pictures to post. Most of the review will be on the scenery. It was spectacular to say the least and my pictures just wont do it justice.

I will do my best to get to this each day. However, it will take me some time to get through close to 32 days of adventure. So please sit back and hopefully enjoy what I have to bring to you. I will get into the meat of this tomorrow but for now here is a little bit of our stop in Hawaii

Our view from the Waikiki Marriott Resort

I'll be back tomorrow to get this thing going.. Cheers until then!

Looking forward to your review.

Ok... I said I would be back the day after I started this but that didn't work out so well. Then I discovered everyone's friend CruiseLifeRick had started a live thread on Symphony so I ended up caught up in that.... Oh well.. I'm here now.

I think where I last left off is that we were about to take off from Toronto for Honolulu. Our pre-flight hotel was at the Delta Toronto Airport and Conference centre hotel. I give this hotel 2 thumbs up. The rooms were large and very clean. The hotel had a great bar and seemed very lively. Once we settled in to the hotel we spent some time at the bar and proceeded to get our vacation groove on! A shot of the bar.

And our room.

As we would be away for close to 6 weeks, we decided the best place to leave our Jeep would be at the Toronto Park n Fly. Which we did. We used the valet service and from the time we dropped the car off to the time we made it through customs (in Toronto you clear US customs before you depart rather than when you arrive) and security it was literally less than 30 minutes. Not a bad start to our journey. Next stop would be Honolulu.

So the flight from Toronto through Chicago to Honolulu was uneventful. Thus, the reason I am writing this I suppose.

We arrived in Honolulu around 2:30 pm. Honolulu slips 6 hours behind our time so we still had some day left but we of course were on 7:30 pm time.

I had arranged for a private pick up at the airport with Go808 Express. They were fantastic. They contacted us as soon as we arrived to let us know where to find them and they were waiting outside. It was a private shuttle and it was $27 total plus tip. Hard to beat!

We were staying at the Marriott Waikiki Resort and Spa. The hotel was beautiful and pretty much every room has some kind of a view. I wouldn't hesitate to stay here again. In fact, we did at the end of the trip.

Some shots of the hotel:

Our Room:

Our View:

We decided to take a little walk to Waikiki Beach which was just across the street.

I just love the lifestyle and laid back atmosphere in Hawaii.

Some more from Waikiki

With that we were calling it a day for the first night in Waikiki.

On day 2 in Waikiki we decided we would rent a car for the day and drive around the island. One of the things I love about Oahu is that Honolulu is everything a city should be but you are mere seconds from paradise. Today we were off to see a little bit of paradise.

We started off with a drive toward Diamond Head and Diamond Head Beach Park.

Loving your review and beautiful pics. Looking forward to more!

So the weather wasn't on our side today and we were in and out of the rain all day. It didn't matter tho' as it was still very warm and well, back home there was snow.

Rain or shine the surfers never stop...

:D

Loving your review and beautiful pics. Looking forward to more!

Thanks for following along...:D:D

Some more from the Diamond Head area....

The flip flop parking lot..

Looking forward to the rest of your review. I am in the process of planning our second trip to Australia/New Zealand. We are booked on Solstice Sydney to Auckland followed by Explorer to the South Pacific Islands. Will have lots of interest in your review of the South Pacific Islands as we will be stopping at all the ports you visited other than Mare.

Our next stop along the road would be the blow hole... however the blow hole just wasn't cooperating this time...

Looking forward to the rest of your review. I am in the process of planning our second trip to Australia/New Zealand. We are booked on Solstice Sydney to Auckland followed by Explorer to the South Pacific Islands. Will have lots of interest in your review of the South Pacific Islands as we will be stopping at all the ports you visited other than Mare.

I will try and answer any questions you may have... a bit of a spoiler alert... our itinerary did change slightly for the South Pacific islands as we found ourselves on Voyager out manoeuvring a cyclone that was trying to mess our trip up. We actually never made it to Mare. We had Luganville, Vanuatu added to replace Mare. That was a fantastic switch.

Hi sayvan.

Bob and Chris from aussie following along. We just got back from a solstice cruise to nz also and loved every minute of it. Looking forward to checking out your great pic review.

CHEERS Bob.:D:D

Our next stop would be at Koko Head and Hanauma Bay Nature Reserve. The scenery around this spot was absolutely stunning. The area is also known for its natural reef and snorkelling. In fact, you have to watch a 5 minute movie before you are allowed down to the bay area. We did snorkel in the rain and I have to admit the water wasn't as clear as we had heard it would be or hoped it would be. I think the weather played a role in that. The area is also very crowded. Close to 3,000 visitors a day we were told. If your looking for a less busy beach, this is not the place. You do have to pay a fee to get into the park. The cost was $7.50 unless you have state ID then its free. The beach was beautiful though. These shots were before he clouds really rolled in.

Over the course of the trip we did a fair amount of snorkelling. This was our first swim for that and we were trying out our new full face masks. I highly recommend these. They take a few minutes to get used to but you can breathe through your nose or mouth.

Courtesy of my GoPro Hero 4 camera here is some snorkel shots. As you can see the coral (although lots of it) wasn't really that great. The water was very murky.

A few more snorkel shots..

As I mentioned earlier the beach was really nice albeit crowded.

Towards Koko Head...

Hi sayvan.

Bob and Chris from aussie following along. We just got back from a solstice cruise to nz also and loved every minute of it. Looking forward to checking out your great pic review.

CHEERS Bob.:D:D

Hey Bob and Chris... Thanks for following along. When were you on Solstice? We got off her on February 17th.

Cheers...

...and then the skies opened up so we decided to pack it up and head back to the car.

There is about a 15 minute walk to get to the bay. Heading down its not bad at all. Heading back up its an exercise program. They do offer a free shuttle if you need or want that.

Once back up we had to take a couple more shots of this beautiful bay. You can see how the sky is already clearing by the time we reached the top.

We then headed back on the road toward the North Shore.

You can see the weather still would not give us a break. But hey, we were in Hawaii so it didn't really matter.

A few miles down the road the weather did start to improve.

Well kinda improved...

A few more shots from our tour around Oahu and then I will call it a day for today.

Chinaman's Hat

We were in Hawaii in July and swam here! :) We also did a tour of Oahu, but started in the other direction. Such a beautiful place. I'm really looking forward to the cruise portion of your review, too.

Heather