Aloha~! A Photo Trip Report of the POA - 10/11/14

[Miicah]

I had a horseback riding excursion booked through the ship. I went once back in middle school and I really enjoyed it so I thought that it would be cool to try again, especially with such beautiful scenery to pass by here.

 

Cool signs inside the pier building while we were waiting in our designated spots (there were several tours from the ship waiting in separate areas here).

 

 

 

They assign you horses based on your experience, and though they say that riding a horse at least once makes you a intermediate level instead of a complete novice, I feel like I should’ve picked novice because my horse (named Diamond) just took advantage of me, hahaha. She kept stopping to eat the plants and I had a hard time keeping her in check, haha. I know I’m rather meek but I didn’t think the horse would know it too, oh man, haha.

 

 

 

How awesome is it that the bird is on the horse? Haha :p

 

[Miicah]

 

 

 

 

 

This must’ve been a designated photo stop, as our guide took everyone’s cameras and took a picture of them here, which I thought was especially nice for those like me who were alone and didn’t have someone else to take a picture of them while on a horse.

 

[Miicah]

 

 

 

 

 

[Miicah]

 

 

 

 

 

One of the members of my group was kind enough to take some pictures of me while we were waiting to get off our horses back at the ranch. Boy did my legs and butt hurt after, haha. Overall it was a nice trip, though they really packed the van—it was pretty tight with four of us sitting at the back (where we barely felt the A/C).

 

[Miicah]

The towel animal I saw when I returned back to our cabin. I had lunch with my mom as I mentioned earlier, than I just took some more pictures (the sky was clearing up a bit by then) before heading back to the cabin to chill.

 

 

 

 

 

[Miicah]

Our daily treat from our butler Jose~!

 

 

At 2:30PM I attended the Arts & Crafts sessions at the Pinks Lounge and made this beaded bookmark! My mom was surprisingly jealous when I showed her my handiwork, haha. I think she really wanted to do some arts and crafts.

 

 

Later I bought us dessert from Carlo’s Bake Shop—some cupcakes! The service was kinda slow because the same people also serve the people at the adjoining bar, but the cupcakes were good. I think I’d have to visit the real thing in New York to see what the fuss is all about, though.

 

 

[Miicah]

Tonight for dinner I booked us at Teppanyaki (which I believe I mentioned earlier). I picked this day because Thursday was the big luau day, and I figured with most of the people there it wouldn’t be so crowded in here (which it wasn’t—the other table was empty, though apparently they were booked for later in the night). I was so confused at first, because Teppanyaki is actually inside the East Meets West restaurant (as is the sushi bar), and I thought it was its own separate venue.

 

I was a little disappointed our chef wasn’t actually Japanese, but he was Filipino so that was just as good, haha. I learned that I don’t like well-done meat, as it was too tough for me to chew, haha. It was a very pleasant and interesting experience, I can understand what all the hype is about. I definitely want to try it again on land here.

 

 

 

 

The menus had instructions where you can make some origami! Most of us had this snake but one had a swan! I wish I had that one.

 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2015 by Miicah

[Miicah]

 

 

 

[YOUTUBE]j6vOM9xsCko[/YOUTUBE]

 

Afterwards we went to the Crew Talent Show. It was nice to see the ones behind the scenes take center stage!

 

Our growing towel animal collection!

 

 

 

That’s it for this day! More to come!

[cruizinrican]

This was a trip of many firsts—first cruise, first time with NCL, first time in Hawaii—and now my first attempt in trying to write a review for it all! I've been so inspired by the multitude of reviews that I've read on this site, and most of them weren't even about the POA or NCL (I was just really excited that I read anything I could get my hands on, haha), which just further made me want to write this because the Pride of America deserves some love.

 

Just a warning that this report will include my entire vacation, meaning I will also cover the one-week pre-cruise stay we had in Oahu. I figured most people going on the cruise would spend a few days pre- or post-cruise, and that maybe what I experienced could help others in their planning. So if you're hoping for just the cruise portion you should probably skip to here [insert link when I get there :p].

 

For some background info, I turned 27 on this trip (the day right before embarkation), travelling with my mom, who's in her 50's, and we're from Canada. As I mentioned before, this was our first cruise, and we haven't had a vacation since 2009, so we were severely overdue on one. We always joked that “this'll be the year we take a vacation”, and though every year passed without us taking one because money was always tight, I was fiercely determined to make it happen this year!

 

The question now was...where to?

 

Funnily enough, neither Hawaii nor a cruise was my first choice when I first decided that we would be taking a vacation this year. My first choice was actually Bora Bora, followed by Maui, Hawaii and then Australia, but my mom ruled out the first and last option because my initial research showed that Maui was the cheapest of the bunch. I guess she was having pity on me since I was the one who was going to be paying everything for the both of us, haha. With a destination chosen, I went to the bookstore and bought a couple of travel books in my excitement, and upon reading those my mom learned there were cruises that go to Hawaii. She was so taken with the idea that our land trip was now going to be a sea trip.

 

Although the book mentioned Carnival, HAL and Princess as cruiselines that travelled to Hawaii, NCL was the only one that started and ended in Hawaii, and since that was what we wanted to focus on, NCL was the cruise line we ended up choosing. It was ironic, because after all was said and done, this route actually ended up costing me more than that trip to Bora Bora would've, haha (though we did somehow jump from it being a one week vacation to two somewhere in all the planning so that might've messed things up a bit :rolleyes:).

 

That's all I can think of right now, so without further ado, let's get started!

 

 

Great start, but for some reason I can't see any of your pictures?! :( I feel like I'm really missing out.

Edited February 21, 2015 by cruizinrican

[fayerussell]

Thanks for keeping at the review, it's great!! We are taking my mom on the poa in 4 weeks-so excited!!! Love the pic of u and ur mom on the turtle! Lol. My husband and I did the same one 4 years ago! We are getting a suite for first time. Did you ask butler for any special requests? Want to utilize our suite perks as much as possible! :)

[relic2]

Micah, your Philippine chef was better than many Japanese chefs I have had on land. Very nice pictures and you are giving me good ideas for next January. Glad you are back!

[Miicah]

Great start, but for some reason I can't see any of your pictures?! :( I feel like I'm really missing out.

 

Hiya! Yeah, it seems I've exceeded my free bandwidth on Photobucket again so most of my pictures are sorta out until my cycle restarts on March 6th :( So sorry about that! I wish the forums had an option to edit posts more than 20 minutes after.

 

Thanks for keeping at the review, it's great!! We are taking my mom on the poa in 4 weeks-so excited!!! Love the pic of u and ur mom on the turtle! Lol. My husband and I did the same one 4 years ago! We are getting a suite for first time. Did you ask butler for any special requests? Want to utilize our suite perks as much as possible! :)

 

Thank you for continuing to read the review :) Haha, yeah, we liked a lot of the green screen pictures, haha, definitely fun. But yay for a suite! It will definitely spoil you, haha. I don't think we utilized Jose as much as we could have (lucky him, haha)! Other than booking the specialty restaurants, that was pretty much it-- though I think we should've asked for different daily treats, since we didn't like those meat ones too much. Most of the requests that we did have was taken care of by our room steward Edwin.

[Miicah]

Micah, your Philippine chef was better than many Japanese chefs I have had on land. Very nice pictures and you are giving me good ideas for next January. Glad you are back!

 

Is that so? Awn, that's too bad :( But yeah, he was awesome. Definitely made me laugh, and he gave us the extra rice, haha. Thanks so much for coming back to read the review, and happy to give you some ideas!

[kgymn]

I'm caught up I'm caught up! I've enjoyed the few pictures I have been able to see. We are planning on booking the April 4th sailing next week (just waiting to confirm time off and get paid!) so it's a huge help with deciding which excursions etc we will want to do.

 

Is there any way you could put the photobucket pictures on another site and just link to the album? Then we can at least see them, if not in context with the review.

 

My husband and I live on Oahu so we're excited to take a cruise from our home port. If you do get back here, there really are some GREAT beaches far superior to Waikiki, with crystal clear water most days, and soft white sand without rocks in the water.

 

Also I agree with the previous poster about Waianae and the west side of Oahu, it isn't nearly as bad as it has a reputation for. The most dangerous things you can do on Oahu are go swimming (the waves and currents can be strong/dangerous) or go hiking (people get lost!) but other people aren't going to bother you much, just as long as you keep an eye on your stuff you're usually just fine.

 

Anyways I look forward to the remainder of your review! I remember the weekend you pulled back in, I was having a party that weekend, a nice rainy outer bands of the hurricane party LOL I am glad the volcano won that battle but very sad how hard it hit Puna as the volcano held it there while it weakened!

 

~Katy

[Lorey2007]

So glad you're back I'm having a great Saturday evening reading your review. Your pictures did come back and then a couple of days ago I was going to check the pictures you had of your suite and they were gone again I'll have to check next month. I am hoping to be able to upgrade to a SG suite in few days, do you remember what category your suite was?

[Notion_of_the_Ocean]

Hey miicah... almost all of your photos are down with a photobucket message about bandwidth displaying. You may want to check that out. Thanks and great review!

[kgymn]

Hey miicah... almost all of your photos are down with a photobucket message about bandwidth displaying. You may want to check that out. Thanks and great review!

 

There have been a few posts addressing this in the thread, there is nothing they can do about it but wait for the bandwidth limit to start over at the beginning of each month.

 

~Katy

[Miicah]

I'm caught up I'm caught up! I've enjoyed the few pictures I have been able to see. We are planning on booking the April 4th sailing next week (just waiting to confirm time off and get paid!) so it's a huge help with deciding which excursions etc we will want to do.

 

Is there any way you could put the photobucket pictures on another site and just link to the album? Then we can at least see them, if not in context with the review.

 

My husband and I live on Oahu so we're excited to take a cruise from our home port. If you do get back here, there really are some GREAT beaches far superior to Waikiki, with crystal clear water most days, and soft white sand without rocks in the water.

 

Also I agree with the previous poster about Waianae and the west side of Oahu, it isn't nearly as bad as it has a reputation for. The most dangerous things you can do on Oahu are go swimming (the waves and currents can be strong/dangerous) or go hiking (people get lost!) but other people aren't going to bother you much, just as long as you keep an eye on your stuff you're usually just fine.

 

Anyways I look forward to the remainder of your review! I remember the weekend you pulled back in, I was having a party that weekend, a nice rainy outer bands of the hurricane party LOL I am glad the volcano won that battle but very sad how hard it hit Puna as the volcano held it there while it weakened!

 

~Katy

 

Yay for being caught up! I'm glad you battled through it despite the majority of pictures not being available at the moment. I'm excited for you booking an upcoming sailing! Happy to help any way I can :)

 

I could certainly try and upload all the photobucket photos somewhere else and just link the album if you'd like. It might take a while since some days have at least 100 photos, but I'll get to work on it!

 

That's so awesome that you and your husband live in Oahu! It must nice! Hopefully the novelty of being in such a beautiful tourist place doesn't wear away! :p OMG, it'd be awesome to visit some real beaches without all the rocks cutting me up, haha.

 

It's so strange that all the private tour guides I spoke to just refused to go to the West end, but locals like you and AlohaPride say it isn't so bad. I gotta find more local tour guides like you guys, haha.

 

Thanks so much for reading! LOL about the party that weekend we returned. The volcano beat the hurricane, was it? I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing :p

[Miicah]

So glad you're back I'm having a great Saturday evening reading your review. Your pictures did come back and then a couple of days ago I was going to check the pictures you had of your suite and they were gone again I'll have to check next month. I am hoping to be able to upgrade to a SG suite in few days, do you remember what category your suite was?

 

Thank you for always coming back for more, Lorey :) It's nice to know the cycle does restart again. Hopefully it'll last longer this time around :o I'll remember for next time not to link all my photos from the same place :rolleyes: The category of my suite was a SE.

 

Hey miicah... almost all of your photos are down with a photobucket message about bandwidth displaying. You may want to check that out. Thanks and great review!

 

Yeah, as Katy mentioned, I am aware of this. It's the second month now where I've exceeded my free bandwidth on Photobucket. There's nothing I can do unless you wanna pay for an account for me :p And I can't edit the posts with other links so it's sorta stuck like that until the cycle restarts. It's been requested that I link to an album of them so I'm currently working on that. Thanks ^_^

[kgymn]

Yay for being caught up! I'm glad you battled through it despite the majority of pictures not being available at the moment. I'm excited for you booking an upcoming sailing! Happy to help any way I can :)

 

I could certainly try and upload all the photobucket photos somewhere else and just link the album if you'd like. It might take a while since some days have at least 100 photos, but I'll get to work on it!

 

That's so awesome that you and your husband live in Oahu! It must nice! Hopefully the novelty of being in such a beautiful tourist place doesn't wear away! :p OMG, it'd be awesome to visit some real beaches without all the rocks cutting me up, haha.

 

It's so strange that all the private tour guides I spoke to just refused to go to the West end, but locals like you and AlohaPride say it isn't so bad. I gotta find more local tour guides like you guys, haha.

 

Thanks so much for reading! LOL about the party that weekend we returned. The volcano beat the hurricane, was it? I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing :p

 

It was VERY good for most of the state, but quite bad for Puna on the Big Island. The volcano is so tall, it blocked the hurricane from staying on its path. It concentrated a bunch of the rain and wind in Puna until it just weakened the system significantly and it finally got past. Kept it weak enough and far enough off shore to not cause any major damage elsewhere. Puna took a bullet for the rest of us.

 

And I doubt the beauty will wear off. I stay away from most touristy places anyways.

 

If you get back here, Lanikai is one of the most famous beaches on Oahu and has literally powder sand. There's some reef heads off certain parts, once you go out a little, but for the most part the bottom is sandy. Kailua Beach Park down the road has the same sand and a sandy bottom that seems to just go on for DAYS. Waimanalo, too! All on the east (windward) side. The west side has some nice ones that are mostly sandy, with some loose rocks/coral when the waves are of certain size but it tends to stay in patches.

 

~Katy

[kgymn]

On a completely unrelated note, I saw that you were making fun of US winters. There's plenty of difficult winter places- I grew up outside Syracuse and let me tell you, winter SOUTH and EAST of Lake Ontario is so. much. worse. than just north of it. Just saying....lake effect. All the lake effect.

 

~Katy

[Miicah]

There have been a few posts addressing this in the thread, there is nothing they can do about it but wait for the bandwidth limit to start over at the beginning of each month.

 

~Katy

 

After uploading the first day somewhere else, I just realized I could just link to the original Photobucket album and save myself from uploading everything again, haha. Here are the links!

 

Hawaii 2014 10-04-14 Day 1

Hawaii 2014 10-05-14 Day 2

Hawaii 2014 10-06-14 Day 3

Hawaii 2014 10-07-14 Day 4

Hawaii 2014 10-08-14 Day 5

Hawaii 2014 10-09-14 Day 6

Hawaii 2014 10-10-14 Day 7

Hawaii 2014 10-11-14 Day 8

Hawaii 2014 10-12-14 Day 9

Hawaii 2014 10-13-14 Day 10

Hawaii 2014 10-14-14 Day 11

 

And I get it now! That's why the hurricane was downgraded later, eh? Poor Puna :(

 

That must be the trick in living in tourist-y places, right? Stay away from the tourist-y places lol Gosh I'd love to like get a place somewhere, rent it out until I pay it off and just move in!

 

Thanks for those breach recommendations! I will definitely put it on my to-do list for a second round to Hawaii :D

 

And LOL about the US winters! I didn't mean it too badly? :p I just always hear on the news about such and such city closing its schools with like 10cm and I'm just like...really? XD I mean I'm sure for that area it's probably more than they usually see but I think they'd die if they had to come up here, lol. And y'all used to blame us for your bad winters but now it's you guys blowing it up here this year lol Yes, let's blame Lake Ontario. It's seriously always a lake effect man xD

[kgymn]

After uploading the first day somewhere else, I just realized I could just link to the original Photobucket album and save myself from uploading everything again, haha. Here are the links!

 

Hawaii 2014 10-04-14 Day 1

Hawaii 2014 10-05-14 Day 2

Hawaii 2014 10-06-14 Day 3

Hawaii 2014 10-07-14 Day 4

Hawaii 2014 10-08-14 Day 5

Hawaii 2014 10-09-14 Day 6

Hawaii 2014 10-10-14 Day 7

Hawaii 2014 10-11-14 Day 8

Hawaii 2014 10-12-14 Day 9

Hawaii 2014 10-13-14 Day 10

Hawaii 2014 10-14-14 Day 11

 

And I get it now! That's why the hurricane was downgraded later, eh? Poor Puna :(

 

That must be the trick in living in tourist-y places, right? Stay away from the tourist-y places lol Gosh I'd love to like get a place somewhere, rent it out until I pay it off and just move in!

 

Thanks for those breach recommendations! I will definitely put it on my to-do list for a second round to Hawaii :D

 

And LOL about the US winters! I didn't mean it too badly? :p I just always hear on the news about such and such city closing its schools with like 10cm and I'm just like...really? XD I mean I'm sure for that area it's probably more than they usually see but I think they'd die if they had to come up here, lol. And y'all used to blame us for your bad winters but now it's you guys blowing it up here this year lol Yes, let's blame Lake Ontario. It's seriously always a lake effect man xD

 

YAY! Those links are perfect!!!!!! There goes the rest of my night :D :D :D Thank you thank you!

 

Yeah some parts of the US don't have the infrastructure for snow. We lived in Virginia Beach before this and I remember about 2-3cm would mostly shut it down for 24 hours. More would shut it down for 2-3 days! But those areas don't have enough plows, or sand and salt, and don't even attempt to plow the residential roads. I'll drive any time in Syracuse but snow in Virginia and I stayed off the roads.

 

~Katy

[baseballsandbows]

I am near Nashville, and schools were closed all last week and will be closed tomorrow because of several inches of ice. When this happens in the south, it's not that we just freak out--we don't have the equipment to get rid of it. We have enough plows to clear interstates and some main roads, but the back roads just have to melt. Since we had record lows all week, we were stuck at home with a thick layer of ice on our neighborhood streets. We are in a more rural area, and today is the first day we were able to leave since last Sunday. Even then, our neighbor with four wheel drive had to tow our car down our icy driveway. It's just one big mess with not enough equipment to clear it. But, this probably won't happen again to this magnitude for 10-20 years, so the local governments don't spend the money on equipment that will just sit around unused.

 

LOVING your report! Thank you for doing it!

 

 

Lauren

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

[Miicah]

YAY! Those links are perfect!!!!!! There goes the rest of my night :D :D :D Thank you thank you!

 

Yeah some parts of the US don't have the infrastructure for snow. We lived in Virginia Beach before this and I remember about 2-3cm would mostly shut it down for 24 hours. More would shut it down for 2-3 days! But those areas don't have enough plows, or sand and salt, and don't even attempt to plow the residential roads. I'll drive any time in Syracuse but snow in Virginia and I stayed off the roads.

 

~Katy

 

Yay, glad to hear it! Hope you enjoyed looking through them!

 

Yeah, I figured that's what it was. I'd love to not have to go to work with only a few centimeters falling, so I think I'm more jealous than anything when I said that :p

 

I am near Nashville, and schools were closed all last week and will be closed tomorrow because of several inches of ice. When this happens in the south, it's not that we just freak out--we don't have the equipment to get rid of it. We have enough plows to clear interstates and some main roads, but the back roads just have to melt. Since we had record lows all week, we were stuck at home with a thick layer of ice on our neighborhood streets. We are in a more rural area, and today is the first day we were able to leave since last Sunday. Even then, our neighbor with four wheel drive had to tow our car down our icy driveway. It's just one big mess with not enough equipment to clear it. But, this probably won't happen again to this magnitude for 10-20 years, so the local governments don't spend the money on equipment that will just sit around unused.

 

LOVING your report! Thank you for doing it!

 

 

Lauren

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums mobile app

 

Yeah, I figured that was the reason. Haha, I don't mean any disrespect, I was just joking when I said it, and I was more jealous of it than anything, haha :p I'd love to stay home with that amount of snow ;)

 

But thanks for reading! I'm glad you're enjoying it.