Flight landed safely and we got our bags quickly. It is a bit of a walk in Honolulu's airport to get to where you meet your arranged rides. There was a few people there to help you find which mode of transfer you had booked. At the recommendation of many people on Cruise Critic and the Facebook group for fans of the Pride of America, we booked Dang's limo service. Adam and Amy were coming in on a later flight arriving about 2-3 hours after us on Delta (of course since they're coming from Atlanta) so we booked with the same company to pick them up when their flight arrived too. We saw a black limo parked outside and inquired as to whether that was our ride but the driver said Dang's limo service uses white limos and so they aren't here yet. We waited a bit and then finally called the company to let them know we were ready and waiting. A white limo pulled up shortly thereafter and it was a little off putting that the driver didn't bother to even get out of the limo to check whether we were the ones waiting for him. At this point, we were one of the only ones still sitting there. We walked over and confirmed he was meant for us and then watched him force our two large pieces of luggage into the tiny trunk. There was tons of room inside since there was only two of us to put any of the luggage on the seats but the driver wouldn't even consider it. Finally we convinced him to at least put the carry on bag on the seat next to us and he forced the trunk closed around our other two suitcases. There was at least 20 pieces of glassware in this limo but there wasn't even water in any of them. We spent the ride trying to ignore the constant sound of glass rattling while Dad pointed out the landmarks he remembered from when he lived on Oahu. Wish we could have had some conversation with the driver or some sort of local info or advice.
When we booked this cruise, one of the included perks was a free hotel stay the night before the cruise. Back in early summer, we learned that NCL was switching hotels to the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort. We knew we wanted to book extra days ahead of that included night so we could tour Honolulu but when we reached out to NCL for any answers to our planning questions, we were told "You booked with a travel agent, don't ask us, ask them!" Great customer service there NCL. Instead of giving me an answer I know you would have had that would have taken 5 minutes, you insist that I reach out to my travel agent which could take a couple days of playing email or phone tag.
I tried reaching out to Hilton through their customer service online but they said they had no way of confirming whether we had the right Hilton hotel NCL planned to use. Next step was to call the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort and they confirmed that NCL would be using them. However, they couldn't tell what type of room or area of the resort (think small city) we'd be booked in for that one night as according to the woman I talked to, NCL doesn't send them over the list of rooms they'll need until at least a week before needing them. I asked if it was possible to ensure that we wouldn't have to pack up and move rooms if we booked these extra nights and was told that the only option would be to list our "request" in the special notes section when making the reservation for those other nights online. Knowing that NCL would surely go for the cheapest most basic room option (known as Resort View in anything other than Ali'i or Rainbow towers) I used Retailmenot.com's newer cash back feature to book through Hilton's website while logged in as Dad's Hilton Honors account. I booked a 2 queen bed resort view room for Dad and I but when I went to book a single king size bed resort view room for Adam and Amy, they were now all sold out. We ended up having to book a 2 queen bed room for them as well. The resort offered the chance to get a food/drink discount coupon for use on the property if you shared to a friend's email that you'd booked with them.
Unfortunately, the resort is such a busy place, they make any public transportation park just inside the entrance whereas personal cars can pull up to the top of the driveway to unload. We retrieved our luggage, bid goodbye to our limo driver, and followed his directions to go up the hill to the open air lobby to check in. They had separate check in desks for those who'd completed digital check in, those with Hilton Honors, and one for basically everybody else. We managed to arrive right around the 3PM check in time so even the Hilton Honors line we got into was long. Dad didn't want me to check in digitally because he'd hoped we'd be able to upgrade our rooms at the desk. They did have employees walking up and down the lines making sure everyone was in the right line. Our line moved the slowest and once it was our turn, we realized that it was because of the less than stellar employee assigned to our desk. She went to look up our booking on her computer and just kept staring at the screen like she was hypnotized. She'd type or move the mouse around every once in a while and mumble something about things being messed up. Dad mentioned wanting to upgrade and she said it was possible but then still put us in the resort view rooms we booked. We asked about being able to check in for Adam and Amy since the room was booked under Dad's name as the primary person and I would not have been surprised to see smoke start coming out of her ears trying to figure out how to do that. She confirmed that she was able to check us all in and gave us a little brochure packet that held our room keys, towel cards, vouchers for DVD rentals, vouchers for our free bottles of water as Hilton Honors members, and our included internet password on a sticker. She showed us on a map of the resort how to find the NCL desk (just around the corner to the right of the check in desk past the first few shops) and directed us both to the bellman and the concierge desk where we could turn in our free water bottle vouchers. We confirmed that we'd be able to stay in these same rooms for the entire time up until the cruise.
Our next step after 45 minutes of waiting for this check in agent's head to start rotating 360 degrees and spewing pea soup, was to head over to the bellman's podium. They called for someone right away and we decided to trust them with our carry on bag as well. Relieved of that burden, we soon realized that while we'd checked in for everyone, the employee only gave us the room key packet for our own room. When we returned to her to point that out, she was shocked to think we'd have wanted their keys too. No we just thought we'd save them the trouble of waiting in line to check in only to have them wait in line to pick up their keys. I'm curious as to whether she would have let us even check in for Adam and Amy if we hadn't booked Dad as the primary name on both rooms. Now with two room packets, we headed over to the concierge desk and cashed in everyone's vouchers for water bottles. Since our large request finished off the current box the small water bottles come in, we asked to have the box to carry the bottles to our room. We had both been assigned rooms in Diamond Head Tower but on different floors. Each tower's lobby has a ceiling obviously but the doorways to leave the lobby are completely open to the elements as was most of the businesses on the property. Good for airflow, bad for avoiding birds who have learned that where there are lots of people, there is lots of dropped crumbs. The birds have also learned to become quite aggressive as employees constantly try and shoo them away by any means necessary.
We stood by the bellman's desk trying to figure out the map the agent had given us to find Diamond Head tower. A bellman took pity on our confused selves and asked if we planned to drive there when we mentioned looking for the tower. We said no and he redirected us to the short walkway from the lobby to the towers. The map makes everything look so far apart but our trek was really only a 5 minute walk in the opposite direction from the front desk and along a path that winds past the smaller pool and field where they host hula classes and morning yoga. It doesn't take too long to get your bearings once you learn how to get to all the main places but you'd definitely need at least a week of staying there to check out everything on the property. I left Dad to relax in the room while I sought out the NCL hospitality desk where we'd been instructed to visit and pick up our transfer information and extra luggage tags. While it turns out there were many ship transfers running every 15 minutes on embarkation day, we'd been assigned the 11:45AM time slot with a bag pickup from our hotel room by 11AM.
We reached out to Adam once we had arrived in our hotel room and told them that we'd checked in for them and to come find us upon arrival to get their keys. It turns out Dang's limo service had sent an SUV for them which was for the best as they'd brought 6 pieces of luggage. When they arrived at the hotel, they left their checked luggage with the bellman and had been given a card to call them when they knew what room to bring the luggage to. After knocking on the wrong door at first, they finally called us and asked what our correct room number was. They had flown over in the Delta One pod style seats and found it a much more comfortable but still long flight. We went over our plans for our time in Honolulu and settled on a time to meet up for dinner at the steak and seafood restaurant at the resort known as Bali Steak & Seafood once everyone got settled in their rooms. Once Adam and Amy got to their room, they weren't happy that it wasn't a king size bed and complained to the front desk about switching rooms. They were immediately put into a king size bed room a couple floors down from their original room so I'm not sure why it wouldn't let me book that in the first place for them.
The shower did have a solid long hand rail and a showerhead that could be raised, lowered, pivoted, or even taken down off and used as a handheld.
I often will rely on hotel or cruise ship provided toiletries (hey they're free!) and these from the Anuenue shop on property worked really well.
Our little wet bar area just outside the bathroom. That cabinet under the sink held the mini fridge. We only ever kept our water bottles in there but it worked fine. We did have to lay them on their sides to fit as the fridge was mostly stacked shelves. It won't fit any wine bottles or larger water/soda bottles standing up. It stayed cold well enough that I'd have felt safe keeping any perishable snacks or to go meals in there. Our hotel lobby had a "sundries" style shop with basic convenience store items as well as souvenirs. There is also the infamous ABC store a short walk past the lobby. They told each customer to keep our receipts because we could win some trinket if we spent at least $100 in their store alone by the end of our stay.
I may just be a little cruise ship spoiled. I instinctively checked that wicker wrapped ice bucket in hopes that they'd left us ice as we downed several glasses of ice water trying to cool down that first day.
We ended up in a connecting room. Never been a fan of connecting rooms when you don't know the people in the other room. We could hear their TV on occasion and their "lively discussion" on the balcony sounded so close I had to pop out and see if our balconies were connected. Thankfully the wall between our two rooms extends out to the balcony railing so there is at least some visual privacy.
The closet was on the other side of the wall where the shower sits in the bathroom. We did use the safe and at one point ending up searching the room for a pack of Dad's meds only to discover that he'd had it in his pocket along with his wallet so when he pulled out his wallet to put it back in the safe, he'd put his meds in the safe too. The closet was tough to use though because there was just barely enough space to walk between it and the bed to get into bed. The sliding door only provided as much room to reach in as shown. Dad hung up the few dressier clothes he'd brought but all I bothered doing was hanging up my jeans when I switched to wearing shorts.
There's a PlayStation in the center cabinet below the TV so that's how you play any games or DVDs you may choose to rent with your provided cards. For the balcony, the sheer curtain is fully drawn across so you'd still get plenty of natural light. There's an outlet on the side of the desk, one by the nightstand between the two beds, and one close to the floor on the wall outside the bathroom. We used that one for charging my camera battery mostly.
Dad found it funny that we had just three pillows each.
It's the great return of the CPAP machine! We did switch beds after the first night because Dad was used to how the machine's cords lay while he's sleeping when he sleeps on the left side of the bed at home. We found out later that Adam and Amy spent a good bit of their time before we met for dinner scouring the resort and neighboring area for distilled water to put in their CPAP machines. They came up empty and settled for the same bottled water Dad had been using all along. Side note: this was our first time traveling with a CPAP machine prompting the need for a full extra suitcase as a carry on. Usually we just have our medications, phones, and tablets in a laptop carrying bag and my camera in its own carrying bag. Dad was surprised that TSA had no issue with the machine when they scanned our bags.
A funny story about that small black alarm clock/ipod dock on the nightstand - When we arrived to the room for the first time, that clock was not even plugged in. To reach the plug (Dad used the one on the lamp base for his CPAP) meant for the clock, you'd have to move the bed out from the wall. We called down to the front desk to ask that someone come in and set our clock before leaving for our tour the 2nd day. I like to be able to see what time it is when I wake up in the middle of the night so this first night I kept my watch facing me on the nightstand. When we came back we found that the clock had been plugged in and was working but it had been set for a different time zone! Thanks to the included internet Dad looked up the clock model's instruction manual on his tablet and then got thoroughly confused because we couldn't see any reset button on the clock in order to follow the instructions in the manual. Turns out, the hotel had screwed on a back panel that only covered the missing reset button to keep their customers from changing the clock. Dad dug out his Leatherman tool (yes it always goes in checked luggage) and used it to unscrew the panel, reset the clock, and screwed the panel back in place.
Not too shabby a view from our balcony if you just looked to the left instead of straight out.
My own birds eye view of the hula class from our 10th floor room:
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