Excursions in Hawaii?

We have been looking at some great tours at http://hawaiicruiseexcursions.com and was wondering if anyone has done the helicopter tours or the molokini crater snorkeling tour?

Hi Yogamama, we almost, unfortulately, took the helo ride but were going to do it through www.bluehawaiian.com directly as prices were better.  We were getting married in Maui and had already spent all our money.  We  intend to do another Hawaiian cruise with Carnival and hope to fit in the helo ride especially after checking out the above site.  Hawaii is spectacular and Carnival was terrific!

When you speak of Molokini crater I can only feel your talking about the Island on Maui. Be it Maui is the best bar none. What you really need is a week in Maui..... If you ever plan on that holler back at me, I'll give you my true opinion on where to stay and things you must do. Along with the one's you would wish you hadn't......

 To answer your question it's a nice short sail out to Moloikini Crater. Nice warm water. It's a nice trip..... Helicopter tours. If it's in your budget, go for it...... You'll snap 500 photos in no time............

I did the helicopter tour on my own and we were supposed to go to Molokini, but they switched boats and destinations on us.

Not sure we could have made it to Molokini, anyway - the wind and waves were getting kind of big in that  direction.

Pictures from our cruise are here:

http://www.zydecocruiser.com/CarnivalSpirit/Hawaii/index.htm

We did the helicopter tour over Maui with Blue Hawaian.  Absolutely fantastic!!  Blue Hawaian is very professional and have pilot / tour guides who are extremely knowledgable about the area.  I would highly recommend Blue Hawaian.

Hey Mike.  You guys have obviously been to Hawaii before.  Question?  Is it better to rent a car and tour the islands on your own or hire a guy on the pier to trip guide you around the island??  We have lots of time on most islands and would like to see as much as possible.  Renting a car now looks pretty cheap compared to the tours.  For instance; on Oahu we want to see Pearl Harbor & The USS Arizona memorial, Diamond Head,  check out the north shore.  Maybe hit the southeast shore for some body surfing and finally do a pineapple plantation.  Can't get that all in with shore excursions from the ship....The Blue Hawaiian copter shoulds great...Are they just on Maui or other Islands, Too.

Jim,

When we were in Hawaii in April 2010 we rented a car in each port. I will never attempt to drive in Honolulu /Wiakiki again. Traffic & drivers were absolutely crazy!!  Being on our own worked well in the other ports.  We missed Pearl Harbor last time as they had parts of it closed for renovations. This time we plan to do the Carnival excursion which includes Pearl Harbor & the North Shore. 

Do some research on Diamond Head.  It is a long hot climb to the top and takes a couple of hours. (Sounds like you're planning a whole lot of activities for one day.)

I highly recommend Blue Hawaian for a helicopter tour.  They do tours on several of the islands.  You can google their website. Their tours are considerably cheaper if you book online.

We have decided to do the Volano bike ride in Hilo, Pearl Harbor & the North Shore in Honolulu, and "Tubing the Ditch" in Kauai. (all thru Carnival)

In Maui we will probably rent a car and visit the crater and a couple other sites.  Kona has lots to do right at the pier.  We may do the Atlantis Submarine there but if we do, their office is right across from the pier. No use paying Carnival to direct us across the street.

Hope this helps, if you have more questions post them here or e-mail me.

Last time we weren Hawaii we retnted a car in each port.  If you intend to do Pearl Harbor and you do not rent a car, take a taxi and get there early as it the wait is long.  If you take the excursion alot of your day will be taken up at only this one place, and there is so much more to see.   We rented a car and had no problem with the traffic or crazy drivers.  We climbed Diamond Head and it was worth the climb.  By renting the car in Oahu, we saw Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, waikii, shopped and had lunch and lots of sighseeing in the one day.

This trip on 12-2, we are trying to decide on which Luau to attend.  We want to do one on Maui but not impressed with Carnival's choice or price.  We will have our disabled son with us and want to preferred seating and wait service rather than the buffet.  If we reserve our space directly we can select this options for about 1/3 the price, just don't know how to get back to the ship on time.

any ideas?

We are planning to get a rental car in all the ports and revisit the places we missed on prior trips. Are the rental cars right there at the port?

We booked tours for each of our port on this cruise last year. We used a few different companies, but yes, we did book with www.hawaiicruiseexcursions.com

for Hilo, since everyone goes to the volcanoes, we didn't want to do this tour in a big group, which is why we booked independantly. It was a great tour, we were met inside the port by our tour guide, there were only 8 of us in the group and it was $70 for the waterfalls and volanco national park. We stopped at a black sand beach, walked through a lava tube and stopped a a few different gardens. Carnival doesn't offer one tour with all these places, they have it split up into different tours. The tour we booked  which was cheaper than the cruise ship tours that were on a motorcoach buses and our tour included more stuff. This was a great tour and was one of the cheapest tours of our vacation. http://www.hawaiicruiseexcursions.com/BigIslandVolcanoIslandTour.htm

for kona we booked with the ship for the Zodiac snorkel trip as the boat are small so we thought there was no concern about being in a bir group with hundreds of people in the water at teh same time. We booked with Carnival for US$115 per person. I later found the same tour on Hawaii Cruise excursions for around $40 less per person. Oh well, live and learn. Didn't do my homework on this one. This was a great tour though, the water is beautiful and it as totally calm when when we were there. I love to snorkel so this was a great way to spend our time in Kona. http://www.carnival.com/Activities/Excursion/191016

For Maui we chose the Rainforest and Waterfalls hike which we booked with Carnival. You do have to be somewhat fit for this tour as the hiking, while not super difficult is a bit strenuous. What was nice was this was a smaller group tour and we got to really see some of the most beautiful parts of Maui. http://www.carnival.com/Activities/Excursion/192012

For Kauai we also booked with Carnival for the Riverboat tour. http://www.carnival.com/Activities/Excursion/193030 We diid like the tour, but wished we had seen more of the island and not just the river and fern grotto. A combination of both would have been better.

For Oahu, we did two tours. One was a Waikiki snorkeling trip that we booked with http://www.hawaiicruiseexcursions.com/WaikikiCatamaranAdventure.htm This was a great day. Nice sail boat and great snorkeling. This trip was really cheap too, for $45.

We also did an island tour of Oahu with http://www.royalhawaiiantour.com/Royal_Hawaiian_Tour/Home.html . This one wasn't worth the money. We were told when we reserved this tour how they have the best guides in oahu but i think they just say that to make you book. Our guide was ok, but by no means was he outstanding. We felt rushed at some of the stops and in the end he made sure we knew that the tip wasn't included. This is a tour I wish we had done with another company.