Hawaiian Radiance: Planning

Booking

As I approached my 25th milestone cruise with Carnival, I started planning for my milestone cruise credit which gives you 25% of the cost of the cruise as onboard credit. I wanted that to be an expensive cruise to maximize the onboard credit benefit. Hawaii immediately came to mind. 

I also wanted it to be my diamond cruise which is why I forced in a 5-day Carnival Breeze cruise in December when I could’ve had a 7-day Regal Princess for a better price. I needed four more cruise days to get Diamond on this one.

When searching for a room I kept in mind the fact that I was going to get 25% back in the form of onboard credit. Each time I looked at a higher category, I looked at it as being 25% less than what it actually was. I never considered my usual interior cabins.

I started out looking at the 4J cabins on deck 3 near the atrium bar. I liked that they were convenient to the atrium bar where I would likely get my screwdrivers in the morning. But depending on whether or not that atrium bar had a coffee shop, I could potentially have to leave for coffee, then come back which removes some of the convenience. 

For a slight price increase, I ended up booking an Oceanview on deck 5. This is one of the new cabins from when it became Radiance. It’s in the old comedy club area which is behind the Alchemy Bar. It’s extremely convenient to the Alchemy, Red Frog Pub, and the Casino. Down one flight of stairs is the dining room and comedy club. I think it’s a good location for a two-week cruise.

I paid a total of $4,000 for this cruise. I saved $400 using 10% off Carnival gift cards from AARP. I’m getting $949 onboard credit from my 25th milestone cruise credit, $450 from my travel agent, and $250 for being a Carnival stockholder.

Fights

While committing to a trip like this two years out is a bit scary, I felt better about it being round trip from Long Beach because I know I can get reasonable direct flights to LAX on Spirit.

At that point they hadn’t yet gone to their new pricing plan and I hadn’t yet flown to Miami for Encore under it. But I had booked that trip to Miami so it was an easy decision to book these flights with the Go Big option for about the same price.

I started looking six months out and prices were extremely high for Spring. I kept checking and right after New Year’s the price dropped to $50 less than what I paid for my Miami flights. I paid a total of $385. That includes the Big Front seat, shortcut security (if available), priority boarding, a checked bag, a carry-on bag, a personal item, drinks, snacks, and Wi-Fi streaming. It really is first class without the curtain now.

Since I don’t have any pre-cruise plans, I took a later flight and get in at 4pm. I will have post-cruise plans and I’ll be flying back early on Monday after a 1-night stay in L.A. I have an 8am flight that gets me back at 1pm after losing two hours in the time change.

Pre-Cruise Hotel

Originally I was going to just stay near LAX. I was just going to book the LAX Hilton for $125 on Hotwire. Since I’m getting in around 5pm and I don’t have any plans in L.A. that night, I decided to compare it to Long Beach hotels. Most of the decent Long Beach Hotels were in the $250-400 range. But I was able to find the Long Beach Hilton on Hotwire for $157.50. That’s what I booked.

Onboard Purchases

I am going to have about $1,650 in onboard credit. My plan was to use that on cheers, internet, and gratuities. But when I got advance notice of the Wi-Fi price increase of 2024, I couldn’t resist the savings of buying it before the price increase and using 10% off gift cards to do so.

Cheers will cost a whopping $1,200 on this cruise which is one of the reasons I have no more Carnival cruises booked. Gratuities will be another $200. I’ll probably have a couple hundred more in write-in tips at the bars. If I have anything left I will likely spend it on specialty dining.

Ports

Maui

There are two primary tours to do in Maui. The Road to Hana and the Haleakala Crater.  The Road to Hana is a full day so both cannot be done during my port time. I needed to decide between the two.

Reading about the Road to Hana I read a lot of concern about getting there and back in time. People recommended not renting a car and doing it yourself. People cautioned against doing it with an outside tour. The ship tour reviews I read were not good. They felt it was rushed. There were no stops. It was just what you could see outside the window of the bus. I decided to do the crater.

When it came to Haleakala Crater I had to decide between the regular tour or the sunset tour. By the time I was ready to book the regular tour was sold out so I quickly booked the sunset tour.

Honolulu

Originally, I was looking at booking a full Pearl Harbor experience. When I realized how much I wanted to do in Honolulu I decided it would be better just to do the Visitor’s Center and the Arizona this time. Then if I come back I can do one of the tours that skips the Arizona and does the Missouri and Oklahoma.

I want to hike Diamond Head which is near Waikiki and supposedly takes a little over an hour to complete. Since Diamond Head is near Waikiki, it makes sense to do those to together. 

My initial plan was to take the bus to Pearl Harbor, do the visitor center and the Arizona there. Then either take a bus or taxi downtown to tour Lalani palace. Then get transportation to diamond head. Then head over to Waikiki for a luau. 

Planning is extremely difficult because you have to book a specific time for all of those. I decided to book a 10:45 Arizona and a 3pm Diamond Head and then try to schedule the Palace in between. I booked the Diamond Head time first. Then when I went to book the Arizona, all of the times said 75 tickets available, but none were clickable. I discovered tickets were released when I was in South Beach the night before I got on Encore. The social media group ate them up within two days. Every day of the month had a lot of tickets available except my day. Based on the numbers only 600 tickets were made available. 75 of those were before our ship docks. Another 75 are just 45 minutes after our ship docks. That means there are only about 450 tickets that are at a safe time for people on our ship to be able to make.

I can’t go to Hawaii and not visit the Arizona. They do release additional tickets the day before. I would be on my sunset crater tour at the time they release tickets (3pm). You can also take the bus there and get in a standby line hoping to get in. I really didn’t want to leave it to chance like that. I found there are organized tours that have guaranteed tickets you can book. I decided to just do one of those.

I booked this tour for $49 ($63 after taxes and fees) which includes a city tour and the Arizona. I picked the 9:30am tour and paid an extra $10 for them to pick me up at the pier. The tour is supposed to last four hours. That puts us at 1:30. If the timing is right and tickets are available I could ask them to drop me off at the Palace, spend an hour there, then catch an Uber/Lyft to Diamond head for my 4pm entry. Otherwise I’ll just ride with them to Waikiki, grab lunch, then head over to Diamond Head.

Since I was going to be at Waikiki at the end of the day, I wanted to find a Waikiki luau. There are a few challenges here. The biggest is most of the luaus don’t operate on Saturday. I did find a few that do.

I ended up picking Rock-a-Hula. I found a discount code that allowed me to save $15.  I paid $135 for it and it runs from 5:30-7:30pm. I believe all of the ship luaus were in the $250-350 range.

Kauai

There isn’t much to do in Kauai. There are only seven ship-sponsored tours. Waimea Canyon seems to be the best site to see. I booked the Waimea Canyon Tour.

Hilo

I knew I wanted to do a Volcanos National Park tour in Hilo. When reading reviews of the ship tours, I found a lot of people who were disappointed that the tour didn’t include a lava tube. I decided to book an outside tour that included a lava tube. I booked Best of the “Big Island and Volcanoes National Park” tour which includes Thurston Lava Tube.

In addition to the park, it includes the black sand beach, Rainbow Falls, Big Island Candies, and a drive-by of the Japanese Garden.

Ensenada

There aren’t a lot of options in Ensenada. I decided to do the Ensenada Famous Blow hole tour.

I was late booking my excursions but it worked out for me. When I got back from Encore in February I had a 20% off offer. I used that to book three of my excursions. 

I used my Carnival Mastercard and got a 10% statement credit on the excursions so I ended up saving a total of 30% on those excursions.

I also cashed in 5,000 points on my Carnival Mastercard as a $50 statement credit towards the excursions.

Post-Cruise

I’m staying one night after the cruise. I wanted to do a studio tour. I’m doing Warner Brothers that afternoon. That’s $73 for the basic tour. They have some bigger packages but the plus tour is considerably more expensive at $160 and the description doesn’t tell you what you really get other than “additional time with the tour guide” so I stuck with the basic tour.

I booked one night at the Loews Hollywood. I was able to get it for about $200 on Hotwire. I actually only paid $172 but the hotel is supposed to charge a $35 resort fee. I stayed there just before COVID in 2020. It’s really nice. It’s attached to the Dolby theater. The Walk of Fame is right outside. I could’ve had the Hilton Garden Inn down the street for $20 less but I think it’s worth the extra $20 to stay at Loews.