What is a 7-day Hawaii cruise on NCL Pride of America really like? — featuring TravelHappyAmanda (Norwegian Cruise Line)

0:01 Seeing four Hawaiian islands in just 7 days sounds like a dream trip, but it can easily turn into a [music] nightmare. >> There's standing water that you have to go through in order to get to the upper falls. one. >> You have exactly 168 hours to pull this off on a Hawaii

0:26 cruise aboard the NCL Pride of America ship. There are zero at sea days. The Pride of America is in port every [music] single day. The most dramatic landscape in central Maui. If you don't pace yourself, you'll burn

0:52 out by Tuesday. But if you take it too slow, you're wasting thousands of dollars. You can't just relax [music] on the ship because you're on a bucket list trip in Hawaii. So, you push yourself to experience [music] as much as you can. Here's the brutal, beautiful reality of how to

1:19 actually survive a 7-day Hawaii cruise. You going to be okay? As me in five, [laughter] we'll circle back. First, you need to know what this ship actually is and what it isn't. The Pride of America is the only big cruise ship registered in the United States,

1:46 and it's the only ship in the world doing this Hawaiian itinerary all year long. Now, real talk, she's not new, she's not flashy. If you're looking for a mega ship with robot bartenders and a roller coaster, this is not it. But that's not why you book this cruise.

2:12 This ship is your [music] floating hotel. You go to sleep in Maui and like magic, wake up on the big island. [music] It literally deletes your travel time. And that matters because you have such a short window on these islands. So the real question isn't is it fancy?

2:39 It's not. The real question is is it comfortable enough to serve as [music] your base camp after what could be one of the best days you've ever had. Inside the vibe is well Americana. It lives up to its name. Have you ever seen an American themed

3:04 restaurant in another country and it's just overthe-top America? That looks like this place. Like there's a bald eagle on stained glass on the ceiling. Okay. [music] But it has all your main areas covered. From two complimentary fine dining [music] restaurants to a 24-hour grill known for its [music]

3:30 milkshakes. But the best feature of this ship is all the open deck space. You'll be sailing into some of the most breathtaking coastline in the world. And the ship is designed to look outward. And for that, the ship delivers. Your first morning on the ship, you look

3:55 out the window [music] and you're in Maui. The golden ticket here is that you have an overnight stay on the island. Having two days here is everything, but it also means you don't [music] sleep much. To make the most of your bucket list trip, you're off the ship fast. We're talking

4:20 grab and go breakfast before the sun is fully up. We headed straight to the harbor right after sunrise for [music] a chance to snorkel Mikini Crater. The slip for the boat is really hard to find, but we're here a little bit early, so I think we're going to be okay. It's exactly the Hawaii you imagined

4:42 [music] in your head. It's like swimming inside an aquarium. if the aquarium was a 200,000year-old volcano crater. We were snorkeling on top of a coral reef miles into the Pacific Ocean before some of the passengers on our cruise had

5:07 even finished their coffee. And that's on purpose. I didn't fly halfway across the world to sit on a 20year-old cruise ship or to get stuck in a tourist trap I took a bus to. We are here to get out there. Snorkeling was absolutely fantastic.

5:32 That was some of the most fish I have ever seen. It's a really sunny, clear day. I think that helps, too. The water is very calm. It was so easy to see all the fish on the coral, but you have to be strategic for this to work. You'll need to rent a car for the full 2 days. This way, you're not relying on Ubers

5:57 and you're not hauling your snorkel gear around with you the whole day. 2 days gives you enough time to completely switch gears. So, we traded the beach for the jungle. We hiked way past the crowded spots at Twin Falls to find the real waterfall.

6:23 Today, we're going from snorkeling a volcanic crater [music] to the most dramatic landscape in central Maui. We climbed the E Valley for the single best view on the [music] entire island. I even managed to squeeze in a tour of a cacao orchard at a local chocolate farm

6:50 in Maui where we ate fresh chocolate inside a treehouse. By the time we finally made it back to the ship, we were exhausted. We were sore, but that's the [music] tradeoff. You give up some sleep, but

7:17 you get to see all of this in just 48 hours. I'm not going to give up a once- ina-lifetime [music] opportunity in Maui for a little longer at the free breakfast buffet. And then you do it again. You wake up on the big island

7:43 and this island is massive. It feels like you [music] can experience the diversity of an entire planet on a single island in Hawaii. We started at Volcano's National Park where it looks like the surface of Mars. We walked through steam vents bubbling

8:08 up from under the earth from magma. I didn't realize it was going to be so much steam [music] and so hot. Every couple of minutes it [music] just billows out of this and it just covers you in the steam and it's really warm. This is just wild. We walked through the Thirsten Lava Tube, which is a huge cavern created by

8:36 flowing lava. [music] You need to take a moment when you're here to just consider that you're [music] standing where lava once flowed so intensely that it reshaped the [music] earth forever. Part of me wants to just circle back and do that whole thing again. Do I have?

9:01 >> But an hour later, you can be back in Hilo chasing waterfalls. We saw Rainbow Falls, which is conveniently placed right in the city. We drove through Hawaiian farmlands to find the biggest waterfall on this side of the island, Aaka Falls.

9:31 The contrast between our morning in Volcano's National Park to standing at this waterfall on the same day is nearly incomprehensible for me. When the ship moves you to the Kona side of the Big Island overnight, the logistics get tricky.

9:59 Kona is a tender port. If you're not familiar, this means the ship can't dock here. So, a small boat [music] called a tender will ferry you to the shore. Well, you and thousands of other cruise ship passengers. Now, you have three choices for how to get a tinder here, and none of them are

10:25 great. One, book an expensive excursion through the cruise line. Two, pay hundreds of dollars extra for priority access boarding or stay in a suite. Or three, get in line at 6:00 a.m. to get a timed ticket for a boat leaving. So, if you sleep in on Kona day, you

10:52 will not have enough time to see the island. Once you make it onto land, you can head straight up the mountain to a Kona coffee farm. The smell of coffee beans is in [music] the air. The ocean is in the distance. This is the Napa Valley of caffeine.

11:18 She just said this farm is 175 years old and is fifth generation for this family. This tiny [music] stretch of land on the side of a volcano makes the most expensive coffee in America, [music] but the samples here are free. From the biggest active volcano in the world to

11:44 the most famous coffee in America, take advantage of this rare opportunity to see something one of a kind here on the Big Island. By the time you get to Kawaii, the last island, the reality of this itinerary and this pace hit you. You are exhausted. You've been going nonstop for

12:12 [music] 5 days, but you have to rally because this is the most beautiful island [music] you'll see. Now, I need to stop and give you a major warning here. A lot of people book this cruise for the sailby of the Nepali coast in

12:38 Kauaii. It's the iconic shot they use to market the whole cruise. [music] But our sailing didn't even go past it. So don't bank your entire trip on one specific view from the ship. If it's a non-negotiable for you, go ahead and book a boat tour or a helicopter tour. Since the ship decided to bail on our

13:04 view, [music] we had to go find our own. We just off-roaded an Kia rental car, but it lived. You will not believe where we drove to, though. The Grand Canyon of the Pacific. And yes, it lives up to the hype.

13:29 This is absolutely breathtaking. It's better than I thought it would be, honestly. On your way up to the Himea Canyon, which is its full paperwork name, you can stop at the weirdly beautiful red dirt waterfall, which is shockingly on Google Maps.

13:56 I'm not sure how you're supposed to do it, but we just parked on the side of the road and I climbed over the guard rail, so don't expect anything super official here. Then you can do one of the most memorable things of the whole cruise. Deep in the mountains of Kawaii, you can go backount mountain tubing in the

14:22 rainforest. You're going through irrigation canals that are more than a century old and were never meant to have humans inside [music] them. It's more bumper cars than lazy river. This is a little more than I thought it was going to be. I thought

14:48 this. and it's a little more touristy [music] than my usual take, but I regret nothing. There's one final thing about Hawaii that throws people off. Even in the summer, the sun sets early around 700 p.m. This means as the ship pulls away

15:15 from shore, it's already dark. And honestly, that was fine with me because I was too tired to care anyway. And I'm not joking when I say I fell asleep at 900 p.m. some nights. Doing the cruise this way felt less like a vacation and more like an [music] expedition.

15:40 So, here's the verdict. If you want to come home well rested with a tan, book a resort in Hawaii. But if you want to see everything, if you want the volcanoes and the jungles [music] and the turtles and you want to do it all in one single week without going to airports,

16:05 then you book the Pride of America. Now, if you're brave enough to book this after everything I just told you, then you need a game plan. And I'm an open book. I have videos breaking [music] down what you can do at every single port, the logistics, the times, all right here in this playlist. [music]