Pride of America - Hawaiian Islands cruise

[timetraveler]

Has anyone done the 7 day Hawaiian Islands cruise on NCL's Pride of America?

Would you recommend their dive excursions?
Would our time be better spent doing other things?

What sort of exposure suit would we need?

 

[Shasta_man]

Ah, this is a diving forum, so there is NEVER a bad dive.

you'll probably find that your dive time might be spent with a better outfit than the boat uses, but I don't know.

I'd be taking a 5MM suit for water temps in the high 70s.

 

[donnyb]

What time of year?
Summer 3mm, winter 5mm if youre from FLA, otherwise 3mm.

I am not sure who the Pride uses for dive excursions. If you could find out that would help. Of course you could make your own arrangements directly with an operator here. Lots of info on dive ops on this board. You will see some descriptions of the "must do" dives, etc.

My only concern is some of the shore excursions are so short you could be pressed for time, or, the time frame does not line up with the dive ops. Plus, if its winter, you could be skunked by the swells, and then you may not be able to change to a different shore excursion, so you would just be left wandering around town, or taking a shuttle bus to Wal-Mart (the do that here in Hilo).

ask a lot of questions, consider your land options, and what kind of flexibility they have re weather, etc.

 

[deepstops]

Has anyone done the 7 day Hawaiian Islands cruise on NCL's Pride of America?

Would you recommend their dive excursions?
Would our time be better spent doing other things?

What sort of exposure suit would we need?

You may want to ask that question on http://www.cruisecritic.com They have a section for the forum dedicated to scuba diving.

 

[DeputyDan]

We dove with Kona Honu Divers in Kona and they provided dive services to the cruise ships for Kona.

http://www.konahonudivers.com/index.shtml

If you will search for posts by Capybara you will come across a trip report to Kona that is 100% accurate. We did the same trip and had pretty much the same experience.

I will say that the dive operator separated the cruise ship divers from the land based divers that were using their services. I had no complaints with my experience but they keep dives to around 60 feet max. (and they have very good reasons for doing so) so I would recommend accepting their rules - agree or not - or use another operator.