January 2025 Hawai'i Cruise

Itinerary

Date	Location
January 3	Leave San Francisco's Pier 27
January 4	At sea
January 5	At sea
January 6	At sea
January 7	At sea
January 8	Hilo on the Big Island
January 9	Honolulu, Oahu
January 10	Kahului, Maui
January 11	Nawiliwili (near Lihue), Kauai'i

Date	Location
January 12	At sea
January 13	At sea
January 14	At sea
January 15	At sea
January 16	At sea
January 17	Ensenada, Mexico
January 18	At sea
January 19	Return to San Francisco

Background

For about two years, Charles had been thinking about going a cruise. What sparked the interest was a friend of ours, Moira, from the Age Well Center (a.k.a. Senior Center) was embarking on a 3 1/2 year round the world cruise on the Villa Vie Residences' first residential ship, the Odyssey. Over the next few months, I would ask some of her friends how the trip was going. In addition to Moira, my good friend Lucy, whom I have known since the eighties, had been going on multiple cruises per year. I had talked to Lucy many times about cruising and she had been ecouraging me to give it a try. One day, Helen and Charles were sitting at a table with Vic and Doris when the subject of cruising came up. It turns out Vic and Doris had been on going on 4 or more cruises per year. Now Charles was hooked!

Over the next few months, a group of us at the Age Well Center started becoming close friends. We ate together almost every day. During the Spring of 2024 we starting having a potluck every Sunday. Vic and Doris offered their huge backyard for the weekly event. From time-to-time the subject of cruising would come up. Vic saw my interest and started pushing me to go on a cruise. He suggested we go with them in January 2025 on a cruise to Hawaii. Charles and Helen talked about it and in July we finally bit the bullet, signing up for a 16-day Hawaii cruise on the Ruby Princess.

The Cruise

What a wonderful trip we had! The cruise was 16 days long and it went by in a flash! The Ruby Princess, even though an older ship, was wonderful. The ship had around 3,000 passengers and a 1,000 crew members. Not once did it feel crowded. At 947 feet long, 118 feet wide and with 19 decks, everyone was really spread out. It was no more crowded than a typical indoor shopping mall during a non-holiday weekend.

Arriving at San Francisco's Port 27

Vic knew the trick of avoiding traffic at the pier. When a cruise ship arrives in port, most of the passengers debark. To get them to where they need to be, there is a line of personal cars, taxi's, shuttle buses, Ubers and Lyfts waiting to pick them up. Then as the new passengers arrive, they add to the traffic at the port. Vic knew to drop us off across the street at the Fog City Diner. Then we just walked across the street. No fuss, no muss, no long line of cars to deal with! Brillant! After Vic dropped us off, his brother, Phil, drove the car back to his house waiting for our return when he picked us up at the same location.

We arrived around 10:30 AM, just as the last passengers were leaving the ship. There were no lines and we walked up to the check-in counter and picked up our Princess Medallions. At this point, we went to another line (however there was no line) where we were given a boarding group letter. They gave Helen the boarding group "C" card and Charles was just confused. Immediately after receiving the card, they called for boarding group "A". Charles, being confused and not knowing we had been given a card, just walked on. Helen, not wanting to lose Charles, followed him on-board. She hid the card as she knew we weren't supposed to go yet. Sometimes being ignorant is a blessing! Vic and Doris, who are Elite members, were allowed to board early and they caught up with us.

Medallions

The Medallions I mentioned above, are used for everything on-board. They open your cabin door (many times just by walking up to the door it unlocks), paying for items purchased on the ship, keeping track of you while on-board (the Princess App can be used to find shipmates) as well as making sure everyone that got off the ship at a port also got back on again. It is an amazing piece of technology and made the experience that much more pleasant.

Our First Few Hours On-board

Once we were on-board the ship, we wanted to deposit our luggage in the room. By this time, it was around 11:00 AM (see how fast the check-in was, less than 30 minutes). The rooms aren't supposed to be ready till 1 PM. Vic just went directly to the room any anyway. Helen and Charles room was ready to go, so we left our luggage then went with Vic and Doris to their room, which was not ready. They dropped their luggage off in the room anyway, amid a few grumbles from the crew which they ignored.

The first order of business was to head to the Botticelli main dining room for lunch. Most people head to the Buffet first as that is where the crew directs them. However, for those in the know, they head to the only main dining room open for lunch. I was really looking forward to this as on embarkation day, they always have a main dish of beef tenderloin and an orange souffle for dessert. Here's the menu:

After lunch, Vic and Doris took us on a tour of the ship. We went forward, we went aft, we went up several decks, we came down a few decks. After all that walking, Helen and Charles were exhausted ;-)

However, one more important item needed to be taken care-of before the ship could departed. We had to go to our cabins and watch a safety video on the TV. Security knows we did this as our medallion showed we were in our cabin and the TV told them we were watching the safety video. This might sound a bit Big Brotherish, but from what I hear, it is a lot easier than having to stand around on deck for an hour or more to go through the safety drill as you had to do before the pandemic.

After the safety video, we had to find our muster station. All of the muster stations had security at them with a phone. You had to tap the phone with your medallion to prove you knew where your station was located. For us, it was at the entrance to the casino. The muster station is used incase there is an emergency and they need to know everyone is present and accounted for.

Departing San Francisco

The ship was scheduled to depart at 4 PM. It took the crew about an hour to do the final preparations to actually leave the dock. At 5 PM we were under way.

Vic had taken us up to deck 16 so we could have a view of our departure. However, one of his friends, whom he had met on a previous cruise, came by and told us the bow of the ship was open. Vic had never been on the bow, so he showed us how to get there. This was the only time during the trip I saw the bow open.

The bow we were allowed to go on was actually one deck above the bridge. The area stretched from the outer edge of port wing to the outer edge of the starboard wing. It was the best place for watching the action.

Ship Board Activities

Our days on the ship went by very quickly. There were lots of activities to keep us all interested. A typical "at sea" day:

•  7:00 AM - Wake-up
•  8:00 AM - Meet in the Botticelli main dining room
• 10:00 AM - Attend an "Enrichment" seminar in the Princess theater
• 11:00 AM - Attend an "Science" seminar in the Princess theater
• 12:00 PM - Grab a soup for lunch in the International Cafe
•  1:00 PM - Play Rummikub or Majong with Doris and Vic
•  3:30 PM - Walk two miles around the deck (2.5 times around is 1 mile)
•  5:00 PM - Dinner in the Da Vinci Main Dining Room
•  7:30 PM - Attend the evening show in the Princess Theatre
•  9:00 PM - Go to bed

There was variation in the schedule as Helen and Doris would participate in some of the shipboard activities such as water coloring, ukelelea playing as well as other activities. Some days they would do other ship activities, skipping the morning seminars.

Charles and Vic would wonder the ship, looking into all of the cubby holes searching for neat places to see. One day we were on deck 15 and ran across the snack bar which was giving out free ice cream. While we were enjoying our free dessert, we watched others that were paying up to $10 for a super-duper sundae. There was so much there, many could not finish it! We made up for it by having multiple super fancy desserts (free) in the main dining room at dinner time!

On the last day of the cruise, it is traditional for there to be a humorous cook-off between the Director of Restaurants and the head chef. It was quite comical as the director couldn't keep up with the chef and he was very sloppy in the way he did things. Both of them had fun with this and it was enjoyable to watch. After the cook-off, there was a behind the scenes kitchen tour. Here is what we saw on the tour:

Dining During the Cruise

As we all know, cruises are all about eating! We had many a fine meal during the voyage. We usually had breakfast in the Botticelli main dining room on the Fiesta deck 6 at the very aft end of the ship. For dinner, we had a "requested" table (#455) in the Da Vinci main dining room also on deck 6 in the middle of the ship.

Even though there were 4 of us, we requested a table for 6 and said we were "willing to share". This turned out to be great as we met many interesting people during the cruise. We even became good friends with one couple, Rose and Ron from the Albuquerque, NM, area. During the second week of the cruise, they ate dinner with us almost every night and even later in the cruise, they started joining us for breakfast. This was a real treat as, wellll, let's just say one of them is not an early riser and it took a considerable effort for them to meet us for breakfast ;-) Thank you for making the effort!!!!

Another reason the meals were very enjoyable was our wait staff. Our waiter was Anesu from Zimbabwe and his assistant, Nene, was from South Africa. Both of them did a fantastic job of taking care of us! One example. One evening I decided I didn't want the hard bread they were serving. I wanted soft crusted bread. Nene, then went back to the kitchen and found some soft Hawaiian rolls for me. Then, every night for the rest of the cruise, he had soft rolls nearby and offered them to me. Others at the table also, occasionally, wanted soft rolls, so he made sure he had a stack of them nearby. Okay, another example. Anesu had been Vic and Doris' assistant waiter on their Mexico cruise a couple of months before this cruise. Once he figured outwe wanted to be at a particular table (#455) every night, primarily so Anesu and Nene would be our servers. He made sure no one sat at "our" table till we arrived, even if we were a few minutes late past our "requested" reservation time. Thank you Anesu and Nene!

Another member of the restaurant crew I would like to mention is Ferdinand, he was the restaurant manager in Botticelli for breakfast and then the restaurant manager in Da Vinci for dinner. Somehow, out of the thousands of people coming to his restaurant, he began recognizing us. In the morning, he always greeted us with a big smile and escorted us to the section Anesu was the waiter for. In the evening, he would take us to "our" table (#455).

Ferdinand was Filipino and so is Vic. However, he thought Vic was Chinese. When he found out Vic was also Filipino, he treated us even better than before! On the last night of the cruise, unbeknownst to us he had a special Filipino soup prepared for us. We were the only table to get Sinagang soup. The chef did a fantastic job of preparing the soup. It had huge shrimp in it, and a LOT of them, along with a couple of other types of fish, really good vegetables and potatoes. The broth was absolutely outstanding! We really appreciated this special gesture on his part. Both Vic and I gave him a BIG tip at the end of the cruise. Thank you Ferdinand for making this cruise special for us!

Island Hoping

For four days in a row, we went from island to island. The first stop was on the island of Hawai'i, also known as "The Big Island". The second was Oahu, then Maui. Our last stop on the 4th day was Kauai'i

Some of you may be wondering why we sailed past an island, only to return to it the next day. I asked the Captain this question (during one of the "Enrichment" seminars in the Princess Theater) he said the stops are planned 3 years in advance. There is a committee made up of representatives from all of the cruise lines who agree on when a particular ship would visit each island. This is necessary as there is not enough port space to accomodate multiple ships at a time.

A couple of months before the trip, Charles had rented cars on each of the islands. Charles and Helen were on the Big Island a month prior to this trip as one of the week long quarterly work meetings Charles attends for JEDEC. At the end of this trip, Charles and Helen spent a few days touring the island. Charles found a really good audio app tour guide for his phone. The app, made by Guide Along had many good recommendations, so he purchased all of their tours for the Hawaiian Island. As we were driving along, the app would know our location, by GPS, and would start telling us about interesting things nearby and it gave us a history of the islands. Charles highly recommends this app.

Big Island

Our first stop was on the Big Island at the port of Hilo. We picked up our rental car, fired up the Guide Along app and drove to Volcanoes National Park. We were hoping to see some volcanic activity, but the small eruptions had occured two weeks before our trip and then again a week after we were there :-( However, we did have a good time looking into the Kilauea crater and driving around the edge of it.

On the way back to the ship, we stopped in at the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut farm. They had a neat nature walk which wound through a garden of many different types of tropical fruit trees. Of course, we had to buy some chocolate covered macadamia nuts in their gift shop. However, they were a bit pricey, so limited our purchase to a single bag. Later during the trip, we were on Maui and the Longs Drug Store (CVS) had a sale on the same chocolate covered nuts so we picked up a few more bags.

Oahu

On Oahu, we stayed away from the most popular attraction, Pearl Harbor. Instead, we went to the Dole Pineapple Plantation where we had a great time. We took the Pineapple Express train on a two mile journey around the plantation where we saw many different crops growing. Then we went on a garden tour where we saw many tropical plants. Finally, we had some of the famous Dole Pineapple whip, which was featured, and made famous, at Dole exposition at Disney Land and Disney World.

Interesting story. The Dole whip was invented by a college graduate new hire who was given the task of making a frozen dessert made with pineapple for the Dole pavillion at Disney land. His recipe became so popular, the Dole company began marketing it to other food establishments. One of reasons for its popularity was it is dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan, cholesterol-free and low-fat.

After visiting the Dole Plantation, we drove along the coast for a couple of hours. Near the end of the trip, we visited the beautiful Japanese cemetary. It is an idealic place to spend eternity!

Maui

Maui is Helen and Charles' favorite Island. We have been fortunate enough to go there almost every December for the last quarterly JEDEC meeting of the year for the past 30 years. This year, the last meeting was on the Big Island. Fortunately, we were able to step foot on the island during the cruise.

Doris really wanted to go to the top of Haleakala's 13,000 foot peak. We found out about this change of plan as we were driving out of the rental car parking lot. Without thinking about it, we said "sure!". What we had forgotten about was how cold it is at the top. When we started out the temperature was a balmy 75° F. When we got to the top, in our shorts and short sleeve shirts, it was a cold 47° F. Needless to say, we didn't spend much time at the top 😁

I have been to the top of Haleakala many times. Vary rarely is the sun shining. Today, was one of those rare days. It was neat looking down into the sun lit crater.

Kauai'i

Helen and Charles had never been to Kauai'i. Our good friends, Dee Dee & Jeff (and Helen's brothers, Harold & Robert), have been there many times. They hardly ever go to any other island. They have been trying to get Charles to check it out for years, however, Charles really likes Maui, so hasn't spent the time to explore other islands. Finally, we had a chance to check out Kauai'i.

Vic and Doris have been to Maui several times. Every time they visit, they go to Waimea Canyon. Unfortunately, every time they went, the canyon was foggy, so they hadn't had a chance to see all of it. On the day we went, we got lucky. There was no fog and the sun was shining. It was the perfect day to see the canyon!

The only downside was how much it cost. Hawai'i parks was charging $10 per vehicle PLUS $5 per person. It cost us $30 just to go to the lookouts. Fortunately, this entry fee covered all four of the Waimea Canyon lookouts. I will say the lookouts were very nice and the restrooms were clean and pleasant to use.

Ensenada, Mexico

I had never been to Ensenada and was really excited to be going here. Rose and Ron joined us for this excursion.

As we left the ship, we were all directed to the buses that would take us downtown. It is only a mile, so I had planned on walking it, however, everyone else jumped on the shuttle bus. The round trip bus ride was $4 each. However, like I said, it is only a mile, so we ended up walking back to the ship and never used our return ticket.

Vic and Doris being retired pharmacists took us to a couple of drug stores. There we purchased various antibiotics to take with us on cruises, just in case we needed them. I found it interesting the drugs, if bought in the USA, would need a prescription. However, in Mexico they were considered "over the counter" drugs and no prescription was needed. They were also considerably cheaper than in the USA.

After getting our "drug fix", we wandered down various streets and shopping in the stores till we were back at the port. We probably spent a total of 2 to 3 hours wandering around. This was a short port call and we had to be back on the ship by 4 PM.

Our total purchases were less than $100. Vic bought a belt. Helen bought a large bottle of vanilla. That was about it.

So, you may be asking yourself why a Hawaiian trip would include a stop in Mexico? Cruise ships often stop in foreign ports before returning to their starting port primarily because of a US law called the Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA) of 1886, which mandates that foreign-built or foreign-registered cruise ships must make a stop at a foreign port when traveling between US ports, essentially protecting domestic maritime shipping from foreign competition; this means even if a cruise starts and ends in the same US city, it must include a foreign port on its itinerary to comply with the law.

Ruby Princess, Exterior

A few shots of the exterior of the ship.

Ruby Princess, Interior

A few shots of the inside of the ship.

Our Cabin Location

We had a GREAT cabin. It was close to the water line, so the pitching and yawing of the ship was not an issue. Also, being on deck 5 (Plaza deck), we were on the same deck as the International Cafe. It was a great place to go to grab a cookie, a fancy dessert or a small meal, all free! Deck 5 is also the lowest level of The Piazza, so it was easy to get to the center of the ship.

Towel Animals

WoW! We were sure lucky! I had asked our room steward, Joemar, that we would like to have a new towel animal everyday. It turned out Joemar had been making towel animals for 15 years, so he was quite skilled at making them. Every afternoon, when we returned to our room, there was a new animal and the previous animals had changed locations. He went above and beyond with the towel animals. Yes, we gave him a very good tip!.

Conclusion

Helen and Charles had a great time on the trip. For a first cruise, it couldn't have been any better.

One of the best parts was meeting all the interesting people which ate at our table. Especially Rose and Ron. We hit it off immediately with them and hope to see them again!

At the end of the trip, Charles made 2 Future Cruise Deposits for both Charles and Helen. One of the Future Cruise Deposits has already been applied on a cruise in 2026. Details:

Destination:	17 Day | Panama Canal - Ocean to Ocean
Ship:	Ruby Princess
Departure:	Aug 31, 2026 from San Francisco, CA
Arrival:	September 17, 2026 at Fort Lauderdale, FL

If you would be interested in joining us on this cruise, you may want to consider booking it through my cruise agent. Just tell him you want to be on the same Panama Canal cruise as Charles Furnweger:

Vacations-To-Go
Kieffer Gatlin Jr
800-338-4962 ext. 8889
kgatlin@vacationstogo.com