My wife and I are empty nesters both in our early sixties. We are pretty much just average folks who clip coupons, save our pennies, and squirrel away a little bit here and there so we can go on a vacation now and again. Hawaii has always been on our bucket list, but it seemed so far out of reach. So after a lot of research it did seem to be a possibility. Two years ago we purchased a NextCruise certificate, (we always do as we found it a useful and cost saving tool to cruise). Now we learned years ago on the in's and out's of being able to cruise on a budget. First of all if your never in your cabin other than to sleep and change, why spend all that money for a balcony when you can put the extra savings into the fun stuff.

The Pride of America is a great way to see the Hawaiian Islands. Each island is so different from the other. No two islands are the same. As I said we never thought we would get there but this is how we did it. We live in New England and flights are rather tough to get and expensive from Boston. Having to change planes, making connections, decisions of nonstop or stop over flights can complicate one's plans. However, there is hope on the horizon. Hawaiian Airlines will be starting nonstop service five days a week from Boston's Logan Intl, to Honolulu starting April of 2019. This will become the longest domestic flight in the US. The good thing is you leave at 8:00 am and arrive at 2:00 pm HST, still leaving you time to unwind on your first day. If you don't mind stopping, starting, and and changing planes a couple of times Southwest will soon be starting flying to Honolulu from the west coast and will eventually offer inter island flights to Hilo and Kona, (on the big island) as well as Maui and Kauai. We flew United out of Providence Rhode Island, connecting at Newark/NYC to Honolulu, as to the previous mentioned flights have not started as of yet.

We were unsure just how do this trip. We had originally thought about getting in the day before the cruise and spending a night in a hotel. Get up the next day and head to the ship, spend six and a half days and then after the cruise, head out to the airport and home. Well, it didn't take long to realize that our trip of a lifetime should be done right. We decided when we booked our Pride of America Cruise aboard, the NCL Dawn on a cruise to Bermuda that we would not take a vacation in 2017 and 2019 to pay for our little piece of paradise. Read more