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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain La Fauci with an important update on our visit to Kona.
The weather forcast calls for unfavorable conditions in Kona tomorrow. This would make water shuttle activity unsafe. To provide you with a better experience, we will remain in Honolulu overnight and depart at 5:00 PM tomorrow. We trust you understand this decision was made with everyone's safety in mind.
Later this evening, we will need to relocate to Aloha Tower Pier 10/11 nearby. The gangway will close at 11:30 PM and reopen at 1:00 AM.
We are sorry for any disappointment this may cause. Thank you for your understanding. Please continue to enjoy your day.
Master - Captain Francesco La Fauci
January 18, 2019
Dear Carnival Splendor Guests,
As I mentioned earlier, the weather forecast calls for unfavorable conditions in Kona tomorrow. This would make water shuttle activity unsafe.
The weather forcast calls for unfavorable conditions in Kona tomorrow. This would make water shuttle activity unsafe.
To provide you with a better experience, we will remain in Honolulu overnight and depart at 5:00 PM tomorrow. We trust you understand this decision was made with everyone's safety in mind.
Pre-purchased Carnival shore excursions for Kona will be refunded to your Sail & Sign® account. For more information on fun tours in Honolulu, please visit the Shore Excursion Desk located on Lobby, deck 3, forward.
Additionally, later this evening, we will need to relocate to Aloha Tower Pier 10/11, which is located nearby. The gangway will close at 11:30 PM and reopen at 1:00 AM.
Thank you for your understanding. Please continue to enjoy all the fun activities we have planned for you.
Sincerely,
Captain Francesco La Fauci
The above pretty much says it all. At the end of our shore excursion in Honolulu yesterday the tour driver announced that we may be spending another day in Honolulu and not going on to Kona due to the weather being too severe for the water shuttles. Later in the evening we received the above two notices confirming that we'd be stayin in Honolulu today and not going on to Kona.
Kona is actually on the same island, The Big Island, as our port stop for the following day, Hilo. It would have been interesting if they were to go straight to Hilo and then bus us across the island back to Kona for our shore excurions. But, I assume it would have been too difficult and too expensive to transport an entire ship load of passengers for hours all the way across the island. I guess it made sense to just stay put and allow passengers another day in Honolulu.
Being the largest city in Hawaii there is certainly a lot to do for another day in Honolulu. The Shore Excursions desk did put together additional tours for our second day in Honolulu. My wife and I decided to just make it a lazy day and stay on the ship. Yesterday was a pretty full day with our 7-1/2 hour shore excursion followed by the night at the wine bar. Tomorrow would be another full day with a 7 hour shore excursion that would be starting at 8:30 in the morning. A day of rest between them sounded great to us.
As stated in the above notice our ship had to move to a different pier. The Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) Pride Of America was scheduled to be docked at the pier where our ship was supposed to have vacated yesterday. The pier we moved to was so close to our previous pier that the view of Honolulu from our balcony looked the same to me this morning as it was yesterday.
My wife and I aren't into gambling and rarely ever use the casino but there is a music stage in the casino where live music was provided most afternoons and evenings. The stage is actually considered to be in The Oceanview Promenade but the casino and part of The Oceanview Promenade are in the same area sharing a bar and the stage. The 2Shay Band consists of a female singer and a male guitar player. They are quite good and play a variety of music.
There are two frequently used stages on this ship: Splendor Lobby which is in the Atrium Lounge (3 Fwd) and Promenade which is in the casino (5 Mid). Four bands share these stages and alternate throughout the day and evening. These four bands are the 2Shay Band mentioned above, the Cats Duo (Violin Music), Solo Guitar Sounds with Daren Scott, Liquid Groove (often joined by the Solid Brass), and Latin Boys. The Latin Boys play more often in the "Robusto Bar" than on the other stages and Liquid Groove with Solid Brass more often play in Splendor Lobby (Atrium Lounge). Liquid Groove plays mostly rock and jazz and consists of a singer, two guitars, drums, and a keyboard. Solid Brass has a saxophone, a trombone, and sometimes a trumpet player.
In addition to the above bands Eden Parker can be found singing and playing the piano most nights in the Grand Piano Bar and DJ T-Willy is often playing on the Lido Deck or the "Red Carpet" Disco Bar. In addition to all those music offerings there is also the twice nightly Broadway type musical performances in the Spectacular Theater. I just hope when we take the 24 day cruise on this same Carnival Splendor ship in October from Long Beach, California to Singapore, that they have just as good an offering of so many musical bands.
While in the bar we purchased the above bottle of 2016 Layer Cake Pinot Noir. I've had this wine on previous cruises on Carnival. I would give it a rating of about 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. When I purchase wines retail or in restaurants I usually only purchase wines with a 4 or 5 out of 5 rating. But on this ship there are no wines that rate more than 3 out of 5 in the Bar Wine Menus. That is also true of the list of the "suggested" wines on the Carnival restaurant menu. The Carnival restaurants do have a regular wine list with a much wider and better selection of wines but those tend to be very over priced. On some cruises I will sometimes purchase a bottle of wine from that list, especially if it is something that I've tried before and given it a rating of 4 or 5.
At dinner the wait staff did the Macarina Dance including one waiter that danced with an empty bottle of wine balance on his head!
The Playlist Production in the Spectacular Theater this evening was "88 Keys, The Rock N' Roll Piano Show" at 8:15 and 10:15 PM. Each show time started off with a preshow of Eden Parker playing the piano, one from 7:45 to 8:15 PM and one from 9:45 to 10:15 PM. Eden Parker did not play during the actual show itself except during the final number. Instead one of the Playlist Productions singers / dancers was at the piano whenever the show called for a piano man to be at the piano. However, there was some debate as to whether this person was actually playing the piano at all during the show. Some of the audience thought he was actually playing during some of the numbers and others thought he wasn't really playing during any of the numbers. It was obvious that he certainly wasn't playing all of the numbers. Sometimes he would just walk away from the piano and start singing and dancing while the piano music continued to play on. You could also hear several other instruments playing during the songs but there were no live musicians on the stage for any of them. Thus it made one wonder if the entire music tract to the show was all pre-recorded music, including the piano. The performers were most likely singing live. I don't think it was a lip-sync performance.
At 11:15 PM there was an "88 Keys Aftershow" in the Grand Piano Bar with Eden Parker doing the live piano playing and singing for the rest of the evening. After a while he was joined by some of the cast from the earlier show that did some singing with him. Eden said that he didn't realize that he would be a part of the shows this evening.
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