2019-05-06: Submarines and Kings

We crawled out of bed at 7:00am this morning. Well, Patrick fell out of bed. After laughing at him and making sure he was ok, we got ourselves cleaned up and headed up to the Windjammer Cafe for some breakfast. We returned to the room and got packed up for our day.

We walked off the ship and to the closes bus stop which was about a block away. We hopped on the bus and rode for about 10 minutes before getting off at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. The Hilton Hawaiian Village is a HUGE complex. We wandered around for a few minutes before finding our way to the Atlantis Submarine kiosk on the beach. We checked in for our 11:00 submarine tour. We had a little under an hour until our tour and the kids wanted to go for a swim so we hung out on the beach for about half an hour.

We got the kids rinsed off and headed to the Hilton Pier at 10:45 in preparation for the tour. Instead of a submarine, a large boat arrived at the dock. The submarines stay offshore and they use the boat to ferry passengers to and from the submarines. So, we boarded the boat and about 10 minutes later met up with the submarine. The submarine was underwater when we arrived so we were able to watch it surface. The boat approached and then moored to the sub. The passengers from the previous tour exited the sub and boarded the boat, then we were allowed off the boat to board the sub. Our sub was the Atlantis XIV which is the newest of the Atlantis submarines. It was built in 1994 at a cost of 2.8 million dollars. It is the world’s largest commercial submarine and holds 64 passengers. It is rated to a depth of 700 feet but it only took us to about 125 feet on our hour long tour. The tour took us along a few artificial reefs created over the years. There were a couple of sunken ships, a couple of sunken planes, and some other contraptions build in Japan for creating artificial reefs. We saw a wide variety of fish, a turtle, some eels, and a stingray. It was a fun experience!

After returning to shore, we grabbed some lunch at Tropics Bar & Grill which is one of the restaurants at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. We enjoyed the food but it was horribly overpriced. The meal for the four of us came out to $100 for a couple of burgers and two kid’s meals! Four sodas alone came to $20. The waitress was very nice and was joking around with the kids which was fun.

After lunch, we made our way back to a bus stop and headed towards the ship. We watch Hawaii 5-O so wanted to see the King Kamehameha statue. It was only a few block from the pier, so we took a slight detour to check it out on our way back. We also took a quick look at Iolani Palace across the street from the statue before returning to the ship.

Once we were back onboard the ship, Patrick wanted to go to the kid’s club and Michael wanted to go swimming in the pool. We took Patrick to the kid’s club and headed to the pool with Michael only to discover that it wasn’t open. He was pretty upset about it, but we managed to cheer him up with some ice cream. We hung out by the pool until 4:00 and then grabbed Patrick for the kid’s club and returned to our room. The muster drill was scheduled for 4:30. Around 4:20, our room steward told us we had to leave our room and head to the muster station. This is the first time on a cruise we’ve been asked to leave our room prior to the alarm being sounded. The room steward was being a little rude about it and Amanda got a little pissy with him. We went to our muster station and waited to be dismissed. We returned to our room where our room steward was waiting. He wanted to explain his actions. After a short conversation where we discussed both points of view, the issue was resolved. We watched the ship pull away from the pier and then we got ready for dinner.

We had an enjoyable dinner in the main dining room. Both boys were picked up by the kid’s club staff outside the dining room while the adults had some dessert. After dinner, we explored the shops on board and then returned to our room for a bit. We grabbed the kids from the kid’s club and then got ready for bed. We have a tubing adventure line up in Kauai tomorrow!