Organised a trip to Kona as far back as March/April as part of a holiday. Chose to go to Kona for two reasons. One to visit the summit of Mauna Kea, the other to see the Captain Cook Monument at Kealakekua Bay. Being English and living only a few miles from where he was born, it seemed a must do thing whilst visiting Hawaii. If you are without transport there are not many other options to see the monument.
Unfortunately unable to go to the Mauna Kea summit due to protesters. Whilst this is not the fault of Body Glove, It placed extra importance on enjoying this trip. There wasn't the " never mind at least Mauna Kea was good " scenario.
The day of the trip was December 19th 2019. The trip started off very well with a pleasant cruise down to the bay, with interesting commentary and pleasant Hawaiian style music. On going down from the above deck for the buffet dinner, noticed the artist was selling a CD. Almost bought one, but so glad I didn't. It would have ended up in the trash along with the paper plates.
The cruise went increasingly downwards from this point on. On board on this day was an ' artiste ' called Paul from Australia with a party celebrating his 50th. He was to play a song or two. Fair enough I thought, but this turned out to be a good 15-20 minutes of him satisfying other members of his party with his over-inflated ego filled miserable drones. I didn't notice anyone else enjoying it.
However, worse was yet to come. The evening then descended into a nightmare Benidorm style booze cruise from hell. Blasting out at full volume against the pleasant sunset were a load of oldies. a request to play something Hawaiian was met with Don't Worry Be Happy. Not the Hawaiian the requester had in mind I think. It ended with a 70's disco session. YMCA as we arrived back at the pier. Everybody clap hands, woo yea ! How gross. It is not that I don't like 70's disco. I am of a generation that bought those records. This was not the time nor place for them. More Hawaiian or Hawaiian Christmas would have been more appropriate. Christmas was less than a week away after all. The experience on the way back completely ruined the atmosphere of the whole trip.
I intended to have a word with whoever was responsible for the return journey, but couldn't wait to get off that boat. If I hadn't had such an early departure, I,d have marched up to your offices to complain.
If you want to see the Captain Cook monument, do so by any other means you can. Do not go on this cruise.
This review is late as I have just returned home from the holiday and needed to do this on my PC.
Kenneth Lowe