Vacation Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Bucket List Disney Cruise – Second Impressions

August 31, 2022 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

Last week, I wrote about our first impressions of our bucket list Disney Cruise. Today, I have some second impressions. I’m almost back home to finish up on some fresh articles – I’m not turning Lazy Man and Money into a travel blog after 16 years (it’s barely old enough for its driving license.)

In the previous article, I noted that the vacation is about a thousand dollars a day for the four of us. My wife made the bookings for the cruise and flight, so I don’t have the exact numbers. To recap, we went on an 11-day cruise from Denmark through Norway, Iceland, Scotland, and ended in England. The sticker price was a little less than $8,000. When you add in flights, excursions, transport to and from the boat (it’s not cheap with all the luggage), taxes, tips, and travel insurance, it’s easy to see where it gets to $1,000 a day. It’s probably more, but we stayed an extra day in Denmark and a few in England at the end. Those cheaper days balanced it out.

There’s only one 11-day cruise in Norway available in 2023 right now, and it is $12,000. It goes to different countries, but it looks like prices might be 50% higher! This shifts my view of the value quite a bit. On the flip side, I looked at Royal Caribbean recently, and it’s much cheaper – especially with the promotions they are running. I saw some things that made me think Royal Caribbean would be a better fit. It seems like they segment the kids better, so my eight and 9-year olds wouldn’t be with the four and 5-year-old activities.

The only catch is that we might take a military rate cruise if it comes to NY (close enough of a drive from RI) and goes to the Bahamas. The timing has to be right with the discounts and kids’ school, so who knows if that will work out.

Here are some second impressions that didn’t make my original article last week:

General Second Impressions

Clean Rooms
The staff cleaned the room twice a day. It always looked fabulous! The kids and I are a mess. My wife is neater, but four people living in a tiny stateroom is a difficult challenge.
Excellent Food
I almost ate Prime Rib twice a day for the entire trip. There were a ton of other options too. The kids said the buffet was their second favorite restaurant anywhere they’ve been. My wife said it was the best lunch she’s ever had.
Clean Ship
For a ship that is 25 years old, it is in fantastic shape. Everything looks brand new and shiny. There are workers scrubbing the banisters all the time. My wife thinks they deep clean the carpets every night because she’s seen some wet spots. They seem to do most of the cleaning at port – I’d only seen one carpet cleaner.
“Free” Show
There was a show on board each night of the trip. The performances were about an hour long but were very well done. A couple of broadway musical-type shows were based on Tangled or an original sequel to Cinderella. The sequel to Cinderella, Twice Charmed, imaged that the evil stepmother and step sisters had an evil godfather who could turn back time and undo Cinderella. Like The Little Mermaid, there’s a price to pay in working with evil, though.
I like the ventriloquist, Paul Zerdin, and the juggler, Pete Matthews the best, though. Paul Zerdin won America’s Got Talent, and the kids loved the show, so it meant a lot to them. Pete Matthews not only did a show, but he had a juggling workshop where he taught a crowd of about 80 people how to juggle at once. My brother taught me years ago so I could help my kids a little. There weren’t enough juggling balls for everyone, so we had to make do with balled-up socks, but they didn’t have enough weight.
It probably costs $200 for a family of four for a show, so the included shows gave us some extra value for our money.
Family Atmosphere
My wife mentioned that she loved that almost everyone was a family. There weren’t many early 20s young adults looking to hook up as you might find on other cruises. I’m not bothered by that much, but it is worth noting if that’s important to you.
On the flip side, she felt that some older teens were dragged along with the family, and there wasn’t enough for them to do. I guess they disrupted karaoke one night, but I was already asleep and missed it.

Excursions

With excursions, you get what you pay for. We went to the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, which was terrific. Sometimes we just stayed in the city and did whatever was there. That was a great way to save money if we didn’t have anything on our “must-see” list. We went to Magic Ice in Reykjavik, Iceland, a bar made entirely of ice – ice floors, ice walls, you name it. It was a unique experience. Of course, the kids just loved doing anything that was off-the-wall silly. They enjoyed their mocktails, and we got pictures of them in ice thrones and Viking ships.

We also went to see the Loch Ness Monster. I didn’t know that history, so I learned a lot. I’ve a lot to say about that, perhaps enough for a separate blog post.

Finally, when we disembarked the ship, we went on the Harry Potter tour at Warner Brother Studios. It not only got us on time but also got us and our luggage to London for the rest of our trip. My wife worked it out from a link someone on the ship sent her. It was as easy as clicking and booking, which was perfect for her.

Surprises

This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Probably 99% of you will laugh at me. I hadn’t realized that it was going to be so cold in Iceland. I had always been told that it was switched, and Greenland is cold and Iceland is fine. That’s true, but it’s still 50 degrees in the peak of summer. That’s warm for the arctic circle, but I had expected to use the pools and waterslides on the ship. I was excited about those days at sea as I expected them to be relaxing in the summer sun. Instead, I was looking for a place to read a book indoors with a window to the outside. Those were in short supply. Some say we should have splurged, so we didn’t have an interior cabin, but those were 50% more.

This was a case where I was too busy to do any thinking or research.

What Could Be Better

In the previous article, I pointed out several cons, and it was a little negative. Here I’ll just add one more:

Terrible Coffee
I don’t drink coffee, so this one’s from my wife. She is usually fine with anything resembling coffee. This was the worst she’s had. It reminded me of something my mother said when we were in Europe twenty years ago. She complained that the coffee was weak. Maybe it’s a Europe thing.
My wife came up with a solution. She found some instant coffee at a grocery store at a port. She’d add some of that to the coffee on the ship, and it seemed to be much better. Before coming up with that, she’d buy cappuccinos at the coffee shop.

Environmental Aside

There’s no real good place in the article to talk about the environmental consequences of cruise ships. There are a lot of people against cruise ships. I get it. I consider myself environmentally conscious. Since this blog started, I’ve been blogging about better environmental choices and solar panels.

However, I did a little deep thinking, and I think the problem may be travel in general. Airplane travel to 5 different countries, and all the stops (other parts of Iceland) create a lot of carbon emissions. Are cruises inherently that much worse? I would have to see a comparison. It also is worth noting that we stopped using air conditioning at our home. Climate control of the interior stateroom must be much more efficient than in our home. We stopped using almost all the energy at home, for that matter, and we aren’t driving anywhere. There are about two thousand people like us.

I’m not going to say that cruises are environmentally friendly – far from it. However, when you consider that other travel is not ecologically friendly either and a significant number of people would be using energy anyway, maybe it’s not so bad?

For further reading, I found some analysis of carbon emissions of cruise ships vs. flying, but I think some of the analysis is lacking. It doesn’t make sense to compare the pollution per passenger mile traveled. A plane can travel our whole 11-day journey in a day. Try keeping that plane in the air traveling for eleven days, and putting a broadway musical on board. The more I think about it, the more difficult it is to compare the two.

Final Thoughts

It’s great to have someone clean your “house” twice a day. Sign me up for that when I’m rich. It’s also good not to have to worry about food. No shopping, no planning, no cooking, no kids fussing – well, they fussed a little bit when they weren’t at the buffet.

I love the idea of being able to see different countries and not having to unpack and figure out the logistics of the local travel systems. In the future, I think we’ll look at Carnival or Royal Caribbean because Disney simply isn’t very FI friendly.

Bucket List Disney Cruise – First Impressions

August 21, 2022 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

Good [whatever time of day it is where you are]! I’m in the middle of the North Sea, and it’s 5:30 AM as I write this. It cost me $36 to get online, so please don’t be too critical of this post. If it’s terrible, at least I was able to save my thousand-day Duolingo streak.

As you gathered from the title, I’m on a Disney cruise. Those are words this frugal guy never thought he’d type. I’m not a Disney person. My wife isn’t a Disney person. My kids would say that they are Pixar/Simpsons people but have no interest in Disney classics, Star Wars, or Marvel.

An expensive Disney cruise makes no sense, but it also makes all the sense in the world. My wife has been looking to return to Europe since we moved to California in 2006. It didn’t make sense then, and it was more complicated once we had kids in 2012 and 2014. The kids can take care of themselves a bit, and they’ll remember this trip. The kids are happy because it’s focused on them. Initially, my wife wanted to go on Queen Mary 2 but realized that would be terrible for the rest of the family. This has something for both of them. As for me, well, I’m human tofu. I take the flavor of what’s around me. If they are happy, I’m generally happy.

This cruise is 11 days and goes from Copenhagen to Norway to Iceland to Scotland to England. We got a day in Copenhagen, and we’ll get a couple of days in England at the end. Overall it’s about a half month away. That’s why I’m not blogging too much until September.

There are entire blogs dedicated to Disney cruises. Before I went, I read a two-thousand-word article about how the beer package worked. It was around 1950 words too long. You buy a mug for approximately $15, and you get six ounces free every time you buy a beer. At about 55-60 cents an ounce, it is $3 of extra beer and pays for itself in about 5-6 beers. The article I read wasn’t as helpful as it didn’t even go into the math.

I will play fast and loose with the numbers because my wife did all the booking. There were many hidden costs, like the ride from the airport to the Airbnb in Copenhagen and then to the ship. I’m not smart enough to think of those details as we have a ton of luggage, and a regular taxi wouldn’t work well.

The Cost of a Disney Cruise

The base package was around $8,200 for a family of four. This was for the cheapest stateroom. We looked for discounts and couldn’t find any. My wife usually gets a military discount, but the travel times for those cruises didn’t match what we needed. I’m sure there was tax, and I know we paid for insurance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were $9500 when my wife checked out. We’re going with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which works in this context. We also had flights that were probably another $2500 as my wife found some deals or cashed some reward points. With extra costs (Airbnb before and after the cruise, rides, excursions, etc.) I wouldn’t be surprised if the final price came in at $15,000.

Wow, I felt way better before I tried to do the math, and I thought it was $8200 for 11-days. We’ll get about 15 days, but anyway we slice it, it’s about a thousand dollars a day. It’s a good thing she earns very good as a pharmacist. The house would look like 101 Dalmations if I tried to make that with my dog boarding side hustle.

The strange thing is that this seemed like the biggest “bargain.” Most other cruises were a thousand dollars a day just for the stateroom. So we see several countries and cultures for less money per day than on other Disney cruises.

Save Money on a Disney Cruise

There are a couple of ways that I’m saving money. So far, I’ve only bought internet access for one day; it is day four now. My wife and I purchased $40 sim cards for our phones from the airport. They include 30GB of data, which is more than we’ll need. I would have bought less data, but there wasn’t an option. The cruise internet is $36 a day, so mobile internet is a bargain. Whenever we are near land, I can use my phone as a mobile hot spot and have a good internet connection for my computer. It just doesn’t work in the stateroom, because the mobile service doesn’t have reception.

On a Disney cruise, you can bring two bottles of wine at any port. We could have brought in more than enough wine never to have to pay for drinks. You are not supposed to drink it outside your stateroom, but there’s no way they’d know if you put it in an opaque cup.

The Good, Bad, and Ugly of a Disney Cruise

The Good

The first two days were as close to perfect days as you can get. My wife rated the first one as a 9.7 and said the second one was even better. It’s just nice having everything taken care of for you. At least twice a day, the staff cleaned our room. There was never a worry about where the next meal would come from or doing the dishes afterward. I suppose that’s standard for every vacation, but we didn’t have to plan any uncomfortable travel-related stuff.

A cruise is a great way to get a taste of several different countries. The Disney aspect was perfect for the kids.

The Bad

Too Much Trivia

We loved the trivia for the first couple of days. However, about half of the activities are trivia, and it’s too much. I can get maybe 10% of the questions. My wife can get about 50%. The kids can do another 10%. Routinely there are 2-3 teams that get at least 95% of the questions correct. There’s some very obscure stuff, but even the less obscure stuff can be challenging when the queries span hundreds of movies, dozens of TV shows, a variety of theme parks, and more. Think of what they could do with just The Simpsons trivia… except sadly, there hasn’t been one question related to them yet.

No Clocks

Maybe it’s a Peter Pan thing, but Disney doesn’t believe in clocks. There are no clocks anywhere. That can be a good thing on some vacations, but everything is run on a strict schedule here. If you run things on a schedule, have clocks around.

I realize many people have cell phones, but the kids don’t. Well, the kids do have some basic cellphones, but they aren’t helpful here without wifi. They can use the Disney Cruise app to chat with other family members, but we’re not leaving an eight and 9-year-old alone when they’ll need it.

The Ugly

Lost Children

Disney lost our kids in the first three hours of getting on the boat. We checked them into the kids’ center and said we’d be back in about an hour as we unpacked. We came back, and there were no kids. The kids’ center said that they switched from “open house” to “secure protocol” at the top of the hour, which means they kick all the current kids out. They said they usually take them to the other kids’ center, but we went to check that out before picking up our kids, and they weren’t there.

Disney had no idea where they might be. They said that usually, the kids go to the room, but we had only been in our room for a few minutes, so we weren’t sure they’d know how to go there. Plus, we were coming from unpacking in our room. Fortunately, they did ask a crew member, and he was able to look up our room and bring them there.

They have extensive security to pick up the kids the rest of the time using a check of parents’ faces (coded into the system from before we left), a room key card, and a secret family password. Excellent security 90% of the time doesn’t make up for the other 10% of the time when they push your out to fend for themselves with strangers.

A couple of days later, one of the people in charge pulled the kids and me aside to say they were sorry. They hinted that they would like to make things right. One kid said he’d like some chocolate, and the person in charge quickly pointed out that she couldn’t make that happen. It seemed odd considering that all the food is included, and there are about five types of chocolate desserts every night. It was clear to me at that point that we weren’t going to get any room credit or anything else of value. The apology did little more than re-open the wound.

“Kids, Go to Back of the Line”

You have to get in line to take pictures with the Disney characters. (These are pictures you pay for, but you can grab your own with your phone.) We were 10 minutes early for Pluto, so we got in the line while Goofy was there but finishing up. They switch out the characters, and it’s at the exact location (so they don’t have to move all the lighting and other photography stuff). About 15 people lined up behind us. Then they announced that Goofy was leaving, but it was our turn. We explained that we were in line for Pluto, and they said that the line started just behind us and we’d have to go to the back. They hadn’t announced any kind of the start of a new line, and there was no way to know that was happening.

We went to the back of the line, and I complained that we had waited longer than everyone. The young lady working there said that SHE was okay with this. I explained that we are the customer, and it’s not about how she feels about her job. I was honestly too confused to get into it anymore.

When we finally got to the front of the line, they gave us a photo of Pluto for being patient. Of course, giving one photo to two kids created a new set of problems. Who gets the photo? Let the fighting begin!

Final Thoughts

As we get off on more ports and spend more time off the boat, we’re finding that we have more things to do. Still, the onboard activities could have a little more variety.

My Hawaii Vacation During COVID

March 22, 2021 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

I usually don’t aim to get hate clicks. Life is too short to make other people angry for no reason. I’m certainly not aiming for hate clicks now, but I wanted the title to be honest. I understand how “My Hawaii Vacation During COVID” looks. It’s probably an 8 of 10 on the Ted-(Can)Cruz-trip to escape the dangerous deep freeze and power outages of Texas last month.

I was hesitant to write about it at all, but in the end, I decided that it is best to be honest. This website is (partly) about my financial journey and a Hawaii vacation is a big part of that. However, before we cover the finances let’s get to the decision to travel during COVID. By now you probably know the drill. The three most important things during COVID (in no particular order) are:

1. Wear a Mask
2. No gather in groups
3. Don’t travel

One of my favorite quotes from Tom Brady is, “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.” I barely left the house for the first few months. Like most everyone else, I haven’t seen (non-immediate) family or friends in more than a year. While I’m near the bottom of the list for vaccines, it seems that I could get my turn within 2-3 months. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not too long.

So why, despite all this, did I spend the last week in Hawaii on vacation? When assessing the risk, all of the following came into play:

My Wife’s Expert Opinion
My wife’s a pharmacist with the US Public Health Service (USPHS). USPHS does a lot of good work, but this their thing. She’s led a team that authored a COVID report that went to the Vice President. I try to follow all the news and details about everything, but she knows many times more than me.
She was the one who came up with the idea to travel to Hawaii.
Hawaii is One of Two “Safe” States
My wife said that there were only two states where we could go. Rhode Island had blocked just about every state. However, Hawaii has done extremely well limiting COVID. They have 10% of the case of Rhode Island, and a similar amount of people (~1,000,000). They have great testing, quarantine, and natural benefits like isolation (Pacific Ocean) and warm weather year-round.
We had originally planned to go to Lake Placid, but it would have required driving through several quarantine states. We took that off the table because then the kids couldn’t go back to school when the vacation was over.
Planes are Cleaner than a Drug Lab
My wife explained that it is a better environment for making IVs than many IV labs. Having made those IVs as a pharmacy technician 20-25 years ago, I know that this is a big deal. It turns out that planes are circulating all the air through HEPA filters every 3 minutes. Not only are planes well equipped, but everyone had to have a negative test 72 hours before boarding. Everyone was required to wear to mask (except for eating).
Our plane was only about half full. My wife and one kid had the center four seats of one row. I and the other kid had the center four seats of another row. That happened both there and back. With the exception of the row in front of us and behind us, we had a good amount of distance.

The safest thing would obviously be to stay at home and never leave the house. With the kids having two weeks of no school, I don’t think that was likely to happen. As an alternative option, spending time in a state with 10% of the COVID cases seems like a defensible position.

Benefits of the Hawaii Vacation

It’s Hawaii. It’s vacation. Those benefits are a given in any year, but more so after the last year. I know that everyone has had to cancel travel. We canceled our March vacation last year as things were getting bad. (We’re also unlikely to be able to recoup our timeshare annual expenses, which we couldn’t use.)

Our kids have been fortunate to be in school this year. Private school has been a great value, especially this year. (It’s so much better than the end of last school year, paying thousands of dollars a month so I could run around a teach a 6 and 7-year-old different curriculums at the same time.)

However, the kids are also on a two week break. That’s a long time to be sitting at home watching TV and playing video games. Yes, I can try a version of my own COVID-19 homeschool, but the kids needed a break of some kind. I didn’t realize it until I was wearing a mask for 12 hours on the plane (plus all the time to and from the airport), but I’ve essentially only worn a mask for about an hour at a time to run a small errand like getting groceries. The rest of the time I’m at home. My kids have worn them for about 8 hours a day, almost every day. Maybe wearing a mask for long periods is something you get used to, but I now have a new respect for what they’ve been through.

My wife has been “virtually” deployed, which means she works from home, every day, even weekends. There’s been a little time off, but she’s running other pharmacist committees and other professional groups. Personally, I could have done without the vacation. I was stressed with deadlines and blogging before and after the break. (I’m stressed writing this now on Monday morning hoping to publish in a few hours.) Traveling always makes me stressed. I always say that flying is designed to make it as uncomfortable as possible so that you’ll pay for the comfort upgrades. For example, the cost to upgrade to first class was almost twice as much as the actual ticket itself.

This was also a unique opportunity. We had tossed around the idea of going to Hawaii again someday, but flying from Rhode Island with two kids is a whole different ball game than when my wife and I flew from San Francisco 13 years ago. I can’t remember what the price was, but it wasn’t very much. Now, the flight is twice is as long and we have twice as many people. I can’t seem to find what the non-COVID pricing would be, but I would guess that it would be between $800 and $1000 per person. At $3200-$4000 in flights, our vacation dollar goes a lot further elsewhere.

Hawaii became an opportunity because we got great pricing due to COVID-19… and it was one of the few places we could go and not have to quarantine either way.

Finally, we don’t live in an area of great diversity in Newport, RI. In fact, that is a big understatement, there is almost no diversity here. Hawaii is one of the few places in the United States with its own distinct culture. The kids can read about different cultures in a book or watch a YouTube video, but experiencing it “hands-on” is so much more valuable. There’s a big difference in the educational value of a week of Hawaii culture vs. watching reruns of Gumball on Cartoon Network.

The Costs of Our Trip

I don’t have all the numbers available unfortunately. My wife made most of the travel arrangements, and I’m writing this jet-lagged and close to when I usually publish my articles. However, I do know the following costs:

Flight: $580/pp
Hotel: $180/night
Car Rental: $700
Hotel Stay Before Flight: $120
Meals: One billion dollars.

I’m exaggerating the billion dollars for meals. We could have done it a lot cheaper, but we went out a lot. The kids wanted to experience malasadas. (They didn’t want to experience Hawaiian plates for some reason.) We couldn’t cook much because of the hotel room. However, we were able to eat leftovers with access to a microwave. We also had cereal as the kids prefer that to almost anything.

The flight was $580 per person or around $2400. We were able to cash in some credit card points for one ticket. I don’t like to count that because it’s like cashing in a gift card – we’re making an exchange of someting that has value for a flight.

My wife was able to get us the military hotel on Waikiki in Honolulu. The Hale Koa Hotel is right next to the Hilton that costs $500 a night or more. We stayed for 5 nights – $900 with all taxes included. I suspect most people would pay $2000 or choose to stay in a cheaper area of Oahu.

The car rental was the big killer. My wife planned a lot of this trip at the last minute and just got a car because she knew ~~I wanted to stalk Jack Johnson~~ we would want to see sea turtles on the North Shore. If we had to do it all again, we’d probably use a lot more ride-sharing. However, then again, that would increase the COVID risk. As it turned out my wife and kids took ride-share once in Hawaii. They woke up at 3 AM (due to the time zone difference) and went for a long, long walk to get coffee. The driver said he wasn’t going to get vaccinated, but my 8-year-old convinced him that his mother works with the experts and it is really safe and effective. I missed the whole thing, but I hear it was a convincing speech.

Finally, we paid $120 for a hotel the night before. There’s a hotel near the airport that includes parking (they shuttle you to the airport), so it’s actually cheaper to get to the hotel with free parking than it is to park at the airport.

Overall, I’d say we got about a $6,000 vacation for $4,000 (less if you count the points we used for one flight) not counting the meals. Yikes, even though it seemed like we were getting deals along the way, it still wasn’t cheap. That said, we had a lot of money in our travel budget after not traveling over the last year. We don’t have any plans to travel in the future either. If everything works out, we might take a road trip this summer.

What Did We Do in Hawaii?

We actually weren’t in Hawaii too long if you count the traveling. My wife had to be back for work the kids had to be back in case the school decided that quarantine was necessary anyway. We left on Sunday and came back on Friday.

Sunday – Due to the long flight and time change, it felt like nighttime to us. However, it was still early afternoon. We walked around the hotel and beach and then went to sleep around 6 PM local time (midnight our time). This is why my wife and kids became streetwalkers at 3 AM. (I had woken up at 11, worked a little, and went back to sleep.)

Monday – After my wife and kids’ journey to get coffee early, we went to an early breakfast and then drove to the Dole Pineapple Plantation soon after it opened. It was a bit of a drive as we had to go around the island to get to the north side. The place was packed, much more than it was 13 years ago when we were there. They have a big pineapple maze (like a corn maze), a train, and a garden. The train was a 90-minute wait in line, so we skipped that. Our whole family found the garden fairly boring. I think if gardens are your thing you’d like it? The 7-year-old and I did the maze while my wife and the 8-year-old opted to sample some pineapple and go through the gift shop. The maze took about an hour to get through and it got a little hot towards the end. My son wanted to do it all over again, but that wasn’t going to happen.

We went through the gift shop and I told my son that he couldn’t get the blue turtle at the pineapple store. There would be other places to get turtles, but this is about the pineapple. We all got Dole Whips. At age 7 and 8 my kids completed their quest to have Dole Whips at the only two places (to the best of my knowledge) that you can get them – Disney and Hawaii. They really have no idea how lucky they are.

Random side thought: Rhode Island recently changed its name from Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations to have sympathy with the negative connotations of “plantation.” The “Providence Plantations” were named in the 17th century to refer to being a “new settlement” and not related to any slavery activity. Somehow the Dole Pineapple Plantation is fine and no one has come after the company to change that name. It seems a little inconsistent to me.

After the Pineapple Plantation, we went to musician Jack Johnson’s town of Haleiwa to see some sea turtles and have a local lunch. The tide was high and there were no turtles. The lunch was good until a local chicken spooked my 8-year-old and jumped up and ate his lunch. Fortunately, he had chosen the nachos instead of his usual chicken tenders. That would have been awkward.

We got caught in a flash flood on the way back and everyone had a long day (having been up since 3 AM). We settled for a quick dinner at the hotel and everyone went to be early again.

Tuesday – We had a pool reservation for 11, but we once again woke up early. We went to Leonard’s for malasadas, which was a highlight of the trip for the kids. After watching Pokemon Sun and Moon, the kids have wanted to try the malasadas from Jessie and James’ food truck in the Alola region.

We decided to hike Diamond Head, a famous trail. My 8-year-old had a really bad attitude to start because he thought he would die. (He thinks everything will kill him.) Somehow he was able to turn it around during the hike as I held his hand and he talked about the souvenir he wanted after he completed it. Before long he was the most enthusiastic hiker of the whole group. He got very excited near the end when he saw the yellow steps that he recognized from the Pokemon anime.

I've been (mostly) offline for a several days – getting some time with nature.
Kids were proud to hike Diamond Head. The pot of gold at the end of the ? is Honolulu. pic.twitter.com/U3mJjckbMR
— LazyManAndMoney (@LazyManAndMoney) March 17, 2021

After Diamond Head, we went to see the Halona Blow Hole, but it wasn’t doing too much. Maybe the tide was too low. We went back for our pool reservation, which was great fun. The lifeguards were very strict, but not for any particular COVID-19 reason, just regular procedure like making sure that everyone is in an exact line for the water slide. My 7-year-old is a decent swimmer and can stand anywhere in the pool. I was with him and they still made him put on a life jacket for the 10-foot swimming distance from the water slide to get back in line. I guess that’s what you get at the military hotel.

We went to the Rainbow Drive-In for a traditional Hawaiian plate lunch which was fabulous. The kids wanted to go a local cat cafe because they had never seen one. I’m allergic so I got to watch them play with cats from outside. Most of the cats were their typical cat-selves and wanted to sleep with no interaction with people. While the kids had a lot of fun, my 8-year-old wants to open up a therapy dog cafe with older dogs. I think that’s a much better business idea than a cat cafe, but I’m biased.

We had dinner back at the hotel at a place called the Pool Bar. It has a great sunset view of the ocean. However, it only has three hot food options, chicken tenders, a pulled pork sandwich, and nachos. The kids didn’t like virgin lava flows, but my wife and I did.

Wednesday – We had another 90 minutes of pool reservation, this time in the morning. The water was colder and we ended up not using the whole 90 minutes. (In case you were wondering, they limit the number of people to around 50 or 75 for the big pool area during this time. It isn’t like one family at a local hotel.)

We went to the mall and its amazing food court for lunch. They had food from everywhere – but specifically over a dozen Asian restaurants. I couldn’t decide so I went with the Mokoloco. My son got tricked by an Americanized restaurant called Holy Cow. It’s really Korean street food (we had no idea) where he had a mozzarella stick on a stick wrapped in a sugar dough outside. It was the highlight of the day. We’re going to try to make them at home with the help of this YouTube video:

The kids also had shave ice (for some reason Hawaii doesn’t believe in the “d” in “shaved ice”) and that went over well too. The food was the big highlight for the 8-year-old.

After lunch, we went out to the beaches. We tried Makapu?u Beach, but the waves were too crazy and it was far too dangerous for our swimming level. We went a little further down the coastline and found a beach with plenty of people. The waves were still big and crashed on the kids quite a bit. I got them far enough out (they had life vests on) so that the waves wouldn’t break on them. We didn’t stay out too long though, because I realized that it would be a bad situation if I got tired and had to fight the current to bring them in. I got back and rested and my wife took them out, but the lifeguard quickly warned them that they should come back in. They were fine at the time, but we were a little out of place compared to the locals who had older kids who grew up with these waves.

Before dinner, we tried to make reservations for Hard Rock Cafe, but it was closed until Thursday. We tried another place, but it turned out to be more of a club/adult place rather than a family place. We walked around and found the Yard House, but it was a two-hour wait. Ruth’s Chris was available right away, but there was literally nothing on the menu my 7-year-old would eat and I didn’t want to spend $200 to hear complaining. We left. Literally, every place was a bust and we had walked two miles, so the kids were in a very bad mood at this point. So we went back to the hotel restaurant. We figured it would be easy since you have to be military to go there. It was still an hour wait and the host chewed us out for not getting reservations.

Finally, we ended up at the same Pool Bar as we did the night before.

Thursday – We went to the beach in the morning. For having a hotel on the beach we didn’t spend that much time at the beach because we were always out and about. It was rainy though, so we ended up back inside.

We went to go snorkeling with the turtles (one of my kid’s favorite animals). It was windy and rainy and the captain decided the ocean current was too strong to let the kids snorkel. We ended up seeing one turtle up close to the boat and another a bit in the distance. The youngest kid loved it anyway. We were able to get the price changed to the observer rate since we didn’t actually get to go snorkeling.

At dinner time we went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Yes, it is a tourist trap that we would typically avoid, but the kids had never been. Also, this was my last chance to find anything related to Jack Johnson. I struck gold as they had his autographed Sleep Through the Static CD and a full-size promotional surfboard. This CD had been in my car’s CD player for the last month or more. I wrote about the first track, All at Once, last year for Earth Day.

The kids loved Hard Rock Cafe and the gift shop had everything deeply discounted. I got a T-shirt for $10. My son got a $50 sweatshirt that was marked down to $15. We didn’t need new clothes

Friday – Everyone was adjusted to the time, so I was the first one to wake up for a change. We started packing in the morning and then went out to the beach for about an hour. That’s all we had until it was time to check out and get to the airport. At the airport, I wandered off on my own and bought my 7-year-old the blue stuffed turtle that he wanted at the Pineapple Plantation, it turned out that we hadn’t seen another one. I surprised him with it when we got home.

In the end, we ended up packing a lot into a few days. I would have liked to do a little more slow travel and relaxed a bit more. Like many vacations, some things didn’t cooperate, but we’re fortunate to have any kind of vacation at all.

This is a long article and I think it covers most of everything. Let me know if you have any questions about Oahu or traveling during COVID. And if you’ve read the 3500+ words this far and still want to leave a hate comment, you’ve earned it.

Block Island on the Cheap

September 4, 2020 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

As you know, in 2020, vacations are rare birds. In Rhode Island we live in the smallest state, it can be a little cramped here. For a long time, we haven’t been able to go to another state without having to quarantine for two weeks. On the positive side, the system has been working for the most part.

As lucky we are to have a vacation, it’s hard to balance that it’s simply going to be a different type of vacation.

We had plans to go to Hershey Park in Pennsylvania, but when that wasn’t in the cards, we went to Plan B – Block Island. It’s still in Rhode Island, so we don’t have to quarantine, and but it is far enough from everyday life and chores.

My wife has spent the summer on a Facebook group about the hundreds of glass orbs that are hidden on the island. Of course just a few days before we go, The New Times has to publish an article about the orb hunting. At least I scooped them by writing about the glass orb hunting in early July

We’ve been to Block Island many times. While we don’t always look for glass orbs, we usually do. We haven’t found any, but we were hopeful that with the focus on it this time, we’d come away with an orb.

Did we find one? Before I get to that answer, let’s get to the personal finance aspect of the trip.

My wife has renewed frugality these days. Work hasn’t been the greatest this summer and early retirement in a couple of years looks good to her. Part of the retirement plan is saving up a nest egg. It had been going really well with COVID because our spending has been a lot less. I think that’s encouraged her to see what’s possible.

With that in mind, we wanted to go as cheaply as we could. That’s a bit of a problem because Block Island hotels in the prime time of summer are extremely expensive. Many of them were built in the 1600s. The rooms are typically very small, so we need a suite to fit two adults and kids. Our favorite place is usually $250 a night while school is still in session in early June. We’re able to get a discount because we have stayed there multiple times and book a few days at a time. We never book over the weekend when the price jumps up a lot.

This time, we couldn’t manage all the cost savings. Our trip is shorter and it’s prime summer, not the shoulder season. Prices were above $500 a night, so we went with a cheaper place. We didn’t think it would matter much because we would be out hunting orbs for a day and a half. We were wrong.

The Old Bakery Inn Review

We got a big place that was dog-friendly. For just under $390, that sounds like a lot, but it’s about the cheapest place of its kind available. We wanted the dog-friendly place because that’s an additional savings of around $40 a night of dog sitting. Also, the dog loves the nature and the kids thought they might be able to train him to sniff out the glass orbs.

That was the good part of the Old Bakery Inn. Unfortunately, the bad was kind of tough. The building itself was built in the 1600s, so I am grading on a curve. I don’t mind that the stairs are all twisted with centuries of a moving foundation.

However, the bathroom was a converted kitchen. Thus the place was both for us. This is important because we had a plan to cook our meals. Eating out at Block Island is very expensive. All the food has to be brought in by ferry. There’s no fast food or a value menu to be found. There are a couple of places that may have a slice of pizza that is cheap. I have to look into that next time, but we are rarely in the mood for pizza after a hot summer day at the beach.

Getting back to the cooking plan, my wife was itching to use her Instant Pot skills (read her Instant Pot Review). She’s been following a Facebook Group all summer where people seem to make only two things – cheesecake and Mississippi meatloaf. I think they probably make more in this group, but those are the only two things my selective hearing has registered. (Do I score points for honest?) The Old Bakery Inn’s bathroom/kitchen had only a small fridge. There were bowls, plates, silverware, or even a small microwave to reheat leftovers. There were 3 of the plastic disposable cups, not enough for the 4 of us. It wouldn’t have taken much for them to add a few of these cheap things. The other place we stay has all this and a big fridge and a stove – and the bathroom is separated from the kitchen.

Additionally, The Old Bakery Inn had no wifi. I don’t think I’ve been to a hotel that hasn’t had wifi in more than a decade. I had my mobile hot spot, but my data plan was quickly at the end of the 8GB before it gets sent to a crawl until the end of the month. I have to type this review up in Notepad and edit it with links later.

There was also no coffee maker. What kind of hotel/inn doesn’t have a coffee source? I’m not a coffee person, but my wife is. Fortunately, she brought a cold press cup of some sort and was able to make her own. I had suggested that we bring iced coffee with us, but my wife wanted to try this. (This is an old Aruba travel trick we’ve used in the past. There was no Dunkin’ Donuts in California where we lived, but then went on vacation to Aruba there was one. It was a long walk, so we’d get enough iced coffee to last for a few days.)

There are actually two televisions, so the kids could watch a Phineas and Ferb marathon, while the adults can watch something else. That was a very good feature. We weren’t out hunting orbs as much as I thought we’d be, so it became necessary. Ironically, the kids had been watching all the Phineas and Ferb episodes anyway since there aren’t too many Disney+ cartoon shows.

We ended up doing fairly well in saving money on food. We brought our own beer and drinks (Diet Coke, flavored squishes like Mio). We brought our own milk for cereal. We brought a couple of reusable “Dixie-Cup” material bowls, which was perfect for the dog to eat and drink (and the kids’ cereal). As we were running out the door, I switched out the cooler to an old Brookstone picnic one I had gotten in college. It comes with its own plates, cups, and flatware. It served us well.

My wife packed a bunch of dry goods like chips, pretzels, nuts, etc. She also packed some cheese, butter, some pasta, 1.5 pounds of ground beef, and Kraft Mac and Cheese. This was enough to make dinner for the kids with the InstantPot. We had simple peanut butter and deli meats for sandwiches on the trail. We didn’t need to eat a single meal out, but we ended up eating a couple of them out anyway.

The first meal was when we first arrived. We didn’t have access to our room yet and we didn’t have a place to settle down for lunch. We went to a Mexican place, Calavaras, which has been a highlight in the past. Unfortunately, this time they mixed up my wife’s and my burritos. They wrote shrimp on the one that was pork. So she started to eat that one and I started to eat the other. It’s a very good thing I didn’t have a shellfish allergy. However, between the ferry ride and the shrimp, my stomach wouldn’t be good for hours.

I felt like complaining about spending $50 for the burritos (and the nachos for the kids) only to get a mixed-up order, but everyone is having a tough 2020 and it wasn’t going to make the situation any better.

The next restaurant visit was for drinks and a brownie sundae. The kids simply needed a break from orb hunting. My wife and I had one adult drink and the kids had juice. That ended up costing us $45. I’m tempted to go spend $45 at Burger King and take a picture of what it would look like. For kids would have preferred all that Burger King (spread over a week), but that’s simply not in the cards at Block Island.

We could go to the single grocery store on the island, but that’s expensive too. Maybe I’ll do a cost comparison sometime. For now, if we can bring most of our food, it’s better to avoid it completely.

Glass Float Hunting

It may sound fun to take a 6 and 7-year-old on a treasure hunt. It is fun. However, their legs got tired in the hot sun. Sometimes I got tired myself. Other times our 11-year old dog got tired. Because my wife is super-human, she never got tired.

I think we were out hunting for orbs for around 16 hours over the 3 days and 2 nights. What did we find?

Nothing. We found a lot of places where hundreds of orbs out there could be hidden, but no orbs themselves.

This was incredibly frustrating for the kids because they had just assumed that we’d find an orb. Although we tried, we couldn’t limit their expectations. At one point we walked about a half-mile to a lighthouse (you couldn’t drive there) that we received a tip on. It was a tough walk on squishy beach sand or slippery rocks if you went to the ocean. Doing all that work for “nothing” was the last straw for my 7-year-old. That’s really when everything started to unravel… and understandably so.

That’s when we settled on the before-mentioned brownie sundae. Sometimes life doesn’t work out how you want, but you pick yourself up and continue on. Next year, they’ll be a year older and more prepared to search longer and better.

I don’t like to an article on a negative note. We ended up recharging our batteries well. We came back home energized to get back to our day-to-day lives.

What it’s Like to go on Vacation During Coronavirus

July 2, 2020 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

kids smores — Our annual s’mores dessert.

Today’s article is brief… expect a couple of longer ones next week and in the future as the kids go to camp (if camps still happen as planned)

So like everything in 2020, this is going to be a weird article to write. It’s especially odd because coronavirus cases are spiking across the country… except for two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island which are declining. We’re lucky enough to live in Rhode Island. We never got a big spike in our area and now things are on the decline.

I still don’t see nearly enough people wearing masks, but what’s in place is working as well as… what’s working in many European countries when you see the charts.

It’s so strange here, that we did something that few Americans can think about – go on vacation. Last week, we went on our annual trip to Block Island – a small island ~15 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. It’s only accessible by ferry and has a tiny population of ~1000 people. It’s where (allegedly) Billy Joel and Christopher Walken sneak off to if they want to get away from the celebrity life for a bit.

Block Island hasn’t a coronavirus case yet. (Now that I think about it, their “hospital” isn’t really much and I can’t imagine they do testing.)

In a role reversal, the bed and breakfast that we stay called us up and asked if we wanted to come this year. Their usual clients from out of state, couldn’t come as a practical matter, because of the state’s 14-day self-quarantine mandate.

So we did what the 30-year old song said to do:

“Sail away on the Block Island Ferry, leave all your troubles behind… take a trip back to carefree times.”

For the most part, it lived up to its promise.

Our Own Block Island Gotchas

This section is likely to go over like a lead balloon. After all, we’re already in the win column by having any kind of vacation at all.

It seems we weren’t the only people looking to take this trip. While we were able to book the hotel easily enough, the ferry itself wasn’t taking reservations for awhile. When they finally started, car reservations were filled up for the first day except for the last one at 7 PM. That would be a loss of a whole day of vacation. That’s significant when you are only staying 3 nights/4 days.

We decided to park the car and go across ourselves in the morning. I took the ferry back at 2 PM to pick up the car and bring that across to the island. I was originally disappointed by this run-around, but it’s the first 6 hours I had without the wife and kids in about 4 months. I was only disappointed that when I got back, everyone (especially my wife) was ready for sleep. I can’t blame her with two kids and the dog.

Before our trip, we got the news that my wife’s friend’s father had died. The funeral was the morning of the last day of our trip. We had planned to stay the full day, but we were able to change our ferry time and leave in the morning. (Few people leave the Block Island first thing in the morning – the ferry was almost empty.)

A four-day vacation turned into about a two day one. That’s still 2 more days than most people have during these times, but it was disappointing nonetheless.

The Block Island Vacation Itself

There isn’t a lot to do on Block Island. That’s kind of the point. There are outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, and beaching. There are some nice tiny boutique shops. Finally, there are the restaurants. The outdoor activities are exactly the same during coronavirus – except that you bring your mask with you just in case. There aren’t many people around, so there’s not a big need to use it.

We usually go hiking and hunting for glass orbs. There’s a deal with the tourism industry on the island and a local glassmaker to hide around 500 of these on the island every year. They are extremely hard to find, and we haven’t found one in 4 years now. This year they weren’t hiding them until late July. Instead of hiking, we brought an inflatable kayak and took that out for a little while.

We didn’t get to do any boutique shopping. I’m not a big fan, but sometimes there’s something in the 75% bin that’s a good deal. The biggest reason why we didn’t get to do any is that our 6 and 7-year-old kids wouldn’t allow it without ruining the whole vacation. There’s simply nothing fun for kids in boutiques. If we had a longer vacation, we could have split up, but it didn’t work out that way.

The restaurants are very different during coronavirus of course. They were just starting to open up distanced indoor dining when our trip started. It didn’t seem like any restaurant operated the same way. A few took temperatures. Some took our name and phone number. Some had menus. Some asked us to take a picture of a menu with our phone and use that to order from. However, once again, many people don’t have an option to eat at a restaurant.

At the end of the day, the best thing about Block Island is simply unplugging from day-to-day life. It’s nice to not have to worry about a to-do list that never gets done or laundry, dishes, cooking, etc.

If we wanted to be more frugal about the planning perhaps we would have come back the evening before and saved the last night at the hotel. That would have saved us a couple of hundred dollars. However, we would had spent a lot of the last evening cleaning and packing for our trip, which would have cut down on our vacation further.