The very first time I ever mentioned Hawaii on this blog was back in the summer of 2019 as we disembarked the Disney Fantasy and started looking forward to our dream trip to Hawaii the following year sailing on the beautiful Disney Wonder from Vancouver to Hawaii followed by a few days at Aulani. I had been looking forward to it ever since the moment when we booked it the year before – we even had our favourite stateroom on the ship, all of our flights were booked and all of our sightseeing was planned. What could possibly go wrong?

Well as we all painfully know the last two years have been the strangest times we have ever known in our entire lives. I had planned everything to do with our Hawaii trip so carefully and I thought I had a backup plan for anything that could go wrong but a global pandemic, the US border closing, Canada closing their border as well as their cruise ports, the shutdown of cruising around the world and a national lockdown in the UK had never even entered my mind. Why would it? Even now when you look back at what happened you wonder if it was all a bad dream as the world was a scary place for all of us for quite some time.

Having our dream trip cancelled was heartbreaking and I remember crying an entire afternoon one day back in March 2020 when our cruise documents arrived at home for our trip that could no longer happen. That might seem silly to some people but I had looked forward to it for so long but that as well as being told I was being furloughed from work for at least two months the same day was just too overwhelming.

However several months passed and in October 2020 after going back to work, Disney Cruise Line announced the dates for the two rescheduled Hawaii cruises – April and May 2022. The only difference was that the itinerary from Vancouver to Hawaii (which we had booked previously) was nowhere near as good as it missed the port of Hilo on the Big Island whereas the sailing from Hawaii back to Vancouver included all the stops we should have had on our cancelled cruise. So it was an easy decision as to which one we wanted to book but we also knew that it would be popular so the morning after my birthday, we each sat with our laptops and after some frantic refreshing, we had a reservation on the Honolulu to Vancouver cruise. The only downside was that this time, we could only get a GTY verandah cabin so our stateroom would be picked for us – we have always had the same room on both the Disney Wonder and the Disney Magic and we had it booked for the original Hawaii cruise as well. But who cared what room we had as we just wanted to be on that cruise and to be able to start replanning our dream trip.

Over the next few months, I tried not think about Hawaii too much as I would not let myself feel the excitement that I had originally had for our cancelled cruise as I did not want the pain of losing the trip once again as there was still far too many things unknown at this time. However shortly afterwards in Spring 2021, Disney announced the “Disney Magic at Sea” staycation sailings from the UK and we jumped at the chance to book two of them – from both Southampton and Tilbury – and they were every bit as wonderful and magical as I hoped. We even had that favourite stateroom of ours on them and it almost seemed like old times again albeit with a handful of restrictions and Covid protocols onboard.

Very slowly after the staycation cruises happened, the world once again started to become and feel more normal and we celebrated little victories along the way as cruising around the world restarted and after 600 days of being closed, the US border finally reopened in November 2021. But I still could not get excited about our Hawaiian cruise as there were still far too many obstacles in the way such as a Canadian ban on cruise ships as well as the strict Hawaiian Covid rules that were in place. I started to think that even if our cruise was not going to happen, if we could just get to Hawaii and enjoy a few weeks travelling around the islands, I would be so happy and over the moon just to achieve that.

As 2022 arrived and we got closer and closer to the cruise, stressed and exhausted would be an understatement and I started to suffer from anxiety and even had several panic attacks which was not fun. It felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders and I was just so scared of anything going wrong when our dream trip was so close. For an entire month before we flew to Hawaii, we did not socialise with others and I lived like a hermit as much as possible as we both knew that not only did we have to do a test to board the ship but also one to be able to fly to the United States to begin with. During this time I even had someone be incredibly rude and nasty to me for wearing a mask at work when no one else was – it was my choice and I just wanted to be as careful as possible. During this time I only ever had two things in my head which were “I cannot wait to board the ship” followed shortly by “Will I even be allowed to board the ship?”

The good news however was in the weeks before we travelled the Hawaii Safe Travels program ended, sailings to Hawaii on other cruise lines restarted, the first ship in over two years docked in Vancouver and it seemed like the final hurdles that were in the way of our trip happening were being lifted one by one. And then one afternoon we were able to swap our GTY cabin on the Disney Wonder for a stateroom that was only two doors away from our favourite cabin on Deck 7 and we honestly felt like we had won the lottery. We did not think things could get any better at that point until one week later when our favourite stateroom became available. Somehow the impossible happened and at this point we really started to believe that this trip to Hawaii and this cruise was meant to happen.

I finally finished work a few days before we travelled but the three day wait at home until we could get our fit to fly tests done felt like forever as they went by so slowly. The day before our flight, we drove the short distance to Heathrow Airport to get our antigen tests done in person and yes I cried tears of joy when the negative result came through. The next day we flew to Los Angeles but as I have flown to LA hundreds of times for work over the last twenty years, it just felt like any other day and definitely not like a holiday at that point. Despite the US mask mandate being lifted on aircraft a few days before we travelled, we still wore them for the entire flight as we wanted to be careful as we still had one more test to do to be able to board the Disney Wonder later that week. I felt exhausted on landing which was not helped by the long line at immigration (however it was nice to see the crowds in the airport again like old times) but thankfully it did not take long to get to our hotel for the night.

The next morning I woke up and felt a sense of calmness as well as excitement as I could actually finally say out loud that “I’m going to Hawaii today” – something that I once never thought would happen. When we were checking in for our Delta flight at the airport that morning, it really sunk in and became real when I saw “Honolulu” on the baggage tag of my suitcase. As we had waited so long for this trip, we had decided to treat ourselves to First Class seats on the flight when we booked and it truly was money well spent as we got priority check in, priority security, priority boarding (so we had no issues finding space for our hand luggage), no checked baggage fees and as the flight was five and half hours long, we had bigger seats with extra legroom as well as food and drink along with being the first off the plane in Honolulu.

We had made sure to book seats on the left hand side of the aircraft and the first sight of land as we descended into Hawaii was amazing. Then as we turned to make our final approach into Honolulu, the view of Aulani below us was simply breathtaking.

Just over an hour later after we had collected our luggage and picked up our rental car, we were arriving in Ko Olina and pulling up in front of Aulani which has been a bucket list hotel of ours for such a long time. I was tearful when we walked into the Maka’ala (lobby) and heard the music by Kealiʻi Reichel that I had been listening to for years and I cried even more tears of joy when we were told that we had been upgraded to an oceanview room at the resort. I had my dream view (and yes I cried again when I saw the view for the first time from the balcony) and it really did feel like it was the universe saying that this trip was supposed to happen this way and at this time.

And despite all the tears, I know that I’m a grown up but two weeks before we arrived at Aulani, character hugs were reintroduced after two years of distanced meet and greets and that first hug with Minnie and Mickey was every bit as magical as you would think and the world immediately felt like a much better place and everything was normal once again.

We spent the next few days enjoying everything Aulani and Ko Olina had to offer as well as taking trips to the incredible Kualoa Ranch (another place I had always dreamed of visiting), Byodo-In Temple, the North Shore of Oahu, Lanikai Beach as well as hiking up Diamond Head for sunrise. Then it was finally time for our long awaited Hawaiian cruise on the Disney Wonder which was every bit as wonderful as I hoped it would be but more on that and our days on Maui, Kauai and the Big Island another time.

Now that we are home after the trip, looking back at our photos of Hawaii seems very surreal and it feels like a dream. I was not originally planning on writing any blogs from our Hawaii cruise (like I have done for our previous cruises) but then thought why not – I waited so long for this trip that I want to remember everything. Someone asked me on the final night of the cruise if I was sad that it was the last night and I could easily answer no I wasn’t in the slightest – I could never be sad that the trip was over, I could only smile and be overjoyed that it finally happened.

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