Should You Rent a Car for a Honolulu Cruise?

So the car you might rent has to go back somewhere before you board — the desks near the pier are a cab ride away, and we found none at the terminal.

Norwegian says Pride of America calls Hawaii home year-round and starts in Honolulu. Hawaii DOT names Pier 2 the primary cruise terminal and Pier 11 the alternate, and your line’s documents say which you’ll use. Aloha Tower itself is closed indefinitely.

One trap, whichever way you arrive. Royal Caribbean warns that Google Maps lists another “Pier 2” about 4 miles from the real one, so type “Pier 2 Cruise Ship Terminal” into the app or the cab driver’s phone.

That leaves a narrow job for a rental: the island days, not the ship.

The W Line runs every 10 minutes from the airport through downtown and Ala Moana to Waikiki, and Route 42 takes over after 10:30 PM; none of the W Line’s timetable stops is at Pier 2 or Pier 11.

That last clause is the catch. The bus gets you downtown for $3, not to the gangway, and we didn’t measure the walk from the nearest stop.

At the airport, TheBus allows one medium suitcase plus a carry-on, which must fit under the seat or on your lap; its own rules page still says carry-ons up to 22 by 14 by 9 inches — two pages, two rules, so pack to the stricter one.

Skyline, the new rail line, has an airport station between the International and Terminal 2 garages — it doesn’t reach downtown or the piers yet.

For one or two light packers going to Waikiki first, the W Line is hard to beat on price. Skip it with a family’s worth of bags.

Roberts Hawaii sells Norwegian passengers a shared ride from the airport to the pier for $29 a person, and $26 from the pier to the airport or Waikiki, with two standard bags included.

Per person, that’s a fixed price, not a meter, and the bags are included. At four people the cab likely wins by about $84, our arithmetic.

The cab figure needs a warning. We could read only the city’s proposed 2022 meter, $4.38 for the first eighth of a mile and 56 cents each eighth after, plus a $2.60 fuel surcharge and 75 cents a bag; we couldn’t confirm it was adopted.

Run that meter and a mile costs about $4.48 after the first eighth. Waikiki to Pier 2, about 3.4 miles by our estimate, lands near $22 — against $26 a person with Roberts going the other way.

Uber and Lyft publish no fare we could read — open the app before you decide. The airport page sets all of these against a rental from the Rental Car Center.

The Waikiki Trolley’s Red Line is $35 a day for adults and $23 for children 3 to 11; the last run starts at 3 PM.

Two adults and two kids pay $116 for a trolley day. A rental for the same day in town is about $62, our arithmetic on an assumed $50 base with Oahu’s tax, the state surcharge and fuel.

The car looks cheaper until it parks — Waikiki hotels we read charge $45 to $80 a night, and the night-before page lists them hotel by hotel.

The 3 PM last run is the real limit — plan a trolley day around the morning, not the afternoon.

We didn’t re-confirm which Red Line stops serve the harbor — ask before you count on it as a ride to the ship.

The split runs by distance from Waikiki. A day that crosses the island tends to favor the car, and one you could reach by bus in half an hour rarely does.

If the quiz came back “rent,” book the car for the island day alone — collect it in the morning, return it before the desk shuts, and keep it out of a hotel garage overnight.

Waikiki’s hotel desks close between noon and 4 PM, so check yours on the hub’s hours checker before you pick the return time.