Too early for me

scroot

Mouseketeer
Joined
Jul 12, 2000
Going to Aulani and tried to book an excursion to Maui. The deal was we had to get ourselves to the ariport by 5 a.m. Didn't want to spend a day of vacation getting up at 3. Does anyone have experience with tours to other islands leaving later in the day or are they all this early?
 
Going to Aulani and tried to book an excursion to Maui. The deal was we had to get ourselves to the ariport by 5 a.m. Didn't want to spend a day of vacation getting up at 3. Does anyone have experience with tours to other islands leaving later in the day or are they all this early?

Tours to other islands will always start very early because otherwise you would barely have enough time to see/do anything. And in reality you'll hardly see a tiny fraction of Maui on a day tour, so the question you need to ask yourself is it truly worth it just so you can say you 'saw' Maui. You may decide it's far better to relax and enjoy yourself on Oahu which has enough things to see/do for an entire vacation.
 
I agree with PP that if you arrive much later, you won't have a full day in Maui (or any other island) and therefore it may not be worth it. You don't really need a tour to island hop either - it's very easy to do yourself. Hawaiian Airlines is the main inter-island airline so you can choose your own flights booking directly with them, and then you'd just need to book a rental car for a day. Also keep in mind driving distances - on Maui, Lahaina and the Kaanapali Beach area are a good 30-40 minute drive from the airport.
 
One day Island tours were once big business out of Oahu, but Hawaiian Airlines does not give the tour groups special deals anymore, so booking is tricky. Probably the only time they feel safe.

Keep in mind we are all coming from early time zones, so 3am is not all that bad. You see all kinds of people roaming around at sunrise
 


Keep in mind we are all coming from early time zones, so 3am is not all that bad. You see all kinds of people roaming around at sunrise

This is true. We came from the east coast and were up and at 'em by 4-5am for the first few days before we acclimated. There were surprisingly a lot of people up and around at that time.
 
We took Hawaiian Airlines to the Big Island to spend the day at Volcano National Park. I can't say I enjoyed getting up at 3:45 am to catch the 6 am flight but it was well worth it (we flew back on the 8 pm flight). The flight was only 40 minutes, you don't need to be at the airport hours beforehand and traffic wasn't bad at 4:30 am. I've wanted to tour the various islands but never really enjoyed the idea of constantly packing and unpacking and checking into and out of hotels so we decided to try this and see how it worked out. In future, I will probably continue to stay at Aulani and do staggered day trips to other islands.
 
Unfortunately the only way to get to another island is to fly there, with all the delays and issues that come with flying. Aulani is assuming that guests want to maximize their time there, but you can set up your own excursion.
 


Can't help with tours but we did something similar as a PP. We had a rental at Aulani and drove to the airport and took the first Hawaiian Air flight (5:00 AM) to the Big Island. Easy to pick up the car rental once we arrived (and easy drop-off). Then we stopped at Kens Pancake House right outside the airport. A definite "Can't Miss"! We drove to Volcanoes NP but honestly did not have a lot of time, since we had lined up a Lava Boat Tour for late morning. After that we had lunch, did a little sightseeing, then drove back towards Hilo for the last Blue Hawaiian helipcopter tour over the volcano. We then took an early evening flight back to Oahu. It was a fantastic day! We are just not tour people. We love the independence of going where we want, when we want. While we were on Maui for three days we did the sunrise on Haleakala (now THAT was an early alarm clock setting!) and we spent an entire day on the Road to Hana and back. As someone earlier mentioned, if you decide to make the day trip to Maui, you need to go as early as possible to have a chance at making the trip worthwhile, since the distances between places can eat up a lot of time.
 

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