Mandy_M, Sep 2026
Wonderful tour, see a ton of beautiful sites in just a day!
So first the things I liked: the tour was breathtaking. When we didn't get out, the driver slowed down or stopped so we got to take pictures, which I really appreciated. The tour guide was nice (I'm sorry I couldn't remember his name, long curly/wave dark hair) and gave a lot of fun facts, history and insightful information about Maui and the places we saw. He even took pictures of us at some of the stops which was really nice. We stopped at many gorgeous, stunning locations and had plenty of time to explore and take pictures. We got to stop for delicious ice cream as well as a sweets stand! Overall definitely recommend, we got to see A LOT in just one day. Didn't have to worry about parking, driving, getting lost, it's a really good deal!
Now the things I didn't like and hope they improve going forward: so as a solo traveler, whenever I do these tours, since the whole bus is filled with families and couples, they always have me sit up front. It just makes sense.. well for some reason that left me truly baffled, the tour guide split up a married couple, had the husband sit in the front seat and had me sit in the very back.. I was very, very confused. In addition, it's rather difficult to hear the tour guide in the very back, as the speaker is not very loud. At times, you couldn't hear him at all because some people were talking to each other. Anyway.. another complaint is that during the 9-ish hour trip, we were only offered water ONCE at lunch time. When we asked if anyone wanted water, I loudly stated yes please and raised my hand, but he apparently did not hear me so I recieved no water until then next stop when I had to explicitly ask him for a water. I found this to be very odd and I ended up with a headache from the dehydration. I had to dry swallow an excedrin before it turned into a migraine. Not fun.. Another thing was when we stopped at a state park for 1 hour, he told us we'd be having lunch and then we could go explore. I was excited because I was quite hungry. However, a few minutes after walking to the site, the tour guide changed his mind and said actually we'll have lunch at the next stop but we'll keep this stop at an hour still. I was disappointed but what can you do? So I went off exploring. We were told to meet back at the van at 11:30. I, along with two other couples arrived back at the bus at 11:27 to find everyone else had finished their lunch??? So because they didn't want to explore for the full hour, they wanted to sit in the bus and wait, he decided to give them their lunch early? Well if I had known that, I'd have been back earlier. So we had to eat our lunch in a very bumpy, unsteady bus while driving to the next stop. YOU try putting sauce on a wrap in those conditions without making a total mess... it's a bit frustrating, especially having to again eat a meal with no water. It's quite literally in the booking title "lunch, water, chips". It's laughable but honestly it was worrisome because the hot , humid Hawaiian weather really dries you out, especially walking/ hiking around. And my one final gripe: the drop off process. So we finished the tour around 3 and began dropping off people at their hotels. My problem is that he passed by me and a few other guests hotels to get to the other guests hotels first.. listen, I totally understand the logic, first in, first out. HOWEVER, almost 1.5 hours was added onto our trip because he chose to drive all the way to their hotels instead of just dropping people off at which ever hotels are on the way/ come first.. it just didn't make any sense at all to me to drive all the way to one area, just to have to drive all the way back to the first area to drop off other guests. In the future, maybe figure out a way to end the trip closer to the people you pick up first. Why keep multiple guests in the van for almost 90 more minutes instead of just dropping them off..? I struggle to understand. So hopefully these things can be fixed/improved, otherwise it was a great trip.
