Booking Oahu/Aulani activities

[CrazyDuck]

We booked Pearl Harbor within a week of the times opening up for our late June trip - and couldn't pre-reserve a mid-morning time. We ended up with 8am just because the next available was lunchtime! If you know what day and time you want to get your Arizona tickets, I'd book them ASAP. We actually got the Passport, which includes admission to the ships and museums as well.

You booked a 8am reservation at Pearl Harbor and you are staying at Aulani? I hope this is not for a weekday reservation. Traffic is bad coming from west Oahu from the hours of 5:30 am- 7:30am on weekdays. Remember Oahu is a regular metro city with the 2nd worst traffic in the nation!

 

[Cinderpamela]

We booked an 8 am weekday reservation and while traffic was a bit congested it maybe took around 45 minutes to an hour at the most to get from Aulani to Pearl Harbor. Since you have to be there an hour before your reservation time... so 7 am... that means you leave Aulani at around 6 am or so. With the time difference from the mainland we were actually up and awake plenty early to get there.

 

[MrsPinup]

As of around 2012-ish (or so) you can now make your reservation online at http://www.recreation.gov/tourSearchResult.do?contractCode=NRSO&parkId=72369&tourId=0

Its still free but now you actually have a ticket reservation for the boatride out to the Arizona rather than having to just show up and get a ticket for later in the day. You can still choose to just show up and there will be limited tickets to get that way... but its much less stressfull to reserve your ticket ahead of time.

What Annie was talking about above was what to do if all the reservation times have been taken, but you still want a guaranteed ticket. Reservations... especially in the summer are in high demand and may well already be booked up for July. If thats the case you may want to look into one of the tours she listed above.

If I was travelling with young babies I would for sure want to have a reservation in hand. That way you can plan your day and naps and such around the reservation.

There are lots of details on the gov't website I linked above, but feel free to ask any questions.

Thanks! Our dates are all reserved already We didn't have a choice in the lateness of our plans, so unfortunately we are at the mercy of good luck. And also terribly - my friend (who was last there in 2010) swears you don't need reservations, refuses to look into what I have been telling her about them, and doesn't want to make reservations for anything. She wants to just go with the flow of how the kiddos are doing. I think that will mean that I will miss out on this and everything else I was hoping to do on the island

 

[Cinderpamela]

Thanks! Our dates are all reserved already We didn't have a choice in the lateness of our plans, so unfortunately we are at the mercy of good luck. And also terribly - my friend (who was last there in 2010) swears you don't need reservations, refuses to look into what I have been telling her about them, and doesn't want to make reservations for anything. She wants to just go with the flow of how the kiddos are doing. I think that will mean that I will miss out on this and everything else I was hoping to do on the island

Don't dispair yet, when doing a search for something else I found this thread titled "Who has toured pearl Harbour without a reservation?"

So there is still hope, check it out!
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=3102371

 

[CrazyDuck]

Pearl Harbor memorial is ok... But if you want to see something really interesting go see the Mighty Mo! I think that's the real attraction over there!