Stopping over in Hawaii?

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

Hello all,

I know a few of you have done and/or intend to do stopovers in Hawaii on your trips.

Is it much more expensive usually to add this sort of thing to your flights?

What are the flight lengths from LA-Hawaii? from Hawaii-Aust?

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

OH and how many days would you need minimum to make it worth the effort? Would 2-3 be worth it or not?

 

[PrincessInOz]

My input below.

Hello all,

I know a few of you have done and/or intend to do stopovers in Hawaii on your trips.

Is it much more expensive usually to add this sort of thing to your flights?
I believe it is much more expensive these days. It will depend on the carrier.

What are the flight lengths from LA-Hawaii?

About 5 hours.

from Hawaii-Aust?

About 11 hours.

OH and how many days would you need minimum to make it worth the effort? Would 2-3 be worth it or not?

I love Oahu. For me, I would want 3 - 4 days. And that does not include Aulani time. You could do it in 2 - 3.

 

[aussietravellers]

If you haven't been to Honolulu before, I would say at least three days. If you were going on to Orlando from Hawaii, you can fly HNL to Dallas, then Dallas to MCO (you can also fly from NY direct to HNL).

We have done Hawaii on the way home before (Dallas to HNL and also done LAX to HNL).

From memory HNL to LAX is around 5 hours and a half hours.

HNL to DFW is about 7.5 hours.

 

[aussietravellers]

OH and how many days would you need minimum to make it worth the effort? Would 2-3 be worth it or not?

To make it worth it, I would say about 5 days.

Flights from AU arrive now about 9.30am (jetstar). But by the time you clear customs get to hotel, it's time for lunch and your day's half over, so with two to three nights, you will really only get one or two full days, which isn't long.

 

[aussietravellers]

Is it much more expensive usually to add this sort of thing to your flights?

I missed a bit

The SYD-HNL leg can be cheap, with air australia and jetstar, you can get flights one way for just over $300. It's the HNL-LAX portion that is not so cheap, but.... they do have specials too, so it is possible to do the stopover for not a great deal more. If you don't get specials it can add a bit to the trip. Things like that a TA can help, to wrangle and connect fares with stopovers and cut costs. Its a shop around, play around yourself, then pounce on a deal if one comes up (like so many of the fares these days )

 

[Ms. Shuttergirl]

Thanks for all the input ladies. It seems that to make it worth the effort perhaps we would need a little longer than we actually could spare. Perhaps this could be a during the year Hawaii only holiday if a special deal came our way, rather than an add on to an already exhausting intinerary

 

[Mum from oz]

I think Hawaii deserves more than 2-3 days to do it justice. That's without Aulani! We are planning to go for a dedicated trip to Hawaii for 7-10 days between our next trip and the one after. I'm just going to keep my eye out for specials and book it!

 

[queenie82]

Unless you are doing a Round the World Fare adding Hawaii isn't as easy, cheap or simple as it would seem....
Airlines USED to go via there and it could be a stopover (just like SFO is a stop over to MCO)
However it really depends what is on offer. Given the way the special offers come about I would do Hawaii on it's own.

I personally hate the Waikiki are. It's become incredibly tacky...with the junk...or uber expensive stuff. I don't plan to hang around there again any time soon.
My ONLY reason for bothering with OAHU at all in the future is for Aulani.

MAUI however I could easily spend 1 week MINIMUM at. I could easily allocate 2 weeks to Hawaii in general...even 3...

I want to spend a few days on the big island to do it properly. A visit to Lilo and Stitch in KAUAI too..

 

[dabecs]

Thank you so much for starting this thread! We were planning a stopover but it would have only been for 2/3 nights - after reading this thread I think we might give it a miss. We could add the extra nights on to Washington and look at Hawaii as a stand alone destination in the future..

You have all given me a lot to think about!