Switching to Hawaii time?

[mmouse50]

How long does it normally take to switch to Hawaii time from central time? It also time to make breakfast reservations and I don’t know to make them real early or mid morning . By the time we are at Aulani we would have been in Hawaii for 1 week. So should I go with 7:30 or 9:30?

 

[cgattis]

The latest I managed to sleep in 10 days was 7 am on the last day. First day I was up at 3:30….ugh. I watched the sunrise most every morning. We came from central time.

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

Took us 4 days from central time. We were up by 6 the first 3 days.

 

[OKW Lover]

Agree with the above comments. We are on the east coast and our bodies take at least 4 days to adjust.

 

[Lilsia]

We just stayed up late the first night and had zero issues the rest of the trip. It is coming home that kills me. It takes me several days to go back to normal.

 

[Wayland10]

My rule of thumb is one day of adjustment per hour of time change.

 

[SteveNZ]

My rule of thumb is one day of adjustment per hour of time change.

I'm from New Zealand, we're 22 hours ahead of Honolulu right now, the three weeks of jet lag is a killer ;-)

Kidding... of course works out as two hour difference to the body clock. At certain times of the year it's only 1 hour different. The only disorienting bit is that you get there earlier on the same date that you left... this 'time travel' always baffles my kids!

 

[Imurhuckleberry]

Stay up as late as you can the first night. You should be good to go after that

 

[WaDiWo]

How long does it normally take to switch to Hawaii time from central time? It also time to make breakfast reservations and I don’t know to make them real early or mid morning . By the time we are at Aulani we would have been in Hawaii for 1 week. So should I go with 7:30 or 9:30?

Coming from the East Coast US, (6 hour time difference) I agree with the others here, it took me I think 4-5 days until I woke up “naturally” at 6:30am.
But I wouldn’t sweat it, I actually loved waking up early.. and Aulani is perfect for it. This was my schedule almost every day:
2:30-3:30am: wake up because of jetlag then go back to sleep.
5:30am: get up, go for a run or walk along the beautiful beach path while still quiet and watch the sunrise. afterwards:
7am: get some coffee and grab good seats by the pool with my family.
The sometimes i would just fall asleep here and there while relaxing by the pool all day, with lunch, snacks, drinks.
Anytime from 6-8pm: go out for dinner, nightcap, back to bed, and repeat the next day!

 

[jimmymc]

3 to 4 days is about right. I come from eastern time. Day 1 I woke up around 4:30, by day 4 it was 7:30 which is my normal alarm at home.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

We just stayed up late the first night and had zero issues the rest of the trip. It is coming home that kills me. It takes me several days to go back to normal.

I never fully adjust, deliberately. When you adjust flying West, it sucks coming back East. Plus, everything in Hawaii closes early so you don't gain anything by being able to "stay up late" in terms of Hawaiian time. We usually do bed at 8 PM, up by 5 AM, and "rope drop" everything around the island. As a bonus, we get to eat dinner at Happy Hour special prices when we go out.

 

[jimmymc]

I never fully adjust, deliberately. When you adjust flying West, it sucks coming back East. Plus, everything in Hawaii closes early so you don't gain anything by being able to "stay up late" in terms of Hawaiian time. We usually do bed at 8 PM, up by 5 AM, and "rope drop" everything around the island. As a bonus, we get to eat dinner at Happy Hour special prices when we go out.

I do this when visiting the national parks out west and it really helps with beating crowds.

 

[MsOnceUponATime]

My body never adjusts fullly and we usually stay 14 day coming from CT (Texas). I'm up at 2-3am... waiting on the sunrise.

At the very end of the trip I may be able to sleep in until 6 or 7, but I am miserable when we get back home and I've got to come back to work (I start at 7am). I don't know how to really fix this issue as I'm an early riser by nature. I'm up at 5 or 530 on the weekends and holidays.

I try to take advantage of it though, while on the islands, by trying to get out an about first thing in the morning. It usually works out in my favor if we're heading to the trails, which is nice.

 

[tankin]

What works for us is to make sure that we gut through the first day (no sleeping on the airplane or if we do, very short power nap) have a normal dinner at 6 and then head to bed. That will normally get us to bed about our "normal" time but on HI time. While it makes for a very long / suckie day, we're normally "right" by day 3. Going home is the opposite... get to sleep as soon as they close the cabin door and the marathon through the day to stay awake until our normal / at home time.

Transition days are tough but doing we find it tends to get us on local time the fastest

 

[cory30]

We fly from the east coast and generally try to book an early morning flight that arrives in Hawaii by early to mid afternoon. We then push ourselves to go do some light touring/sightseeing and try to stay up late. That approach usually allows us to adjust pretty quickly although we are still up early the next day regardless of how much sleep we actually got.

 

[carone0318]

We flew from NJ on a direct flight in May. We left our home at 4:30am EST and the flight was about 10.5 hrs, we arrived at 1pm HST. We tried to stay up as long as possible to adjust. I think we lasted until like 8-8:30pm.

For coming home, we purposely planned a short jaunt to Disneyland for 3 nights, 2 days. This allowed us to adjust to the first 3hrs. When we flew home to NJ, we easily adjusted to the last 3hrs. When we go again and I always knew we would go again, I will definitely go this route. Maybe not Disneyland, but breaking the return up and have the little adjustments made a huge difference.