Cathie Stahl

Review of Discover Hawaii Tours

We scheduled a Pearl Harbor Tour. The shuttle was ...

We scheduled a Pearl Harbor Tour. The shuttle was thirty minutes late. I called at the 10 minute mark to get an ETA and spoke with Karen, who was nice, even though she couldn t give me an ETA. I called again at the 20, 25, and 30 minute mark and was sent to voice mail. At the 30 minute mark, she did call my mother in law this was when the bus was pulling up.

I don t write bad reviews, what compelled me to write this review was the bus driver s attitude, not even necessarily at the beginning of the trip, but what he said at the end.

We were understandably frustrated when the bus arrived. Ariel (aka Cousin K), the tour guide, stepped off of the bus to call for us. We asked him about our missed time at Pearl Harbor he heard our frustration and immediately minimalized our concern by saying, All Aloha, we re on island time cousin . He didn t answer our question. We responded with, What about the 30 minutes? Yeah we re a bit more frustrated. His response was, You are not going to board that bus with that attitude, you re on vacation (I m not actually, I work here), relax, I got you covered cousin. *note, no apology given.

I have been on several tours over the last 10 months never have they been 30 minutes late maybe ten. My experience with the Hawaiians is that they are Aloha, sweet and understanding, accommodating. Ariel was the first to dismiss my concerns minimalize them. I m not sure about what transpired to make the bus that late but it wasn t due to myself, nor my family.

So we shut up. We got on the bus, picked one more person up and preceded to Pearl Harbor. Ariel continued to call us cousin sometimes numerous times in a sentence. While this normally wouldn t annoy me, it is an honor, it felt completely false coming from Ariel. Ohana do not treat each other with a marginal minimalistic approach of interest.

We either swallowed our frustration or lost our tour. We elected to take a Lyft back to my family s hotel instead of riding back on the bus. We wanted to walk the grounds in leisure. I m pretty sure they d not push back the pick up time by 30 minutes to make up for their lateness.

When we informed Ariel of this, he said to me, Girl, I hope you get your Aloha back . He said this not once, but twice. This is what compelled me to write this. For him to assume I did not have Aloha in me that I should just let go a chunk of time that was paid for and be okay and not question it, was quite frustrating.

This is not a one star review, it is a two. I know the entire company is not Ariel and to judge a company by one employee would be unfair.

Yeah, I suppose he was right in a way, my Aloha for him was not there. And Ariel, if you read this, two things 1) a simple and sincere apology at the get go would have had my Aloha back 2) My Aloha came back in the form of Nelson, a Lyft driver, who gave us a ride around Chinatown.