Aloha David.
We’re very sorry that you were disappointed with your tour, and we want to thank you for giving us this opportunity to clarify and correct some of the misrepresentations you’ve presented in your review.
This was not a $350 Uber ride. With an Uber ride you get just that – a ride.
What you got with your tour was a professional experienced tour guide; your tickets to the USS Arizona - which are difficult to get due to high demand - without having to wait in line to purchase them yourself or potentially not get them at all; a ride in our comfortable air conditioned spacious vehicle to Pearl Harbor, where you got to listen to a lecture by a historian, with excellent information about why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. At your arrival, you received water and snacks from you tour guide, plus a presentation on the display outside the main entrance. Inside the visitor center, you received valuable and helpful information from your guide on the best and most effective ways to navigate the visitor center to make the most of your experience. Commercial tour guides are not permitted to walk all around the visitor center at Pearl Harbor which is why he did not go with you. And when your tour ended, you also received a gift from us as a memento of your visit to Pearl Harbor.
The day before your tour, our company sent you a text message with detail information about your pick-up time, type of vehicle, name of your tour guide, and other helpful information about your visit.
On the morning of your tour, we called you at 8:34am and informed you that your tour guide would be 10-15 minutes late for your 9:00am pickup because the traffic was exceptionally bad that morning, which accounted for our delay, which we acknowledge. However, our GPS indicates that you recollection of our being 45 minutes late is not only an exaggeration, but erroneous.
For the portion of your tour at Pearl Harbor we allocate approximately 2 hours’ time, and you had approximately 1 hour 45 minutes which gave you ample time to visit the two indoor museums, watch a documentary movie, visit the outdoor display, get on the10:30 a.m. navy shuttle to the USS Arizona Memorial and visit the gift shop. Our records indicate that you left Pearl Harbor with your tour guide closer to noon, not 11:30am as you mistakenly state.
After visiting Pearl Harbor, our tour guide drove you to a volcano crater with magnificent views of the city of Honolulu and then took you inside the crater to Punchbowl - the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. You said that you were “not allowed” to get out the car, implying you asked. Yet, you failed to mention that your tour guide undoubtedly explained that commercial vehicles are “not allowed” to stop inside the crater, which is why we drive very slowly as we share the history of the “Arlington of the Pacific”.
What you did not get on this tour, was unfortunately beyond our control. At what was to be the last stop of our tour, Iolani Palace and the King Kamehameha Statute, the roads were closed due to several accidents in the vicinity. Our tour guide made every effort to try to get you through Chinatown, but all the roads were shut down within this area as well. At this point you indicated to your guide that it was ok to drive you back to the hotel.
Regarding your statement about lunch having been promised which never happened…the only thing that never happened is that anyone from our company promised you lunch along the tour. We don’t promise lunch on any of our tours, nor do we stop for lunch on our Pearl Harbor tours, especially our half day 4-hour tour.
You received everything that was promised to you on this tour with the exception of the last stop. As customer satisfaction is our number one priority, we offered you a 20% refund for the inconvenience caused by the accidents which prevented us from stopping to continue the tour.
Thank you.