O’ahu Activities

We went to O’ahu in July of 2024. Our kids were 12, 10 & 5 at the time.

Go City 

We bought Go City passes for each of us. We made sure to look up the prices of all of the activities on their own to choose the ones that would make it the best deal for the price. I think the days we used it had to be consecutive. They have a website that would have all of the current activities and information.

Pearl Harbor

We took the boat ride to see the USS Arizona. It was sad, but also interesting to see & learn the history. Once we were back from the boat ride there were some small museums too. 

We also went on the USS Bowfin submarine. It was interesting to see. Our boys really liked it. There was also a submarine museum that had a lot of information. There were model control panels in the museum part with so many levers, knobs, buttons and switches for kids to play with.

Waikiki Beach

We went to Waikiki beach, but went down it a bit to an area a little less crowded. We took turns; if my husband was in the water with the kids then I was on the beach watching them too and then we’d switch. The waves weren’t big the day we went; but even being careful and having our youngest (5 at the time) in a life jacket; he still got knocked down and kind of tumbled in the water. It was scary. He was coughing a ton and threw up. Thankfully there was a life guard nearby who was also an EMT. He listened to his lungs for us. Other than that though the kids all had a lot of fun at the beach. They had never played in the waves before. We did find a beach with wave breaks for the rest of our trip though.

Magic Island Lagoon (Beach)

This was the perfect beach for us! There were big wave breaker things so the water was much more calm than a normal beach. But water could still come in and out between the breakers. We still kept a close eye on the kids, because even with the wave breakers the ocean is still unpredictable. I loved that it had free parking, and quite a bit of parking too. This was the only beach we kept going back to. 

One day when we were swimming there my kids even saw some cool fish!

Snorkeling with Sea Turtles!!!  Honolulu Snorkel Company 

This was by far my favorite thing we did. It is a top 10 experience for me in my life so far. They had lockers to put our keys/purses and such in at the office before we left. On the boat ride to Turtle Canyon they passed out life jackets, snorkel masks and flippers to each person. They were fine with my son wearing the goggles he brought. Oh, for younger kids they had life jackets at the office that were for kids. My older kids could swim pretty well, but my 5 year old wasn’t good enough and I was struggling with him a little. The staff noticed and tossed me a boogie board that he could hold and keep his tummy on it. Then he could still look down into the water. I could keep one hand on his arm, know he was safe and then I could look down too (but also I checked on him a ton). It worked out really well. 

We saw a few turtles on top of the water while on the boat ride and there were more under water while we were snorkeling. We also had one come up for air just 10 feet from us! We were warned there is a big fine (I think they said $25,000) for touching a sea turtle. There was a diver from another group that went way down to the reef and brought up an octopus. He was swimming around to the different snorkeling groups showing people. So that was a cool bonus we weren’t expecting! We didn’t see as many fish as I thought we would; probably because the coral there was really far down. But swimming with sea turtles was beyond amazing. Then on the boat ride back they stopped to take each group’s photo with Diamond Head in the background on our own cameras; not an extra thing to buy. 

The staff was all incredibly nice and very helpful.

Sea Life Luau

We didn’t have time to look around Sea Life before the luau, but the tickets we had said we could go back another day (but I think there was a time limit on how long we could wait to do that). They gave us each a lei when we entered. My daughter and I got flower ones, my sons got shell ones and my husband got a black kukui nut one. 

There were cultural activities to try before dinner. They had stations set up. We tried hula dancing, casting a fishing net (on land), playing a ukulele, making a flower lei bracelet, getting temporary tattoos and we all got to watch a man climb a coconut tree & then another man showed how they open the coconuts. 

The show with the dancing was really good! The buffet was good, but nothing too special. The pineapple cake they had was very good. We each got two drinks too. The dancing was the best part though. The dancers performed dances from each of 6 Polynesian islands. They were Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga & Aotearoa (New Zealand). The dancers had new costumes for each one and they did at least 2 dances from each. It was really a wonderful show. 

I highly recommend this Luau.

Sea Life (just going during the day with out the luau)

The animals had small places to be, most weren’t even there and it was just sad. The only cool part was seeing sea turtles but even that was sad. There were like 10 in a small little area. We were so bored we couldn’t even make ourselves stay the 30 minutes until the dolphin show to see if it would have been any good. 

Kualoa Ranch-Farm Grown Tour

On the tour, in an open air trolley, we got to see lots of kinds of plants & trees like banana, avocado, star fruit, mango, lime, coffee, cocoa, bread fruit, sugar cane, guava, macadamia nuts, bamboo and pineapple. We got to try poi (mushed up taro root). I thought that was pretty gross. We tried guava too, which I thought was delicious, and we tried a cocoa bean, ew. It was interesting to see all of the plants. There were areas of the tour that had really beautiful mountains in the background and they even took our picture (with our own camera-not one to sell us) with the mountain in the background. We liked this tour.

Kualoa Ranch-Movie Tour

We didn’t enjoy the movie tour. For about the first half we were in a WWII bunker with posters of movies filmed there with some props. Then they drove us around to see animals and fruit trees we saw previously on the Farm Grown Tour. Then the rest of the tour (on a bus) was mostly signs of movies that were filmed at locations there. At the very end there were some movie props from a King Kong movie and one thing from a Jurassic Park movie. It drug on and on and we didn’t find it interesting. Maybe if you really love the movies filmed there it would be better. The scenery was pretty.

Tropical Farms Macadamia Nut Store

This store was pretty cool. They had tons of different flavored samples. There wasn’t a single one I didn’t like. We loved the coffee coated ones the best and bought some to take home. 

Polynesian Culture Center

Due to trying to make sure we had a parking spot that night (see my O’ahu-Useful Information post); we wound up being later than we wanted to be there. We had tickets that came with a guided tour; but sadly we missed the last guided tour. But we could still walk around on our own. They had big areas for each of the Polynesian islands: Hawaii, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga & Aotearoa (New Zealand). Each area had cultural activities, demos and shows. It was pretty cool. I wish we would have had longer to explore. We took a boat ride down their ‘river’ too. Here are some examples of things we got to do in each area.

Samoa: We got to try unlit fire torch twirling.

Tahiti: We got to try spear throwing & got to taste coconut bread that was really good.

Hawaii: We just got temporary tattoos at that one, I don’t know if we missed other things there or didn’t see them.

Fiji: We watched a coconut oil making demo.

Tonga: We got to paddle in a canoe (with a helper guide).

Aotearoa: We ran out of time.

Most of the areas had temporary tattoos that were fun to get. 

Then we went to the luau. We had tickets to an indoor one, I think it was the Ali Aliʻi Lūʻau one. They brought fun virgin piña coladas in pineapples. When I said I was lactose intolerant they changed mine for a mango smoothie one. It was really good. The food was pretty good, but the lady running the show talked and talked and talked for a long time about random things. There were dancers, but their costumes were odd and the dancing wasn’t as good as the Sea Life one. Overall; I would pick the Sea Life Luau over this one for sure. But I do think going to do the rest of the activities I mentioned above was worth it.

The other thing we did there was we saw their Ha Breath of Life show. It was kind of a play about a boy growing up and each stage of his life was set on a different Polynesian Island from what I understood. It wasn’t bad; just not what we expected. We saw big pictures of fire dancing and thought it would mainly be that. They did have that at the end though for about 10 minutes and it was really cool. Oh, the show was super loud at some points. 

Ala Moana shopping mall

My daughter and I spent an hour or so at this mall. There were a lot of expensive shops. So that made it less fun. My daughter thought the “It’s Sugar” store was pretty cool. 

Ali’i Agriculture Farms

My husband took our boys here to go fishing one day. Fishing poles were included in the price they paid. They didn’t have a lot of luck, but they did catch one fish.

Circle Drive Around the Island (everything below)

This seemed like such a great idea. It was not at all what we expected. Below are the stops we did or tried to do on the day we drove around the island.

Green World Coffee Farm

My husband and I tried some coffee samples and we got to see coffee trees up close. We did buy some coffee there.

Dole Pineapple Plantation

We got there pretty early and one worker told us to get in line for the train if we planned to do it because the line was still short. We didn’t see a line at all so we bought tickets for the 20 minute train ride to see the plantation. We were wrong. The line was around the corner and we just couldn’t see it. It still didn’t seem terribly long. Wrong again. There were two trains running, but one only came every 15 minutes or so and they couldn’t fit very many people on them. We waited for that train ride for over an hour. The ride itself was just okay. We saw pineapple in different stages of growth and some other tropical plants. I would not have done it if I had known how long we had to wait for what we saw. 

The line for the Dole Whip was worth it though! It was so good. We could even get crushed pineapple on top. Yum!

Haleiwa

We were ready for lunch by the time we made it to Haleiwa. It was packed. There was one road through the tiny town, next to zero parking and hundreds of cars. It took a long time; but we found a spot and walked to some food trucks. I had the best spring rolls I’ve ever had at a Thai food truck. There was a Mexican food truck in the same area that we liked as well.  

We couldn’t even go to any of the little shops in town because the lot we finally parked in was just for those food trucks and they had someone making sure no one left the area. 

The rest of the circle…

Everything went downhill from there. The one road along the North Shore was at a stand still. It was awful. We had multiple beaches marked to stop at to see things like sea turtles or tide pools or easy snorkeling. None had any parking, so we had to skip them all. We had the Waimea Valley as our next stop. People were illegally parked along the road, but there were signs about towing; so we didn’t take that risk. Plus the closest we could have even parked illegally was a mile away from the entrance. By that point it was shorter to finish the circle around the island than to turn around. So we kept going. There was a blowhole we wanted to see; but again, no parking. We left at 8:30 am and didn’t get back until 5:45 pm and the entire afternoon was just driving. It was a disappointing day. I wonder if doing the circle tour with a tour group would have guaranteed entry to everywhere instead of trying on our own.