For those of you who have used the Go Oahu card, what are the pro's and cons?

It depends how much you are planning to do that's covered by it. For me (solo) I don't do much of those type of things to make it worthwhile.

For myself & my husband, I bought a 5-day Go Oahu card for each of us before Easter so I could get the 15% off, plus $10 that Smart Destinations sent me when I downloaded their guidebook before my purchase, so hopefully it works well for us when we go in July. It's $200 per person for 5 days. Personally I think that if you go for less than 3 days you just won't have time to do the "usual stuff" to make the card worthwhile.

For us, just a 1-day Oahu tour ($72), 1-day passport at Kualoa Ranch ($109) and 1-day at Pearl Harbor tour($38) + Polynesian Centre ($50) is already worth the money. Plus I still have 2 more days to use the card for other attractions.

The card delivery is super fast & I got them in less than a week with the thin and handy guidebook. However, if you want to contact them (Smart Destinations) for a refund or ask for info, etc., good luck!! I tried calling them for many days (over a week at different times within their business hours) to ask about the all-day Oahu tour itinerary & not even once that I could be connected to talk to someone.

Besides, you need to have a car to go to Polynesian Centre & Kualoa Ranch as they are far from Waikiki where most tourists stay.

I have spoken to the people as Smart destinations a few times, that is strange you were unable to reach them. As far as I understand it, you can not use the card at the same location twice in one day, so for Kualoa Ranch for instance you would have to do one tour one day ($26 value) then return another day to do one of their other tours. It sounds like you will have plenty of time if you purchased the 5 day.

I am leaning towards the 3 day for budgets sake, I found the 3 day passes on costco.com for $139 for adults and $117 for children, this will save me $240 off even the website sale price! I have also heard you can use the passes for non consecutive days, if that is the case (I am going to confirm) then that is what I will do for sure.

I think we will use our passes for PCC, but not add on the freebee because we want to use the dolphin swim as our freebee, then we will upgrade our PCC tickets for $25 to include the buffet and the HA Breath of Life show out of our own pocket ( I called PCC and you can do this when you purchase tickets/ make reservations but you must have your Go Oahu card # when you do it). We will use the Catamarn sail (probably the breakfast one), the Movie tour at Kualoa Ranch, bike rentals, and possibly one other fun thing like the Palace, Sea Life Park or the Dole Plantation . Many of the other things on the card can be done on your own for little or no cost. We will have a car so we will drive to the waterfall hike (free) go to Hanauma Bay ( minimal cost) go to Pearl Harbor ( the main stuff there is free) on days we are not using the pass. I want to save, and would like to spend some of that saved $$ going zip lining With just the two of you I am sure you will be able to fit a lot more in especially if you have the 5 day passes. I would love to hear how your experience turns out. We don't go till the first week in October. Happy planning!

Hi Brenkjtravel,

Your planning sounds like a good one too. For the one-day Kualoa Ranch passport, it is one of the freebies offered as the bonus so it works perfectly for us as we want to do basically everything that they can offer. Who has time to go back everyday?!

Oh, that will be great fun!

We are three families traveling together with a total of 5 kids, ranging in age from 2-17. Would this be a good way for us to explore Oahu with the kids?

You can download the Oahu guidebook online:
http://www.smartdestinations.com/att...io_Vip&pass=go

I got $10 discount when I downloaded the guidebook to view before my purchase. Right now Smart Destinations is having a 15% discount. For US customers, they send the cards for free by mail and delivery was super fast. I now have the cards so I can make reservations with the card numbers. Some attractions require the card number to actually reserve spaces for you.

Well, I purchased the 3day go oahu cards for all 6 of us from Costco at a discounted price. We will be going to Oahu in just a couple weeks and I have set up many of the activities that come with using the card. If all goes as planned I think the card will end up being well worth it. I'll do a follow up with final thoughts after our trip.

Brenkjtravel, I would much prefer the Palace tour of those choices you listed. Dole Plantation is just a gift shop with Dole Whip cones plus the maze and some activities for children.

We are actually not planning on going to the Dole Plantation, but we have had the whip, you can get it at Disneyland delish!
the things we have booked are:
Kualoa Ranch secret beach tour
The Polynesian Cultural Center and
Ha Breath of Life show
Pearl Harbor
Kualoa Ranch Movie sites tour
Sea Life Park Dolphin Encounter
A Catamaran sail
Hanauma Bay snorkling
Surfing lessons
and will probably hit Wiamea Valley and many of the north shore beaches as we are spending the larger part of our trip on the North shore. I think I would love the palace tour and we
may very well go when we are in the area I have heard it is great, I am just not sure that is how my kids will want to spen their time. I am sure there are things we will see and do during our unplanned hours, and days that are fairly open. thx, for the tip

You can get Dole Whip at the International Market Place, too. If you drive around the island, get a shave ice with ice cream in the bottom in Haliewa. The recommended favs are Matsumoto and Aoki, but we really like it at the General Store.

Perfect! Where at the International Market can you get it?
We will check out the shave ice places while we are on the North Shore for sure! thx carolyn

There is a food court in the IMP, and the last I knew the Dole Whip stand was in a cross section at the first part of it and facing away from Kalakaua. For a cheap meal, I like the smoothie shop for both its smoothies and the fresh sandwiches. It is located along the alley side.

We chose not to do it. We ended up wanting the flexibility of not feeling obliged to do anything if we just wanted to. Ended up spending most of the time on the beach and by the pool.

Ok carolyn, got it thx

Ok, so my final opinion of the GO OAHU Card is, that for us it was totally worth it. We were on Oahu for 9 full days, but only got the three day card. I feel this was great because we had plenty of leisure days that were unplanned and we could just relax and wing it, but we also capitalized on a few days doing fun things the island had to offer. Also, the card days you use do not have to be consecutive, so we were able to spread the activities out over the duration of our trip. With our cards, which I purchased for a discounted price on the Costco website, we did the following:

1st card day ( used on the fourth day of our trip)
the secret beach tour at Kualoa Ranch from 9-12 (super fun and really relaxing)
returned to our condo and got ready then went to
The Polynesian Cultural Center from 2- 9:30
we spent the day here taking in all the attractions then we took advantage of the option to do the buffet and HA Breath of Life show.
My husband and I used the card "Bonus" for this and we paid an extra $22 a piece for our 4 kids to do this because they wanted a different "Bonus"

We were staying on the North Shore for the first 5 days of our trip so we planned to use the card for the options that were in fairly close proximity.

2nd Card day (used on the 7th day of our trip)
We were staying in Waikiki at this point.

Kualoa Ranch Movie sites tour from 10:45 - 12:15
Dolphin Encounter * all 4 of my kids "Bonus" ( you do actually have to have at least one adult for your kids to do this, Luckily my oldest is 18)
We did this at the sea Life Park in the afternoon.

3rd card day (used on the 8th day of our trip)

Snorkeling at Hanauma Bay in the Morning
Makani Catamaran Sail in the afternoon


We had planned and had reservations for Pearl Harbor on another day (a non card day since the main site is free) but with the government shutdown that did not happen, however because we had the GO OAHU card we were able to head over to some of the non- government owned sites like the USS Missouri which had a beautiful Harbor View of the Memorial site that was closed. It got us about as close as we could get to the site without actually being there. We did this after our Catamaran sail on the 3rd card day. We were so grateful to have this option since we had missed the other.

We also paid separately for a group surfing lesson for the whole family, that was a huge highlight and such a blast!

The total cost of all the activities we did with the go Oahu card would have been $1,980.50 to do without the card. We paid $818 for the cards ( plus the fact that we saved $208 buying the cards off the Costco website) I think that was a pretty good deal for all those activities for 6 people.

We enjoyed all the activities we chose. For a more detailed report of the activities etc. I will be doing a trip report in the next few days.

Brenkjtravel - that's a great deal with the GoOahu card! Glad you had fun! Looking forward to the trip report!