Pearl Harbor - plan ahead?
 

I just read someone say that they didnt make arrangements ahead of time to go to Pearl Harbor, and therefore didnt get to see it..

we plan on going to Pearl Harbor while we are staying in Oahu at the Hilton Hawaiin Village this September.
We just figured we'd rent a car for the day and drive over to pearl Harbor.. and go see it...
is it not that simple, is there something I neeed to "arrange" first????

thanks

We were just at Pearl Harbor a couple of weeks ago. We planned the stop in Honolulu specifically to see the memorial and tour the Missouri and Bowfin.

I did my research here and the main thing I learned is that what you need to plan is to arrive very early to get your tickets. It's run by the national park service so the tickets are free. We were there on July 15 and on that date the first tour was at 8 am and they started handing out tickets at 7:30 am. When we arrived at 7 am there were already about 300 people in line. From what I observed, the tour companies begin to arrive at 7 am and we narrowly missed having a few hundred more people join the line in front of us. We arrived in Honolulu at 11 am on July 14 and drove over to PH since it is so close to the airport. We got there at noon; there were five of us and they had four tickets left. We spent that afternoon touring the Bowfin and did the Captain's tour on the Missouri (highly recommended by Fodorites and worth every penny).

omg, that doesnt sound like fun at all, i cant imagine getting there at 7 am, as we are flying in to Oahu from NY the night before... but I guess we'd better plan on getting there before noon... in order to be able to get in at all.

if there are a few hundred people in front of us.. how long would we be waiting to get in??

lasjas - just a note, if you are flying from NY the night before, you'd have no problem getting there by 7am. Because of the time difference, you will be lucky if you sleep until about 4am that first morning! ;)

lasjas....you will be up and ready to roar long before 7 am on your first day there!

Sometimes you're actually better off getting there later - as has been my experience several times - but if you get there after 9 am and still have a wait of at least two hours, continue on Kam Highway about five minutes to Pearlridge Mall on your right for some great shopping. Anna Miller's Pies is also on the right near the mall and quite excellent.

Postal: that's why we took stopped by PH after we left the airport--hoping for tickets and fewer crowds but missed it by one ticket. I wish I'd known about the mall and pies--eating and shopping are my two favorite past times!

lasjas, they give out tickets in groups and each group consists of 150 tickets. We were in group four; putting at least 350 people were in line ahead of us. They took groups in every 15 minutes starting at 8am for the 15 minute movie which exits to the water shuttle. It is a very efficient operation. The day we visited the memorial we were in the movie by 9am out to the memorial and back in our car and on the road by 10 am. We were only in Honolulu for two days, so it worked out well for us to see the Missouri and Bowfin the day before. The early start the next day gave us a good amount of time to do some exploring.

hmmm, i am a little confused about the whole Pearl harbor / memorial exhibit... how long will it take for us to see it all?
I am only concerned becasue (I am embarrassed to say..) it does not interest me in the least.. we are doing this for my husband, he is very interested in seeing this...
I am just wondering how long we will be there, I need to be prepared mentally.....:)

thank you!

lasjas,

It would have been a very long had we not split up our visit. To see cover everything you could spend a full day. If it doesn't you interest prepare for it to feel longer. We have three kids (11, 15 and 17). My 15-year-old son and I are very interested in WW2--my dad is a veteran and served in the Air Force. Seeing Pearl Harbor made his stories come alive for us.

One thing I neglected to mention was the small Pearl Harbor museum. I could have spent hours there but DH and the kids' eyes were starting to roll back in their heads. The exhibit requires a lot of reading to absorb the information thus making it very time consuming.

If this is a big interest of your husband's he should take the Captain's Tour of the Missouri. It's about 2 hours long and they feed you. There were only eight people in our party and one gentleman was spending the day at Pearl Harbor while his wife shopped--sounds like a good compromise to me!

I keep forgetting to mention that there is a PH shuttle service that will pick you up at your hotel. We had a car, but if you do a search here you'll find the name of it. The good thing about PH is if you can't get tickets to view the memorial until later in the day, there is enough to see and do to keep you busy.

omg, i can see it now, my husband reading every little thing, spending hours and hours, with me wondering why I am standing there while I can be laying under a palm tree with a mai tai....
we are going to have to come up with some sort of compromise...:)
well, that's our first day, and aftr that it's all fun n' sun for 15 more days, so i guess I can just shut up and suck it up! :)

lasjas, believe me, the Arizona Memorial tour will be the most emotional experience you have in Hawaii. When I lived there, we always took visitors and it was as moving for me the 30th time as it was the first.

I agree doing the Bowfin (submarine) and Missouri (battleship) might get boring, but not the Arizona. Can you leave him there so he can take his time and come back for him?