Hawaii Vacationers. . . please click here

[Daniel B]

Hi all

I would really like to go to hawaii for my honeymoon-- and my father tells me its gonna be 10,000 for a two week honeymoon and is strongly discouraging me to go-- he really knows how to put a negetive spin on things i do in life. . . anyway, ive tried googling it but came up with nothin. I dont want a 5 star hotel or anything like that but some place nice and maybe some fishing, scubadiving, and sightseeing. Have any of you gone before? Is he right-- please say No!

Thanks

 

[Mara]

You could easily spend $10k in 2 weeks on Hawaii...depending on the island and where you stay, what you do etc.

But you can also spend alot less and have just as great of a time, depending on what your priorities are and how you like to vacation...

We love Kauai and prefer the quieter part of the island, where we stay on a sugar plantation with bungalows and cottages that have been converted for vacationers...we adore it there and it's a 20 min drive to busier parts of the island where the tourists are etc.

We stayed in Kauai for 7 days the first time in a 1 bedroom cottage facing the ocean, rented a convertible and had airfare from CA...and most of our food (and we like good food) was basically $2k total. And we had a fabulous time.

So really you could do $10k on Maui in a 5 star resort (or even Princeville in Kauai!) for 2 weeks or you could spend about $5k. Just really depends on what your priorities are and what you want to do and what you WANT to spend!

ETA: You said you Googled and came up with nothing? How is that? There is SO much information on Hawaii out there! That is how we found our information and planned our trip to begin with.

 

[marvel]

Go here: Pleasant Holidays. You can calculate airefare, hotels, car rentals, etc. It will give you an idea of how much you will spend on accomdations from 5 star to your basic hotel. Waikiki is a great place if you want to party and shop. Maui is beautiful and a little less crowded. I've never been to Kauai, but have only heard great things about it. No matter where you go in Hawaii, you can't go wrong...it's a beautiful place!!! My absolute fav for vacations!!

 

[Daniel B]

~Thanks Marvel and Mara~

I want to go to Maui, I hear It is beautiful--but its hawaii, Im sure everywhere is beautiful. I was thinking 5K range like you said Mara would be what we're looking to spend-- Geez, 10 grand on a vacation is pretty extreme, but Im sure its doable-- Amanda and I arent that needy-- well, She does have expensive taste- She gets it from her Ma-(No Joke). I went to google and typed in "average amount for a vaction in hawaii" hoping to hit something from trip advisor or somethin, but came up empty-- so i figured i'd give you guys a holler. My dad wants us to go to the Carribean- St. Johns or the like-- but thats where my Bro went and my father also, i want to be different!

 

[rms]

my DH loves Hawaii and we have gone the last 3 years. In Maui last year we stayed at a beautiful small condo (15 units total) with all oceanfront lanais in Kihei. The condo itself is not necessarily cheap (and I think prices went up right after we were there), but we ate at home pretty much the entire time. We saved lots of bucks that way, saw every sunset wth a perfect view, and felt a lot healthier too! So as another option I would highly recommend staying at a place with a kitchen if you would be up for doing your own cooking. We did the same thing in Honolulu. The year before that we booked a trip with Pleasant Holidays and it was great.

 

[oneofus]

$10K for Hawaii?! I guess if you include serious shopping...

Check out Orbitz.com or travelocity.com. They have package deals. Flights are pretty cheap now too, so you can book separately and use Priceline to get resort or 5* hotels.

 

[laney]

10K nope - you don''t need to spend that. If you plan well, you can spend any amount you like - low or high.

We did our honeymoon last april on Oahu(to see pearl harbor) then most of it on the Big Island - because we wanted to hike volcanos / scuba/ etc.

You can get a nice room on either island - although for us the big island is less populated and more what we expected in hawaii. The car rentals are the cheapest in the US (can''t really take the car off the island..) and there are lots of things to do for free - literally - water - hiking - sightseeing.

Diving was a bit expensive because you really have to do boat dives. We went with two different companies - and they were about the same price - 90-100 for 2 dive boat trip.

The most money we spend was on going out to dinner. But we were going to expensive restaurants - and you don''t really need to do that - plus there are real grocery stores nearby for breakfast/lunch. Our hotel offered breakfast at $25 a person. So if we ate there it was 50-60 for eggs and bacon. You don''t need to to that - but if you did 10K could go quickly.

You should have no problem on hotels.com or even expedia finding hotels for cheap. Then budget your activities.

Oh the helicopter ride was a bit pricey too..

 

[VegasAngel]

My BF and I went to Maui. We stayed in Lahaina at the Lahaina Shores Beach Resort. Our trip was this year 6/12-6/17 (The weather was amazing). We got a package from AOL Travel for $3000 for both of us with flight, hotel & rental car. The resort is comfy but not as fancy as some of the bigger resorts. It was nice to have a kitchen in the room so that we could make breakfast in the morning and keep food in the fridge. When we checked in we asked if they had an ocean view suite, they said no. Why did we wind up getting a beautiful ocean view anyway? Lahaina has lots of shopping, tons of restaurants (We ate on the ocean every day) and plenty of activites. The Expedia desk in our resort booked us a helicopter tour of Hana, snorkeling in the Molokini crater, Sunset cruise (Dont bother with those) & parasailing. How much you spend is definately going to depend on when you go and what activites you want to do. Maui is definately a Great Island. Eat at Mama''s fish house if you visit Maui! Here are a few pictures. Sorry, none of me since I was too lazy to put makeup on.


View from hotel room inside of room Picture of our resort

 

[Daniel B]

Thank you for your replies everyone, it makes me feel better that its doable under or around 5K. The resort looks awesome Vegas. I''ll let you guys know what i chose closer to out wedding date

 

[ame]

I could easily see that as a $10K trip. We spent probably $6K on ours not including shopping, dining etc. We stayed on Oahu in the Royal Hawaiian for a few days, and in Maui at the Sherton Maui for the rest of the week. We did a day trip to Hawaii for a hike one day and I regret not staying there for a night. IF you want the best, expect to pay for it.

 

[atroop711]

Hi...

We went to Hawaii for our 2st Wedding Anniversary (7 years ago..) and being our 2nd anniversary and not knowing where to go, we took a 2 week Cruise and visited all of the Islands and at the end of the cruise we stayed in OAHU for 3 days to do the Pearl Habor tours...

Our Favorite island was THE BIG ISLAND!!!! OMG....we saw the lava flowing and we had the BEST snorkeling water EVER!!!!!

Maui was awesome too...and Kaui was just gorgeous.

Anyway....sorry for getting off the main subject...well we spent $2300 for everything back then....I know cruises aren''t for everyone but it gave us a taste of all of the Islands and now we know which Island we want to stay at next time!!!!

 

[VegasAngel]

I just wanted to add a few more things. If you want to find the best deal dont bother going through a T/A unless you prefer not to deal with travel arrangements. As others have mentioned you are much better off finding a package deal online. AOL travel, Yahoo Travel, Travelzoo, Expedia, orbitz, hoteldiscounts etc.. Just type Hawaii Vacation Package in a search. I would recommend staying at a B&B or in a condo for the best value. Food prices are what kills. I hope you go you''ll love it!

 

[pearcrazy]

There are lots of options for a cheap Hawaii vacation if you can do your homework. My DH and I spent 6 days in Kauai last June. My husband is an avid scuba diver and we knew we'd be gone most of the day so we really just wanted a comfortable place to sleep with a full kitchen. I searched the internet and ended up finding an apartment over a house that rented for $85 a night in Kekaha. There is a website VRBO (vacation rentals by owner) that we looked on and we finally ended up finding this place through a referral by the dive company DH contacted. It had a king sized bed with air conditioning, full kitchen, full bathroom, lanai and living area. Across the street from the ocean with beautiful sunset views. Terribly outdated decor but we didn't care, we were only there to sleep. shower and have the option for eating in. We were a good 20 minutes drive from all the action but we liked the quiet small town we stayed in and after getting stuck in traffic around Princeville a couple of days were were glad for the seclusion. Car rental came to about $150. We did lots of driving but with the top down and with gorgeous views everywhere, we didn't mind a bit! DH rented a compact but had enough car upgrades for a Sebring convertable. We had enough airline miles for one free ticket and the other ticket was about $810 from Raleigh Durham, NC. We flew Hawaiian Airlines and I can't say enough how great the flight was, I highly recommend them if they are competively priced. (DH travels a lot for work and gets to keep miles and car points) I'm guessing that we spent about $1500-1800 on activities, dining and souveniers. We ate a lot in our apartment, it probably would have been a couple hundred more for meals without a kitchen. We had an activity every day and felt like we'd really gotten a thorough Kauai experience. Our pilot on our private island tour the last day agreed. We chose not to go the helicopter route and got a much more personal tour for less money.


Our total for everything came to under $3500. it was $1470 for lodging, airfare and car and I guess $1800 for activities, dining and shopping.That was for 1 week. Double it for a two week stay and I'd say that you're easily looking at $7k on a shoestring conservative budget. For a two week honeymoon I would think you'd want to do a little island hopping. Inter island airfare is going to add up. I'd say that a 10k pricetag is very realistic. Do you really need 14 days in Hawaii? We went to Cancun for our honeymoon way back in 1991 for 8 days and we were both ready to come back to the states. I will say that since it was our honeymoon we went all out when we went there since those are the trip of a lifetime sort of memories you want. Something to keep in mind. We chose a luxury hotel, fine dining every night, lots of partying, activities and shopping. That stuff adds up really quick and back then Mexico was VERY reasonable. Hawaii is outrageously expensive. A gallon of milk is $7.50 on Kauai!!

 

[njc]

Hawaii is outrageously expensive. A gallon of milk is $7.50 on Kauai!!

A month ago it was like $4 in a Maui K-mart. Being from the DC area, we really never had any sticker shock over prices. Gas wasnt even that much more...

We did 13 nights/14 days for $5,500 through a local travel agency... that included 3 hotels, 3 rental cars and all airfare. We spent 4 days in Maui at a 5 star hotel, The Fairmount Kea Lani (our big splurge), 3 days on Hawaii at the Hapuna Beach Prince, and 7 days on Kauai at the Poipu Beach Sheraton. We found just about all the "tour" type activities that cost so much, you could do on your own. You could snorkle right off the beaches in front of all the hotels. I got the series "Hawaii Revealed: The Ultimate Guide Book" which were amazing to guide us around the islands. There is a seperate book for each island and they were awesome for directions, what to see, maps and places to eat. We also chose to wait a month until after Labor Day when the total price of the trip dropped over a $1K... well, worth it in our opinion. Leaving mid-week also made airfare cheaper.

Another money saving thing we did was go to the local Kmart or Walmart and buy snack foods, drinks and alcohol (a wonderful tip from the books mentioned above). That way when either of us wanted a little nibble or drink, we werent paying the pool bar $5 for a bag of pretzels and $10 for a mai tai. Having our own food also helped out in the airports.

Total i think our trip came out to about $7K and that was being decently cheap and i dont feel that we missed out on anything and it was THE PERFECT amount of time. Anything less and i would have left dissapointed. Its very do-able for under $10K.

 

[Daniel B]

Date: 10/16/2005 7:37:35 PM
Author: atroop711
we had the BEST snorkeling water EVER!!!!!

Atroop, that wasn''t "The Place of Refuge" was it-- on the travel channel they said it was the best snorkeling in Hawaii, because you can see tropical fish found there that are not seen anywhere else in the world-- only native to Hawaii-- sounds like a Must Do!

 

[Mara]

Hee hee NJC, we didn't have sticker shock at all either being from CA/SF area...everything here is overpriced as well. Even the dinners we ate out rivaled our typical Saturday nite in SF dinner basically. So it wasn't too bad...we felt at home..hehee. Kind of sad that we are so used to it! On the other hand, we didn't feel like the food was SOOO great in Hawaii either. We checked out a few highly recommended places, one of which had great 'ambience', and we thought, eh the food is okay...I think we are too spoiled with all the fab food choices we have here. I'm so picky about food now too.

 

[MrsFrk]

We honeymooned in Kauai as well. We rented a cottage for less than $100 a day. The food in Hawaii is not great, (the locals eat crap!) so we made sure we had a kitchen. We bought fresh fish every day and ate grilled fish and fresh beautiful fruit daily. This really kept our food expenditure down. I''ve been to Hawaii since, and food is definitely the most expensive aspect.

I personally am not a resort/touristy area type person- in Hawaii the really touristy areas are sooo expensive. Things that are overpriced for us are DIRT CHEAP for the Japanese, so the prices are just exorbitant. So it''s definitely possible to do Hawaii for less than 10K.