We booked this tour because it advertised on Viator as a "Private Tour exclusively for your party: enures a personalized experience." The morning of the tour, you can imagine our shock and dismay when a large shuttle bus showed up at the hotel to pick us up. There were already other passengers (not in our party) on the bus. For the next 30 minutes we persisted to drive around the city to pick up even more people. To make matters worse our tour of the city was less of a tour and more like a drive by (we actually could not get out of the bus at Punchbowl Crater and had to take pictures through the window of one side of the bus). The tour guide was not knowledgeable about the history of the sites and she could not provide us any information other than simply telling us the name of the locations.
Once you get to the Pearl Harbor Memorial you are on your own. Per our tour guide- "tour guides are not allowed in with you at the park," so you are on your own. You only get 1.5 hours at the park which is not nearly enough time to see or do much besides the boat tour to the USS Arizona. They ask for you to be back on the bus 1hr 15 minutes before the end of the tour time and then cram everyone back on the bus. Then you spend the next hour or so to wait your turn while everyone gets dropped back off. So for a 4 hour tour, 2 hours of it are spent picking up and dropping people off. We did NOT get a private tour and it was NOT a personalized experience.
We reported the False advertising and our problem with the tour company IMMEDIATELY. The owner, "Neil" called us to discuss and we showed him that his tour on Viator advertised this as a PRIVATE TOUR. He apologized and persisted in blaming Viator and said his company stopped giving private tours back in March. He asked us if we reported it to Viator (which we did) and said he would take care of it for us. What he did instead is reject our claim and then change the tour description on Viator. Lucky for us, we have copies of what was originally written and will be addressing this head on through proper channels. This is a quintessential example of false advertising and fraud.
My Advice: Admission into the memorial and tickets to the USS Arizona are FREE. I would recommend taking a Uber/Lyft, driving yourself, or using another tour group that is a more reputable tour company. There were people the day of our tour who were on private tours, so that is still an option. You will get so much more out of it (and spend less money) going there on your own.