We booked this tour via a local (Kona) tour agency based on their recommendation after I told them we were interested in doing a Mauna Kea summit tour. At the start of the tour though, our guide Marcus outlined the itinerary for the evening and it soon became clear that we would not be going up to the summit. Even more disappointing, we barely left Saddle Road, and could have done this drive easily ourselves.
While this could easily be viewed as a problem with the booking agency, I am mentioning it in this review as there was at least one other couple in our group who were similarly disappointed with the tour not going to the summit after booking through a different booking agent and expressing the same requirements. The fact that two agents don’t seem to know enough about this tour to sell it correctly points to an issue with the company not accurately describing the tour to those who are supposed to be selling on their behalf.
Marcus, our guide, did a great job with narrating the evening and was an excellent host. No complaints there, but the so-called dinner was another huge disappointment. For the price we paid for the tour as a whole, the dinner was completely underwhelming. The “garlic prawns” were simply 4 small prawns and a cup of white rice. Honestly, we’ve had better catering provided on the snorkelling tours we’ve done, and those tours are less than half the price of this one.
All in all we certainly wouldn’t recommend this trip to anyone - if it were to provide value for money I’d be expecting an improved quality dinner, some seating around the telescope so that we can view the stars more comfortably, a quality photo or two of us against the stars (not just an offer to take photos with our own camera against the sunset) and at least an attempt to take us some way up the summit road, for better viewing of the sky. As it was the tour did not represent value for money at all.