We paid $467.00 CAD for two people for the U.S.S. Arizona and U.S.S. Missouri tours. We were extremely excited for this tour, as both of us had very close relatives who served and died in World War Two. Although we travel extensively to different continents, this was our first time in Hawaii.
Unfortunately, we have never encountered such aggressive rudeness from today's driver who introduced herself by the abbreviated "Ro Ro". To provide some background, we received a text from the tour company, Karma Tour, which we reviewed the day before and the morning of the tour. The company's text states, "IMPORTANT INFORMATION * Only water bottle are allowed on the Tour Vehicle, personal items may not be left on tour vehicles." Apart from the obvious grammatical errors in this, and other parts of the text message, it seems quite clear that water bottles can be left on the tour bus. However, when we exited the bus and left two water bottles on the bus, the driver brought our bag with the water bottles out to us and aggressively approached us in front of everybody and claimed nothing could be left on the bus, despite what her company's text message says. When we brought the company's text message to her attention, she became quite angry and said that nothing can be left on "her" bus. She also said that if we had a problem with this, we should phone the tour company ourselves. There was no need for such a strange overreaction on her part, especially considering we were visiting a memorial site. Taking into consideration the other passengers, who were watching and listening, we decided to take the bottles with us, which she demanded.
Ironically, after the U.S.S. Arizona tour, when we were on the bus heading to the U.S.S. Missouri, she announced that people could, in fact, leave not only water bottles but any items on the bus.
The second disturbing aspect was that during the group's entrance to Pearl Harbor she walked ahead with the group but did not wait for everyone to enter and check to see if all members of the group went through the security checkpoint without delay. In fact, I was at the end of the group and had to stop to show the security guard the contents of my clear bag. The bag was, of course, fine, and I was allowed to continue. In the meantime, the group, lead by the driver, had gone on ahead, and I had to catch up. This is a very busy place, with many visitors, and we were anxious that we would be unable to find the tour group in such a crowded place. We mention this as another example of the lack of professionalism we encountered today. We expected better from the company that, ironically, calls itself Karma. We did not deserve this kind of treatment, and we are feeling upset and disappointed by Karma Tours.