What a disappointing tour. It has the potential to be such a good experience (witnessed this with other groups during our tour) but is so beyond lackluster. PLEASE book with another company. This experience fully put a damper on my trip to Hawaii (how is that even possible?!)
For starters, the van is crammed. 4 bench rows of 3 and they pack every bit of person they can fit in there.
Next (and definitely the biggest issue) was the guide. I have NEVER been on a tour where the guide simply treats the excursion as if he’s an Uber driver. There was ZERO knowledge shared about this beautiful, historic landmark. He did not speak to our group at all! It was honestly one of the weirdest things and it got to the point where I began to feel unsafe because of his apparent misery to be driving us on a mountain.
The communication was lacking to the point where the entire group was not informed we were skipping stargazing which led to confusion. Rightfully so, considering the stargazing is a large part of the experience. Absolutely no hate to the experience/company for missing the stargazing. You can’t change the weather and we understand this entirely. The issue lies entirely in the way the “guide” went about it. He in fact, did not speak a word to our group on the summit ascent, summit descent, or way back into town. (3 hours) I just wanted to reiterate this as it was VERY strange and we were really excited to learn about Mauna Kea.
Lastly, and at this point one of the things I care about least, was that he took 0 pictures of the group. It’s advertised in the title that there would be free photography but our grumpy guide could not be bothered with interacting with us so that didn’t happen.
For the price, this is so beyond not worth it. I would not even go on this excursion again if someone paid me