We visited Maui and the big island last week. Since I had been to the Old Lahaina Luau before and my partner had not been to one, we decided to wait til we got to Kona and see one there. This was a mistake. First I will say the dancers/musicians were great. The food was also good, really tasty, good selection, right temperature. But overall it was a big disappointment-perhaps I should have done more research, but it was not at all what I had hoped for. There are 7 dancers/performers in total so it’s a very small scale for a luau. In between numbers, the MC talks to the crowd and sings various songs. He was a fine singer but it seemed to me to be a filler each and every time (I presume because they have so few dancers they need time for costume changes). I was not paying $370 U.S. (we are🇨🇦) for what felt like a lounge singer from the 70’s. no disrespect to him, it’s just not what I thought I was paying for. The other really negative thing was they closed the bar after about 2 hours. We are not huge drinkers but part of the price of the tickets is open bar. It ends at 8:30 or so. It’s not like people are going to abuse the open bar all night. This was also an unpleasant surprise.
Maybe if I had never been to the other one in Lahaina, I would have been less disappointed at what we saw. AND one final note-they make you buy a lei! That was really disappointing! $20 for a lei and pay for parking on top of the fairly steep ticket price. I couldn’t recommend this luau.