When we arrived at the location, we thought we were North Shore, turns out the area to check in at is on the other side at Hawai'i shark encounters. There is no booth, its just the guys on the boat that asks for your name and that is it, pretty painless. I would suggest bringing a towel, sunscreen, some water, your own snorkel set (if you have them but they supply some) and if you get sea sick take Dramamine. I don't get sea sick but I took it just in case and I felt fine. The tour guys are nice and they do like to joke around which is cool. The boat ride is about 10-15 minutes and it is bumpy getting out there but the way back is not so much. Now to review the cage experience:
The cage has areas of Plexiglas but the rest does not, be-careful not to put your arms or legs out. Sharks get close to the cage which is awesome. However, I do NOT like the fact they can put as much as 6 people at a time in a cage. It makes the cage a lot more bumpy and hard to hold yourself up. I'm a good swimmer and I literally bumped my head, my legs and arms against the cage and yes it did hurt but didn't knock me out. My wife does not know how to swim and she saw some sharks but just couldn't handle how rough the waters were. Plus you're on vacation (holiday) let others enjoy as well. We had one lady that would not move out of my wife's way even though she saw her struggling. It really pissed me off but the boat guys did nothing about it ( I do not think they knew). On our tour we had 10 people in total, 6 went in first and 4 people in second. When the 20 minutes were up that lady would not leave and give others a chance and she was blocking me from even leaving so I stayed in there longer. In fact, the tour guides do not say "hey please get out of the cage your time is up" it kind of depends on how long you want to stay out. I am a person that gives others a chance so I was nice enough to even leave, I probably could have stayed out there for an hour and no one would have cared.
Improvements: 4 people max in a cage, when your time is up, tell them they have to leave the cage and give others a chance.
Highly recommend for the experience, I was able to see 5 sharks at once.