Hawaii Volcano Tour from Hilo (Land Tour)

We booked the Volcanos National Park tour and I can say it was definitely worth it. Our tour guide (Daniel?) was awesome. Giving us history but keeping it really light and funny. We were able to spend a good amount of time at Kilauea, and hit a few other spots on the way. Would highly recommend this tour to anyone.

I was not given a ticket for the Arizona and when I got there I had to join a standby line which I didn't have time to stand in as I had to get back on the bus. The crew explained to me that the tour operator should have supplied the ticket. When I complained to Roberts I was told the driver checked everyone had a ticket, but he did not. Very disappointing.

This was our fourth trip to the Big Island and this time we chose to do the one day Hawaii Island Grand Circle Island Tour. We had a fantastic day leaving our hotel in Oahu t 5:05 am and flying to the Big Island and returning at 9:30. We had a great day seeing all the sites and historical places. We would highly recommend this Tour Operator and their very informative guide.

This operator simply does not care about customers. First, about the Kona trolley that they operate. A useful service, reasonably priced. Yet, they did not bother to mark the stops, to say nothing of posting the schedule (it comes once every two hours). There is NO map. Nowhere. Not even on internet. One can only guess where the stops may be from their names. Worse, when the trolley arrives to the last station, it does not go back, but start a 30 min loop over an industrial area, and this is not explained anywhere. When we boarded the trolley thinking we were going back to our hotel, we embarked onto this stupid loop instead, and so did about 2/3 of the passengers. The next day, we booked a grand circle island tour. One may think that for $150 pp they should place their customers above commission-paying businesses. No way. Of six scheduled stops two were at actual sights (volcano steam vents and a black sand beach) and four (!) at tourist traps like candy, coffee and mac nuts stores. Incidentally, we drove past several small nut farms where we could obviously have gotten better nuts at lower price, but no stops there. Our driver-guide wad a truly nice old chap, but he was patently untrained to be a tour guide. He was talking non-stop, not even allowing fir a pause to ask a question, in a very low, monotonous voice, with a very thick Hawaiian accent. Roberts should realize that their tours are also booked by non-native speakers, who expect to receive service in standard American, or close to that. His was one of the least comprehensible English accents I’ve ever heard, and, trust me, I’ve heard a lot. He was wearing a mike, which did not work, so those in the back seats could not even hear him. Just as with the trolley, there were no maps of the tour, nowhere. We were handed a blind photocopy of a hand-drawn scheme of the Island, where the itinerary was not shown, but instead some random numbers from 1 to 6 were placed on the scheme without any legend, with each number covering about 30 sq. miles.

We used our VIP tours certificate from Costco to book our tour and were not disappointed. Our tour guide,Dean, was a wealth of information as well as a very good driver. Only 10 people on our tour but our stops were unique & enjoyable-rainbow falls, excellent buffet Sky Garden restaurant in Hilo, enough time at Volcano, fun candy factory, black sand beach with turtles, & royal kona coffee farm. We were picked @7:30 am and returned just after 6pm. Long, but lovely day.