Roberts Hawaii Tours

Finally decided on my 7^th visit to Kauai to book a movie tour. Checked out the various movie tours offered and decided on Robert’s. It was easy to book online, it was the cheapest offered, and included lunch. Got picked up at 7:15 am at the Sheraton in Poipu and met the rest of the group at Walmart in Lihue. Tour had a total of 11 guests. The tour was enjoyable and stopped at six sites. The guide was informative and friendly and the driver was great. Lunch was good at Wahoo Seafood Grill in Kapaa. Glad I went on the tour and my only suggestion is to make better copies of the map and list of movies made on Kauai. Making copies of copies are never very clear nor professional.

Booked the Waimea Canyon Tour and I have so many regrets.
Because I was with the cruiseline, I had only one full day in Kauai and I’m incredibly disappointed I chose to spend it with Robert’s. The driver was fine and welcoming, but the redeeming qualities stop there. The tour and stops themselves were just terrible. At the end of the 5 hours I got off the bus feeling disgusted I had wasted money on this tour.
When you book the tour, it says that the length is 5 hours, which made the price seem decent to me as I assumed we would be spending quite some quality time at the canyon. In reality, what I got was a tour engineered to waste time at pointless stops. The drive from the port where the cruise is docked to Waimea Canyon is an hour or a little over. It took us at least three hours to get there because of all the stops.
We stopped at insignificant places and spent unreasonably long amounts of time on the way there. The first 20 minute stop at Spouting Horn was completely fine, since there were gift huts and a restroom by the lookout. Then we took a 15 minute stop by a canyon/​valley lookout, which in my opinion, most people wouldn’t stop for. It was definitely a view I would appreciate through the car window but not spend 15 minutes at.
At this point, things weren’t terrible yet, but then we stopped at a huge tourist trap/​convenience type of store for an absolutely ridiculous amount of time. I seriously couldn’t believe we spent over 30 minutes at this place. I didn’t catch the name, but this was a place where a super small snack bag of potato chips costs $ 1.10. What on earth… Our guide said this was a stop for us to grab something to eat, but they had no real food — only a paltry selection of chips and other snacks with prices that would make any sensible person cringe. The prices of everything in general were absolutely ludicrous, and it was offensive that we spent the longest time of all on the tour at this spot.
Once we arrived at the canyon, I was again incredibly disappointed. Our guide told us we would have 30 minutes at this stop, which at first seemed like it wouldn’t be enough to me. In fact, it was way more than enough time for everyone because we stayed only at the small cubicle of the Waimea Canyon Lookout. Basically just a viewpoint stop for tourists to take pictures at. The ride back took a little over an hour, and all I felt was frustration the entire ride.
I can’t speak for the other tours, but if you were even considering the Waimea Canyon tour, don’t. I feel nothing but cheated by the tour arrangement and I highly advise against it. If you can, you would be so so so much better off renting a car and stopping at places you actually want to be, spending as much or as little time as you want at each.
The canyon tour was an absolute joke. All these fluffed up stops leading up to what I would never call a tour of the canyon in a million years. What it was, was a pitiful photo stop. It’s a gorgeous place, and for that reason I’m even more disappointed we experienced it in such a brief, one-​dimensional manner. Overall, I feel completely deceived by this company. Shout out to Robert’s for ruining my time in Kauai.

We did the Roberts Movie Tour on our first full day on Kauai and it ended up being a great way to see many spots on the island. Wendy was a fantastic tour guide… not only for her movie knowledge, but also for just useful tips about places that are safe to go on the island. Our driver was also fantastic… I still don’t know how she got the tour bus in and out of some of those spots. Yes, most of the movie references are for older movies which I haven’t seen, but the sites are still beautiful. Elvis fans will definitely enjoy seeing Coco Palms and watching a good portion of Blue Hawaii at the end of the tour. Younger people will enjoy seeing the Jurassic Park sites and Hanalei Bay (The Descendants). As a note, lunch is no longer at Tahiti Nui, although you do drive by there. Lunch is at a restaurant in Kapaa instead that is opened specifically for the tour at lunch, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the meal. That was really the only negative I had about the tour. You do spend a lot of time on the minibus, but it goes by quickly because you are watching movie clips and just seeing this beautiful island. It was definitely a fun tour!

Obviously Kauai is an island rich in cinematic history, so my family wanted to do an organized trip highlighting the movie sets and locales. Thank goodness we chose Roberts as our tour company!
Wendy, our guide, was very knowledgable, self-​deprecating, funny, helpful, warm, etc etc. There are not enough nice things that can and should be said about her. She absolutely made this trip and her local knowledge was essential (she’s lived on Kauai for 40 years).
Mickey, our driver, was himself a guide and was charming, southern (redundant), kind and equally as knowledgable. He operated our vehicle skillfully.
Beautifully laid out and unique tour and a must-​do for cinema lovers. Thanks Roberts!

Possibly the best tour we’ve ever done. Mickey, our guide, was kind of like a character in a movie himself — entertaining and funny with a dash of southern charm (he’s from Alabama). We loved how he brought the stories alive from the video movie clips with his own jokes and he seemed genuinely passionate about movies and the history behind the making of them. For anyone who loves movies and/​or Elvis, you will love that you will walk away with tons of facts and trivia. You almost feel Elvis on some areas — ok that might be going too far, but you get what I mean. The best tours transport you to that era or time. We got to see most of the island because of the tour, with our brave driver Diane who managed to get us out of some very tight places. We even stopped at a «hidden beach» that we would have never seen had it not been for the tour.
This tour offered lunch at Tahiti Nui where the Decendents was filmed. Burgers/​chicken or kalua pork and fries — good, but what was really good — the Mai Tais (you need to purchase this, but they were the best ones we’ve had so far). When you stop for lunch, I suggest you visit Pink’s creamery around the corner — the best ice cream I’ve had — loved my coffee flavor — it was creamy, rich, and tasted like it was made with love.
I would highly recommend this tour.

The tour of Kauai was a little odd, primarly because of the borderline loony driver. I’ll withhold her name as a courtesy to her. If you’ve seen the movie Rainman, imagine him driving a bus and giving a tour. She wasn’t unaccomodating or anything, and kudos for getting us up to the Waimea Canyon and back safely, but some of the «facts» she recited were just wrong. For example, rooms at the Grand Hyatt Poipu beach are in the $ 300 – 400 range, not $ 4,500 per night. Okay, they might have a presidential suite for that price, but the President wouldn’t be on this tour so that’s irrelevant. A joke as we passed a cemetary went like this «Someone asked me how many people were dead in there, and I said ‘All of them’» NIce try. After about three minutes of listening to her narration, I wanted earplugs, seriously.
The bus itself was clean and the itinerary was fine. The tour took us to Waimea Canyon, a great gift shop, the spouting horn, Kauai Coiffee and stopped at a canyon whose name I can’t recall (near where part of Jurassic Park was filmed, I think, and right beside the main road). So the sites were memorable and beatiful.
One easy improvement for this tour would be to stop at some places with a mountain view. I kept trying to take pictures from the bus at 40 – 50 mph, which didn’t work so good. Good for a shot of blurry trees, though.

Great way to get an overview of the island. We don’t usually do organized tours but our travel agent strongly recommended it. Our driver grew up on the island and really knows the history. We saw the Southwest side and Waimea. Canyon. It was nice for me to not have to keep my eyes on the road and look out the window.

We booked this tours online since it was much cheaper then the price we were quoted from the concierge at the Westin Princeville by ~$ 20 each! Our tour was canceled due to flooding in Hanalei, but was rescheduled for the next day. So plan the tour for the beginning of your trip just in case.
We were the first to be picked up at 7am since the tour starts in Lihue. We were shown a documentary on the hurricane that hit in 1992 and the damage it left behind. Our tour driver Sunny and guide Chenoa were great, informative and fun. We watched clips from movies along the tour related to the sites we were seeing. We saw so many beautiful sites! The weather was crazy, one minute pouring and then sunny, then cloudy, windy you name it.
The tour had several highlights for me, first, the stop at Coca Palms, the abdandoned hotel (since the hurricane). You could smell the mold and dust. It was a sad sight to see. The ground, however, were nice. «Uncle» Larry Rivera was there and performed a few songs while our guide did the hula. He posed for pictures with us and talked about the history of the hotel and all the guests he had performed for. At 82, he had lots to say.
Secondly, I loved seeing the sights related to the movie Descendants. We saw the beach George Clooney was running down and the house he goes to face his wifes lover. Then we ate lunch at the Tiki Nui Restaurant where George Clooney met up with his cousin in the movie. Lunch was nothing special, but it was included in the tour.
Overall, we had a great time. I would highly recommend this tour!!!

Because we lucked out on renting a car during our holiday here in Kauai, we decided to book a tour of Kauai. It’s not cheap but worth every penny. Our concierge at Westin Princeville booked for us and we were set. We charged the tour to our room.
There’s only one way roads on Kauai, hardly any stop lights and super dark at night.
Anyways, we weren’t feeling adventurous and the weather was confusing. Sunny, windy, rainy, cloudy, etc… damn you mother nature!
We chose the Movie tour and glad we did. We got picked up first because we were staying in Princeville. They have videos on the nice, AC coach bus. We drove for miles, nothing but beautiful greenery and mountains.
We reached Lihue to pick up the others on this tour. The bus filled up fast and there is something for everyone, young and old on this tour. They give you a sheet of paper listing all the movies filmed. The scenery just speaks for itself. The tour guide Shanoa was very informative, even doing impromptu hula dancing and jokes.
We made a super fast quick pit stop at Walmart, I tell ya it’s THE CLEANEST Walmart I’ve ever been in! Wow you go Walmart! We got to pick up some bottled water, snacks and use the bathroom. They tell you when the next restroom stop will be, so go!
The parts of the tour that stood out for me:
The Coco Palms hotel. A step back in time and a caretaker is there on the grounds. The future of this hotel is unpredictable. The hotel rooms and lots of things were abandonded and strewn about. Smells of mold and dust and sadly, the destruction was from Hurricane Iniki. Larry the singer was entertaining and kind, reminiscing on the days when celebrities sang with him.
The 2 falls we visited… breathtaking, peaceful, mysterious… there were people there making baskets out of leaves and selling real coconut juice!
The beaches were just like postcards… no one around (except for Hanalei beach) One beach we went to was beautiful, obelisk on the hilltop but we found out was a breeding ground for hammerhead sharks??? WTF?
Hanalei — the mountain that was the inspiration for the song Puff the magic dragon… Hanalei bay/​beach? The pier and surroundings were the setting for The Descendants movie.
Tour ended with a lunch at Tahiti Nui. Old school casual place, relaxed vibe and
cheap eats. The bartender in the Descendants movie was there, she owns the place and when I asked her if I could get a can or bottle of coke to go, she told me to walk down the street to the liquor store cause it’s cheaper there! Wow thanks for saving me some $$$. As always, chickens and roosters roaming about.
Would highly recommend to anyone who wants to get an overview of the north/​east part of the island.

We arranged to take a Waimea Canyon tour through our cruise line, and Roberts was the company that conduced the tour.
The guide was a local of Kauai, so he had many stories to tell us during our commute to and from Waimea Canyon, the «Grand Canyon of the Pacific.» Some areas were treacherous to drive through, so for safety reasons he stopped the narration for a few minutes. We made a couple other stops other than Waimea, including the Spouting Horn and another overlook which I cannot recall the name of.
I have been on a lot of organized bus tours, and this one ranks towards the top.

We did both the Big Island full day tour and Kauai’s Waimea Canyon and the Fern Grotto tour. The drivers were very nice, and Larry, the driver & guide on the Kauai tour was very knowledgeable about the island. The smaller bus was more comfortable than the large bus. The large bus took longer to get back to our hotel because it had more people to drop off. We noticed that we were the only people who tipped the driver on one of the bus, and less than half the people tipped the driver.

This place was extremely difficult to book, and on that basis alone, I would avoid it like the plague.
I called on Monday morning, and was promptly put on hold for 15 minutes. I decided to have the front desk of my hotel give it a try, which they did, and amazingly got through.
I booked the full-​day tour, 8:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., with stops at Spouting Horn, Waimea Canyon and Fern Grotto, among others.
We waited until 9:00 a.m. in the lobby of our hotel until we got worried, and had the front desk staff call. The tour representative assured us the driver was on her way. When she arrived, she blurted out, «We were going to leave you because of the time!» Excuse me? You were going to leave us? We were the ones who had to call you to see if you were even going to show up the day of the tour.
The driver then got on the van’s loudspeaker and, in an apparent effort to embarrass us, said, «That’s why we have you wait outside on the road, people, so we can see where you are.» First of all, we were never, at any time, told that we were supposed to wait outside on the road for the van (such a suggestion appears to me to be ludicrous at its core, as there are several tour companies driving down the road at any given time. Are they supposed to pull over at every person on the side of the road to see if that person is on the tour?). Second, Robert’s had my cell phone number, and could have called if there was any confusion. In fact, they had called the day before to confirm. Third, if the driver truly could not find us, wouldn’t the logical solution be to park and go to the lobby to track down the guests? Her excuse sounded to me to be a CYA-​type of cover-​up.
The tour was not half-​bad, as we did get to see most of the important stops, and even got to stop at a coffee plantation to taste free samples.
The customer service, however, has some improving to do.

Buses were very clean, which is a must.
The drivers themselves were awesome, very funny without being annoying and chock-​full of neat info about the islands.
They were very willing to talk about anything you wanted to know, from where to get pineapple to when the next stop would be.
Very thoughtful company, truly customer-​oriented.