Aloha Brett
We have taken hundreds of groups on this tour to the USS Arizona and the USS Missouri and have developed a very good product over the many years we have been offering this tour. This tour has been developed to provide our guests an optimal experience of the USS Arizona, Visitor’s Center, and USS Missouri, and to do this it is important that guests adhere to the timeline we provide for their tours.
You were advised the evening before by text that your pickup time was 8:45am and that being on time was very important. Unfortunately, you didn’t adhere to the timeline and as a result we had to adjust our tour to accommodate your tardiness which undoubtedly had an impact on your experience. You arrived at 9:35am - almost an hour late. Had you been on time, we would have conducted the tour by first going to Punchbowl Cemetery and the City Highlights, where along the way Rich would have been providing expert guidance on the history and culture of Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands, plus listening to a 34-minute lecture done by a historian about the Pearl Harbor attack. However, because you were late, we had to rearrange the tour so you could get onto the USS Arizona with your timed tickets. Rich took you inside the Visitor’s Center and provided his expertise on how to navigate the park to optimize your time there. Commercial tour operators are not permitted to walk around the park with their guests which is why he directed you to speak with the Park’s Department rangers if you had questions.
After leaving the Visitor’s Center, Rich brought you directly to the USS Missouri, offering private transportation to Ford Island, where the entrance to the USS Missouri is located, and gave you a presentation explaining the historical significance of the battleship and the end of WWII, also history about The Oklahoma Memorial. He recommended that you take the docent tour as a complement to his presentation, after which he arranged to meet you to continue the tour.
After your visit to the USS Missouri, he was going to take you to the remainder of the tour to drive through Punchbowl Cemetery and to Iolani Palace and the King Kamehameha Statue; even though this was supposed to be done first thing in the morning, our company was willing to extend the length of the tour, an extra cost for us, to provide you with a full experience, but you declined to continue the tour.
As you can see, in order for us to fulfill our mission of providing optimal and outstanding experiences to our customers, we only ask, from you to follow our guidance and timelines, something that you failed to do.
We hope in the future, we can provide to you and beautiful family an experience that will bring you excellent memories. We also understand that accommodations may needed when traveling with children.
Thank you anyway for your feedback, and the opportunity to clarify why your experience did not meet your expectations.
Aloha,
PHV