Transportation If you don't rent a car, you might as well not come here. There are sightseeing tours, but if you want to go other places besides your hotel for dinner, you need to be able to drive yourself.
Where to Stay The Princeville Hotel The only hotel located on the north shore. (Most places are on the south shore.) It's a fabulously beautiful hotel and they really pamper you here. Just about every room has a view of the beautiful Mount Makana, also known as Bali H'ai from the movie "South Pacific". The only drawback is that the north shore is quite rainy, so keep that in mind.
Restaurants
The Entertainment book doesn't list as much for Kauai, but there are a couple of places, one of which we tried, marked with a "*". Bubba Burger Just a burger joint, but their stuff is really good and cooked to order-forget McDonalds-come here instead. The Double Bubba with Teriyaki sauce was quite good. If you want a side, order fries rather than onion rings-it didn't seem like we got very many onion rings, and they costed twice as much as the fries, which we got alot of. Cafe Hanalei at the Princeville Hotel. Sit outside and enjoy a beautiful view of Bali Hai while you eat. Lunch here was excellent-the chicken with thai coconut curry sauce served with potatoes and rice was fantastic and the ahi with cajun style guava mayonnaise was very tasty. For a drink, try the Princeville Palace-it's a hawaiian style mimosa. Yummy. *Winds of Beamreach at the Pali Ke Kua condo complex in Princeville. Very casual, with good food. The South Seas Pineapple Shrimp was really good-shrimp sauteed with peapods & mushrooms in a creamy pineapple sauce. The Hawaiian Steamed Red Snapper was also good-it was cooked in a sort of vanilla sauce. Good service and good prices, too.
Nightlife: Forget it. It gets pretty dead.
Luaus: Smith's Tropical Paradise A semi-authentic luau, complete with an imu pig ceremony and entertainment while you eat. The food is okay and there is an open bar, but with very limited choices-the mai tais tasted watered down. It is all you can eat, but when we went back for seconds, it didn't seem like they tried too hard to keep the food trays full. There is also a show in an ampitheatre that you have to move to after dinner, but some of it's pretty hokey and not very authentic. For example, the song for the New Zealand Maoris sounded too much like a '50's pop Hawaiian song, unlike the authentic Maori song we heard at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu. The $50 per person they charge is way too high considering what you get. Princeville Hotel Much nicer than Smith's. Includes an imu ceremony and an open bar with anything you want and the drinks tasted full strength to us. The food is much better here, too, and when you go back for seconds, there's still plenty of food. You don't have to move to another place for the show-all the entertainment is right where the dinner tables are-it's a smaller show than Smith's, but it's more authentic and if you're not done eating or drinking, you don't have to go anywhere.
Shopping Coconut Marketplace A smallish, outdoor mall. When they say in the ad "over 70 stores" they make a big deal of it, but it's really not that many. There's a wide variety, but it's not worth going out of the way for. Guava Kai Plantation On the north side of the island. A big guava plantation owned by the people who own Mauna Loa Macadamia Nuts, this is the best place on the island to get great jellies, dips, juices, and other exotic fruit items. You can also see a part of the plant where they process the guava. They make the juice used in Ocean Spray's "Mauna Lai" Hawaiian juices here, too!
Tours Hawaii Movie Tours Deluxe Tour The literature makes it sound like you get to see lots and lots of movie locations, but we were quite dissappointed. We had high hopes, but as the day progressed, we felt that the $300 per person for the deluxe tour wasn't worth it. You start the day with an hour long helicopter ride, going around the entire island and seeing lots of stuff, including the Fantasy Island falls and a couple of remote areas Jurassic Park was filmed in. The helicopter ride was the one part of the tour that was well worth the time, so we recommend you definitely do a helicopter ride on your own at some point while on Kauai. After the helicopter ride, it's back in the van and on to a place to stop and eat lunch, included in the tour price. Lunch was very good, but later in the day, we wished that so much time wasn't spent on it. After lunch, you go to Smith's Tropical Paradise for the fern grotto boat ride, which takes entirely too much time. When you get back from the fern grotto, you see a couple of movie locations, including the Coco Palms, which is where "Blue Hawaii" was filmed in part. The last hour of the tour is spent at the village where "Outbreak" was filmed. Then the tour operators had to hurry us back to Smith's for the tram tour, luau and show. Overall, we didn't think we got our money's worth. If you want to see more movie locations, DON'T take the deluxe tour-at $300 per person it's not worth it. Instead, take the land-only tour-it's only $85 per person. It stops at lots more movie locations. When we booked the tour, we thought the deluxe version would have the exact same land tour as the land only, but they explained that since it takes so much time to do the helicopter tour, the fern grotto boat ride, the "Outbreak" village and also the Smith's luau, they had to cut alot out of the land part of the tour. Had we known this, we wouldn't have done the deluxe tour. It was too much "tour" and not enough "movie". So, here's our recommendations for the company that runs Hawaii Movie Tours in a nutshell-
*Keep the helicopter ride-it's the best part.
*Tell people that if they take the deluxe tour, they don't get the same land tour as if they'd taken the land only tour.
*Get rid of the Fern Grotto boat ride-it's not a movie location and it takes too long anyway.
*10 minutes at the Outbreak village is okay, but an hour is too long-we've heard the stuff the guy talks about a million times before.
*Don't provide such an elaborate lunch-it also takes time away from driving to movie locations.
*If you follow the above suggestions, you could easily add more "land" movie locations to the deluxe tour, including the beach where "South Pacific" was filmed, the dock used in "Miss Sadie Thompson", and other stuff.
*Going back to Smith's for the luau might be okay, but go back later, skipping the included tram tour. That way, there will also be more time for movie locations.
So, for those of you thinking about going to Kauai here's what we suggest-just take Hawaii Movie Tour's land-only tour, then on another day do a helicopter tour on your own. That way, you can skip the dumb stuff like the Fern Grotto boat ride. If you want to see what the company itself has to say, click here. UPDATE AS OF 11/2000 Believe it or not, we heard from the nice people at Hawaii Movie Tours not too long ago. They addressed the concerns listed above and it seems that the tour has been changed somewhat. The "Outbreak Village" has been scrapped, as well as the fern grotto boat ride. It seems that the fern grotto area was used for movies, though. The people running the tour (it's a separate group from Hawaii Movie Tours) just didn't say anything about it. There is now more time to get farther north on the island and show more stuff. We appreciate the folks at Hawaii Movie Tours contacting us and letting us know about the changes, and thanks to them especially for sending us a "few things" in the mail.
Smith's Tropical Paradise A weird place-the same place that has the luau and hokey show at night. During the day, you can take a tram ride through their farm, which is okay. This is also one of the places you can take the boat ride to the fern grotto. The fern grotto is pretty, but if you're only on the island for a couple of days, don't waste your time-it takes too long. All in all, we don't think Smith's is worth the time or money-spend the day on the beach instead.
Email / knighton@cablespeed.com
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