Figuring that we had spent plenty already we opted for the self-guided tour rather than shell out another 40 bucks for a guided tour. That robbed us of a certain amount of insight since there was very little written information provided in the “villages.” It did however save us from the dreaded audience participation moments when hapless tourists are forced to engage in embarrassing adaptations of ritual songs and dances. We also apparently missed out on weaving bits of palm frond into vaguely bird-like shapes and mounting them on sticks. Damn.
The staff was all very nice there, of course, but in a somewhat creepy, robotic way. They all asked us the exact same questions, as if reading from a script. “Where are you from?” “How long will you be in Hawaii?” “Have you been here before?” Then there were the relentless pitches to buy a trinket here, an ice cream there, a fruit drink over here…anything to squeeze a few more dollars from you. We were fairly successful in dodging the marketing pitches, as well as the robotic invitations to visit the LDS temple in town (BYU-Hawaii is also there).
On the plus side the grounds were beautiful, albeit in an artificial way, and the IMAX film on coral reefs was good, although we had actually seen it before. The luau included a bland dinner buffet and accompanying entertainment of equal quality. Deborah, ever the glass-half-full sort of person that she is, said of the buffet, “Well, I liked the roll.” We probably wouldn’t have been checking our watches during the subsequent evening show had we not already been worn down by the crass commercialism and endless repetitions of grass-skirted role players demanding the audience respond with “ALOOOOHA!” Thankfully that word also means goodbye.
