In my continued quest to find ways to cut down the cost of our upcoming Hawaii trip, I was super excited to find that there’s a GoOahu card for the island we’ll be spending 90% of our time on!
Seriously – I was so excited. And the rest of this post might sound like a big ad (and I am an affiliate of the GoCity passes, BUT this post is honestly just borne out of pure money-saving-fun-loving-happiness).
It all started 10 years ago with my first international trip to London. I went with two other friends who had just graduated and we were broke as a joke. But we scrimped and saved our entire last year of college to afford plane tickets, hostels and attraction admission to all the cool spots in London.
We were seriously so broke that most of our meals were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the free breakfast supplies at the hostel.
We found the London Pass online and were immediately sold on the idea. We bought the one for the week and planned the majority of our vacation around it (with one extra day long excursion out to Bath, Stonehenge and the Cotswolds).
It was worth. every. penny.
It had every major attraction you could possibly want to see. Then, rather than floundering about the vast expanse of things you could also do in London, we just picked the extra things to fill up the rest of the time off of the pass.
After that super win, I’ve used city passes in Edinburgh (possibly the best pass of them all so far), Amsterdam (actually the weakest option unless you freaking love museums) and San Francisco. I’ve seriously considered purchasing the New York one to actually see all the sights I live around for the weekend someday too.
There are two big city pass companies for America and Canada are the GoCity card folks and the CityPass folks. Both have incredible deals if you’re trying to hit a major tourist attraction and see the highlights.
I wasn’t kidding when I said I was super excited to see the GoOahu card pop up in my Hawaii searches. I instantly went from feeling a little overwhelmed trying to plan this thing to back on track. The majority of attractions that had come up as “must see” on my searches were included in the pass already.
So needless to say, the GoOahu card is our major money saving move on how to see the attractions (and the savings are legit – you honestly do save between 30-60% of entrance fees when using the card – based off of my number crunching of what we definitely wanted to see anyway, we’re around 50%).
You can check out my first post in the Hawaii Savings series in which I freak out over the decision to go to this super expensive little island and start thinking of a few ways to get there cheaper here.
I’ve been there a few times but I’ve never used the pass, I hope you enjoy it!
I highly recommend Sidestreet Inn for food, and North Shore for garlic shrimp, and in my humble opinion, you can’t go wrong with a stop at Leonard’s for malasadas. Mmmm… best things ever. I just realized I did a whole post on food from when I was there: http://agaishanlife.com/2013/06/good-eats-food-in-oahu/
The Dole Plantation is always an interesting visit if you’ve never been, Dole whip is a fun indulgence. And to work off those calories, you might enjoy a snorkel in Waimanalo Bay (IIRC) and I’ve heard that Olomana Hike is great for those who like a challenging hike. It’s too challenging for me, though 😉
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