Customer Reviews

Fodor's Hawaii 2003

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My partner and I were touring Hawaii by cruise ship and used this book in conjunction with the Trailblazer series. Instead of using the workout room aboard ship, we worked out hiking the beautiful trails on Maui and Kaui. Since the Fodor's didn't provide detailed maps we relied on the full pagers in the Trailblazer. It was a good system for combining loafing with seeing the place on foot and also a nice way to work off the enormous amount of food availalbe almost 24 hours a day. Fodor's provided a good cultural overview.

This guidebook was basically a good introduction to Hawaii. It contained all the essential trip information and we found all the recommendations to be first rate. The restaurant and hotel suggestions were far more superior than those in the Revealed series. I'm giving it four stars because I would have liked to see more maps.

Fodor's Hawaii is a useful reference book for either multi-island trips or stays of a short duration. It does a good job of going over background, and some hotels, restaurants and activities. I used some recommendations for restaurants in Honolulu and Maui and was very happy.
Think of this book as giving you the "big picture". If you are planning on a stay of four or more days on an island, I suggest getting an island-specific guide. Because Fodor's covers all the islands, it can only give about 75 pages on Maui for example. It did not cover the popular bike rides down from the top of 10,300 ft Haleakala volcano to the sea--rather it said some companies rent bikes for this trip. An example of an island specific book is "Maui Revealed" which has 300 pages of details and insider information.

Overall I would use Fodor's again, but would supplement with other material.