Atlantis Submarines Kona — Local services in Hawaii

Our big family group booked this as the last excursion to conclude our Hawaii vacation and it was a massive let down. I will start by saying, the actual submarine and the submarine crew were enjoyable. We didn’t see anything unique except a couple of ship wrecks and the ocean floor didn’t have much going on the day we went sadly. My true issue lies with the horrendous customer service of the staff in the ticketing office.

After booking this excursion over 3 months in advance, I received a missed phone call 2 days prior to our trip while at the beach. No voicemails were left and when I tried to return the call, the phone system was down (a common occurrence for this establishment) and the system eventually forwarded the call to the general manager. Once I spoke to him, he mentioned he was away from the office but he didn’t think it was a big deal or anything to be worried about so we went about our day. The following day I received another missed call while out on a snorkel excursion. When I returned that phone call, the girl I spoke to wanted to confirm we had a military ID for the discount we received when we booked, and paid in full, months prior as we needed to show proof during check in. I was out for the day so needed to confirm my family member brought his military ID and once I confirmed that evening I sent an email since their office was closed informing them we were good to go.

The day of the submarine tour, while prepping to check out of our condo & head towards Atlantis, I received an email from Kelsey at the office stating that every adult we purchased tickets for needs to have their own valid military ID to receive the discount or the difference would be due during check in. I had absolutely no idea that every adult needed to be military in our group as we were all family and I called in the day I booked to get info and shared how many people would be going and asked if the company provided military discounts and was never told anything of the sort. The woman I spoke to on the phone gave me all of the info I needed and shared the URL required to purchase the tickets and obtain the discount. I didn’t buy the tickets directly though their website, I used the URL the employee provided.

When we arrived to check in, Kelsey stated multiple times that we should have known since we booked online and it didn’t matter what the employee said over the phone. She was so incredibly rude, lacked ANY customer service skills, extremely argumentative and was truly just an awful person to deal with. She took zero accountability and just kept repeating herself that we “should have known.” She brought the general manager out to assist but he didn’t seem to know what was going on and provided zero assistance. It was by far the most disappointing experience during our vacation and truly, any vacation I have ever been on. We were forced to pay the difference per person (an expense we were not expecting) and were denied any refund for cancelling as it was within the 24 hour window. It was simply, go and pay us 25% extra or miss out on going or getting money our back.

The way they handled this miscommunication was completely baffling to me. We had over 11 excursions booked during this trip and not once did we have an issue whatsoever.

I highly recommend you stay away from this company and find something else to do on the island that is more worthwhile, worth the expense and has employees who treat you like decent humans. The overall experience was lackluster and just simply not worth it. I 1000000% regret booking this and would stay...

I booked a tour on the Atlantis Submarines out of Kona, Big Island Hawaii this past June with my fiancé while on vacation. I had a great experience and I do recommend for anyone that is looking for a unique adventure. You start the experience by meeting at the hotel and walking with a group of about 30 people to the nearby docks. You take a boat from the docks to the actual submarine that is waiting in the ocean. The boat ride was nice and smooth and we even saw a group of spinner dolphins jumping and having fun in the ocean. There is a person speaking on the microphone and giving the safety briefs. I asked how many dives they had completed and was happy to hear him report back that Atlantis Submarines has completed over 47,000 dives without any incidents. His comments made me feel a lot safer and I was happy with all of the staff members professionalism. When the boat meets the submarine there will be a slow transfer process of all the passengers moving onto the sub. The boat does rock quite a bit so if you get seasick maybe not the best activity for you. There is no reason to be worried about who boards the sub first because everyone gets a window to themselves and a good view. Once everyone was boarded and seated the staff will get to prepare to dive. There is good communication from the captain and tour narrator. The submarine dives very fast to the bottom and you will see all kinds of fish. The narrator will be providing a funny commentary pretty much the entire tour which last a little over an hour. The max depth that we got to was 107ft deep. The Atlantis tour out of Kona gave us a great view of the reef and a very up close view of two shipwrecks. The submarine captain or pilot gets impressively close to the shipwrecks. Great for photos or short videos. I though the view was very clear for taking pictures. Overall we saw tons of different fish. We did not see anything too crazy but the narrator stated they have seen whale sharks and whales before as well as sharks. It was a great experience and although I am not sure I would do it again I am definitely glad that I got to go on a submarine at least once. The seats are quick small but the tour is short enough for the underwater part that I think most people could...

Meh. I really, really, really disliked this experience. In all fairness, some of it was me, which is why I gave it a higher rating than I actually wanted to. First of all, I got a little seasick on the boat that took us from the pier to the submarine. I have spent a great deal of time on boats throughout my life and have never been seasick like this. Even though the windows were open there was zero circulation inside the boat so I'm sure that was a big contributor, plus we stayed docked for much longer than it seemed necessary and the boat was rocking hard while we waited. Ugh. It just got worse from there.

Even though I did feel better inside the submarine, there was still very little circulation. I found out later, as we were exiting, that the vents in our porthole weren't forcing out cool air like they were in the other viewing windows. That sucked for sure. In addition, we were packed in with a lot of families and young children, whose parents did little to nothing to control the volume of their children's voices. We could barely hear the tour guide and after a while the sound just became deafening and I checked out completely. You could tell he was frustrated with having to talk over an entire submarine of people. I also found out later that our speaker wasn't working. I had no idea we even had a speaker until my husband pointed out that it was working in the other viewing windows. We really only heard bits and pieces of the presentation. Terrible.

As far as the view was concerned. It was kind of cool seeing the shipwrecks and some fish, but honestly, if you want to do that I think a better experience would be snorkeling or SCUBA. I know that's not always practical with small children, but a far better experience than this, in my opinion. Plus, no screaming, poorly...