Ultimate Whale Watch & Snorkel — Local services in Maui

Lisa bent over backwards to help us get some booking issues sorted out. I’m sure glad she did. We saw some incredible whale activity on the surface and being in a smaller boat means you’re closer to the water and aren’t moving as much with each swell.

My wife started feeling queezy and the crew jumped into action and saved the day! Great experience!

I specifically chose these guys (besides their amazing YouTube videos), because the boats and groups are smaller, which means you can get closer to the action more easily (especially with other boats around) and I watched videos from the Pacific Whale Foundation (the one everyone recommends) and the guides don’t stop talking.

Our captain and crew taught us when it was appropriate and we had questions and let us just enjoy the experience and take it all in without distracting us with trivial facts. It is a fine balance and they did a great job.

Even with the smaller boats, they’re very stable on the water. Anyone who has been on an upper deck of a large boat knows that there is a ton of motion with each wave. Not so with a small boat. But I never felt like our boat was too small for any of the swells.

The water is relatively calm in the channel between Maui and Lanai so it’s a great experience. Sometimes when we were drifting, I’d just sit with one foot over the pontoon in the water (which is amazingly warm for the Pacific).

All around a fantastic experience!

Friends of ours discouraged us from paying for a whale watching tour if we were doing a snorkeling tour because we’d see whales during that. Although they’re right, we did see whales, nothing can replace getting up close with these animals as they breach and slap their tails and play in the swells.

Thanks To Gabe and the gang! This was a highlight...

We spent a week in Maui, with the only excursion being a small group, whale watching/snorkeling trip with this company. We spent over $500 between the two of us for a 4 hour excursion. 14 hours before our Check in time, we received a text saying our excursion was cancelled. My husband then called the number they provided in the text saying that our trip wasn’t cancelled, that it was a “glitch in their system” We’re clearly not from this area and arrived at the location Google provides, only to be told we needed to walk a mile to another dock. Not a problem since we were pretty early.

We were sent to the “mama ramp” and let me tell you, there’s no signage, no representative from this company. We were however greeted by not 1, not 2, but 3 police vehicles and multiple officers. This area is very run down and has a very homeless presence. The bathrooms are surrounded by people who call this area home, and I didn’t feel safe to use it.

Captain Steve’s workers were very kind in letting us know that someone from ultimate whale watching should “be a long shortly”

The only reason I’m giving this review 2 stars, is because Zach and Reese (our captain and deck hand) were kind, informative and empathetic to my sea sickness.

We did find find out that our tour had actually been cancelled, but that the other couple that was on the excursion with us had signed up right after they had cancelled us. So the “glitch” in the system wasn’t true, but they didn’t find it worth their time to only make $500 with just us.

I hope this business gets their stuff together, for this kind of money you’d think they would be a little more...

Hard to write this review as we had 2 very different experiences so I’m averaging it from 1 star and 5 star between our two times :

1st experience: we misread the show up time (be there by 830 for 9am departure) and they called us at 845am asking if we would make it. Told them we would be there by 9am and they said no problem. We get there literally at 8:59am and the ship captain Jill starts pulling the boat away and yells “sorry we leave at 9am.” We were literally on the dock and the check in person (Jo) was even shocked by Jill’s behavior that she couldn’t have waited 30 extra seconds for us to get on board. “Wow. I can’t believe she would do that when you’re literally right here…” said Jo. She felt terrible and rescheduled us to later in the week without charging us.

2nd attempt: everything went smooth and Jo actually made us two hand decorated pet rocks cuz she felt bad for last time. Our captain Emma and KC were awesome! Emma was hilarious with a great dry sense of humor and full of fun facts. The second stop we did we saw about 30 turtles and swam face to face with them; coolest snorkel experience ever!

Overall I think it’s a great company, but … Jill sucks. I know they don’t have a strict “leave by 9am” policy as our second attempt with Emma didn’t leave til 9:08am. Jill is just on a power trip and wanted to make an example of us rather than being kind and letting us board at 859am!!

Use this company just don’t...