Hawaii Shark Encounters — Local services in Oʻahu

I booked a cage encounter for two on Monday, May 24th at 2pm. This was my first time experiencing sharks and visiting Hawaii. I was super excited because well its Hawaii! We had blue, clear waters and the waves were calm. It truly was a perfect day. We received email reminders the day before (nice). When we arrived on dock there was a total of 10 of us. We were split into two groups. Inside the cage, you cannot swim. With 6 people inside the cage, we were a tight fit. Our legs and feet kept bumping into one another when we were floating (not the greatest experience.) Especially when there is a pregnant guest on board, you have to be careful. We were given 30 minutes to appreciate the sharks through the pixie glass. In reality, the tour IS NOT 2 hours. Shark Encounters promotes a 2 hour tour on their website. I double checked under their tab "Oahu Shark Diving" and there isn't any language that describes the 2 hour tour. I checked on my reminder email and again there isn't any detail on how the 2 hour tour is broken down. When I contacted customer service to provide feedback on my experience, I received a text message on Monday May 25th at 8:43pm stating: "Today was an incredible tour day, lots of sharks, epic weather, what were you expecting beyond that?" I fund it (

You're not going to get hurt on this tour and you're going to see sharks, and the tour is less expensive. 👍🏻

We went with another company last year that cost more. They had a lot of Aloha spirit, and made us want to come back. They didn't talk loudly nonstop about people on other tours and their personal lives while we were trying to enjoy the very quiet and peaceful sharks. Didn't basically call me crazy for wearing a scopalamine patch. "As long as you believe a placebo works, it works!" Yeah the doctor who prescribed them must be an idiot just trying to make a buck.

They didn't swear "J-sus!" or yell at my kids either. My daughter is very timid and respectful, and just had her hands in the air for a second to grab her glasses, then was supporting herself again. She wobbled a little, and worried the captain, which I get...we are freaky unathletic, but he didn't stop yelling at her to sit. C'mon man. We know you care, but that was power-trippy.

Knowledgeable guys here...(about some things) just need to care as much about professionalism as liability. I'm not going to speculate how much they care about people. The only thing we really needed to hear them say was their procedure for getting in and out of the boat. Didn't need a twenty minute lecture on not killing or eating sharks. Ask if we're afraid of sharks. We'll let you know. (We're not.) Also...the liver doesn't filter blood. Kidneys do. The surgeon on board was too polite to correct the weird analogy.

Didn't need to hear them lament how little time they get to play with their kids because they work. We all have to work for a living. We're not permanently on vacation...this was a once in a lifetime experience with our kids. Once.

Don't need to hear them call the next customers vultures. We're all customers. Peace and quiet is way more enjoyable than non-stop droning. Or play the radio. That was great.

This review will be deleted before next year, because maybe they'll find some Aloha spirit by...

My son did this adventure 6years ago and enjoyed it very much so when we knew we were going to Oahu we booked with Shark Encounters again.

We booked through Groupon, as we did last time, and saved a whopping $11 per person (there was three of us). We were booked for February 15th at 1pm and the night before, we were emailed that it was cancelled due to the weather.

We immediately contacted them and rebooked for Saturday February17th at 7:00am (we were flying back to Canada the next day - Sunday) Again we received a cancellation the night before due to the weather.

Since we had no other time options to rebook with them, we asked for a refund. They refunded each us the $10.64 that we paid directly to them and they told us to contact Groupon to get refunded for the rest of our money.

We contacted Groupon and they were very helpful and they contacted Shark Encounters to request the refund and we had to show proof that our adventure was cancelled.

Shark Encounters told them they would not refund our money but said they would honor our voucher.

That was very kind of SE but we don't plan to go back to Oahu any time soon if ever again, so the voucher is useless to us.

I contacted SE directly and explained a SE with the reservation numbers and they will "revisit the request".

What a waste of everyones time. Groupon contacted me again and said SE wont refund the rest of our money.

Shark Encounters makes it sound as if Groupon is the company that wont do the refund, but in reality it is Shark Encounters decision not to refund our money.

SE states they will refund your money if weather is the reason for the cancellation, which in this case it is. Whether we paid by a coupon or directly to them shouldn't matter. They received our money either way. It would have been nice for them to do the right thing rather than make this whole situation worse than it needed to be.

Donna...