Yes dad, it’s a real submarine

OK - so I’m heading to Waikiki and Oahu with my family (two boys - 8 and 6) and my lovely wife. What to do? Of course we planned on spending time on the beach, heading to the north shore (no waves in June… doh!) and enjoying the multitude of shops and restaurants. But we needed some adventure!

So browsing the Viator products for Honolulu I stumbled upon the Atlantis Submarine. Interesting… I wrongly assumed that submarines were limited to Paul Allen and the world’s major navies. I decide to give it a go.

The big day!

We show up outside our hotel to find an Atlantis Submarine trolley-bus picking up our fellow passengers. They even had our names on the list - very organised. A short trip to the Hilton Village took us to the departure point. We checked in with the office (on the beach) and headed down to the wharf to get ferried out to the submarine on a nice big boat.

I was still kind of thinking that the ’subs’ may be some kind of glass-bottomed boat or similar, cynic that I am, and was surprised at the announcement over the PA: “Please look off the port side of the vessel and watch for a big bubbling spot on the ocean surface”. Apparently the subs release some air to identify their positions to the mother ship, to ensure they won’t surface in the path of a pleasure, commercial or even navy vessel. Whoa - up it came - a real submarine!!

The dive…

Alongside the mother ship

We pulled alongside and a ramp was dropped so we could cross over onto the sub and down through the watertight hatches. Down below it was quite spacious and bright (no Hunt for Red October here).

Everyone got a padded seat across from a nice big porthole. We all got settled, sealed the hatches and quickly started submerging - cool!

As we descended, we could start seeing fish and even sea turtles. We toured around the bottom ranging from 90 to 130 feet or so, and got to see several shipwrecks, a couple airplanes and a University of Hawaii underwater pyramid structure (dunno what that was about, but it looked cool).

We cruised around for quite some time and the guide was both entertaining and knowledgeable about the sub, surroundings, wildlife, etc. Once we viewed the seven or eight sites, we announced our impending surfacing with a release of bubbles, then a quick ascent. Interestingly as we ascended, we got color vision back again, red stopped being black and the blue hue of the deep receded.

Back on top

A very happy submariner

Once we surfaced, the mothership came alongside once again, and we cracked open the hatches, marched up the ramp and enjoyed the scenic boat ride past Waikiki back to the wharf.

We were whisked back to our hotels and free to enjoy the rest of the day.

It was a lot of fun, didn’t take too much time and the kids loved it. I can now claim to be a submariner. A great adventure!

–Jeff Lewis

Editor’s Note: You can browse more of Jeff’s holiday snaps on the Viator Flickr Site: Atlantis Submarine Tour in Oahu, hanging out with the kids in Waikiki, and the Waikiki Fun Cruise.

Planning a trip? Browse all of Viator’s Oahu tours, things to do in Hawaii, Maui attractions and tours of the Big Island of Hawaii. Aloha, mate!

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 6:00 am and is filed under Best of the Viator Blog, Destinations, Family & Kids, Travel Inspiration, USA, Canada, Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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