What's Actually Happening in Hawaii Right Now

Is Hawaii OK Right Now? June/July Travel Updates: Oahu Shuttle, Kalaupapa Tours, Kauai Closures, Kilauea, and Na Pali Sail-By Return

UPDATE: Kalaupapa Tours are on hiatus

Marcie shares a fast, island-by-island update for travelers asking if Hawaii is okay right now, covering shifting logistics after March storms and ongoing Kilauea activity. On Oahu, a new $5 North Shore Huaka‘i daily shuttle pilot (starting June 29) runs from Waikiki/Ko Olina to Waialua and Haleiwa with cultural storytelling, about 3.5 hours of free time, a passport stamp challenge, and a fixed return time to support storm-hit businesses. On Molokai, Kalaupapa National Historical Park begins ranger-led public tours July 9 (Thursdays/Saturdays), requiring a strenuous ~8-mile hike with 1,700 feet elevation change, age 16+, reservations via recreation.gov, and a 100-visitor daily cap. On Kauai, Waimea Canyon Drive construction closes a key section weekdays 8 a.m.–11:30 p.m. June 22–Aug 17. The Big Island’s Kilauea remains episodic with the park fully open, and Norwegian’s Pride of America restores the Na Pali Coast sail-by starting Oct 3 with an earlier Nawiliwili departure.

00:00 Is Hawaii Okay
00:46 Oahu Shuttle Pilot
02:28 Molokai Kalaupapa Tours
04:04 Kauai Road Closures
05:18 Big Island Kilauea Update
06:38 Na Pali Sailby Returns
08:04 Resources And Thanks
09:13 Final Wrap Up

About Your Host: Marcie Cheung is a Certified Hawaii Destination Expert who has visited Hawaii 40+ times and spent 20+ years as a professional hula dancer. Through Hawaii Travel with Kids, she helps families plan authentic, affordable Hawaii vacations that respect local culture while creating unforgettable memories.

Learn more at hawaiitravelwithkids.com

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Transcript

0:00

I got the same text three times this week from three different people who have trips booked in the next month. Different words, same question underneath it. Is Hawaii okay right now? And I get it. Between the March storms, the shuttle systems that keep changing, and a volcano that's been putting on a show since December of 2024, it can feel like the ground is moving under your itinerary. So today I wanna give you a fast, no-fluff update on what's changed across the islands, what's closing, what's reopening, and one long-awaited itinerary change that just got confirmed for the fall Welcome back to Hawaii Travel Made Easy. I'm Marcie, and this is one of our Monday episodes where I catch you up on what's new before it shows up in your inbox as a surprise. Island by island, here's what's changed Starting back on June 29th, there's a brand new $5 shuttle running daily between Waikiki, Ko Olina, and the North Shore towns of Waialua and Haleiwa. It's called the North Shore Huaka'i, and it's a 90-day pilot program built specifically to help those communities recover the Kona Low storms hit back in March. So here's how it actually works. You book a seat online or by phone, in Waikiki around 9 in the morning or Ko Olina a little earlier, and the ride out includes cultural storytelling about the moku of Waialua along the way. Once you get there, there's no assigned tour guide walking you around. You get about three and a half hours of free time split between Waialua and Haleiwa to eat, shop, and wander at your own pace, and then the shuttle brings you back. The whole day runs six to seven hours door to door. Every rider gets a North Shore passport, a little printed booklet with business recommendations and cultural context, plus a stamp challenge. Collect five stamps at participating shops and you get a small gift. And because this is a recovery effort, the whole point is that your $5 and whatever you spend on shave ice or a plate lunch goes straight to the businesses that got hit hardest. This is worth knowing before you book. This isn't a replacement for driving yourself out there if you want total flexibility, since the return shuttle has a set departure time. But if you've been nervous about North Shore parking or just want a low-effort, low-cost day trip, this is about as easy as it gets right now. I actually had a client last week ask me almost this exact question. She wanted to see the North Shore but didn't want to deal with renting a car just for a day. I was thrilled to have an answer for her, since $5 round trip with the parking and driving headache completely handled is exactly the kind of thing I'm always looking for on her behalf. Oahu isn't the only island where access just got easier. Over on Molokai, something opened up that hasn't been possible in years. This one is bigger news than it might sound at first. Starting July 9th, Kalaupapa National Historical Park is offering guided public tours for the first time ever. And the reason that this is such a big deal has to do with how access to Kalaupapa has always worked. By law, any commercial tour company operating on the peninsula has to be owned by a Hansen's disease patient who actually lives there. For the past year, that was Auntie Melie Watanuki, who ran Kalaupapa Saint Tours. When she passed away this spring, her family made the decision to close the business, saying it honored what they understood to be her wishes. That left the park with no visitor access at all for several weeks, which is a huge shift for a place that just reopened to the public after years of pandemic closure. Now, the Park Service is running ranger-led tours twice a week, Thursdays and Saturdays, and I wanna be really clear that this is not a casual outing. It's a full-day, roughly eight-mile hike in hot, humid conditions, and that includes the Pali Trail down into the settlement, which is about 1,700 feet of elevation change, equivalent to climbing 20 flights of stairs each way. You have to be at least 16 years old to go. Tickets are $20 per person plus a $1 booking fee, and you have to reserve at least 24 hours ahead through recreation.gov. The park is also capping visitors at 100 per day, so this isn't gonna feel crowded, but it also means it'll book up. If you've got a client or listener who's dreamed of visiting Kalaupapa, this is the moment to actually make it happen, as long as they're up for the physical challenge. Not every access story this month is a good one, though. Over on Kauai, one road is about to get a lot harder to use If Waimea Canyon or Koke'e are anywhere on your Kauai plans this summer, listen up because this one will wreck a poorly timed day trip. The State Department of Transportation is doing a full depth reconstruction and resurfacing of Waimea Canyon Drive between Ma'ule'u Road and Koke'e Road, and that section is closed every weekday from eight in the morning until eleven thirty at night. It started Monday, June 22nd, and it's expected to run through Monday, August 17th. The road reopens every night from eleven thirty to eight AM, and it's open all day on the weekends and holidays. So the move here is simple. Do Waimea Canyon and Koke'e on a Saturday or Sunday, or plan a very early or very late weekday visit. Local residents and emergency vehicles can still get through during the closure, but as a visitor, you don't wanna show up at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday and find the road blocked. If you do need the detour, Koke'e Road out of Kekaha gets you up to Koke'e State Park, and since this is weather permitting like everything else in Hawaii construction, I check HDOT's Kauai roadwork page the week of your trip just to confirm nothing's shifted. Kauai's construction crews are working around the clock. Over on the Big Island, it's a different kind of natural process that's setting the schedule. And then there's Kilauea, which just keeps doing its thing. The summit eruption At Halema'uma'u has been going since December 2024, and it comes in these episodic bursts of lava fountaining separated by quiet stretches that can last anywhere from a day to a few weeks. The most recent one as of this recording, episode 50, started the morning of June 27th and ran for about seven hours before stopping abruptly that evening. Right now, the volcano is paused, but the alert level is back down to advisory, and the park is fully open. If you've got a Big Island trip coming up, don't count on lava being visible on any specific day since nobody, not even the geologists, can predict exactly when the next episode starts. But it's worth checking the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory site or the park's own alerts page the week of your trip because when an episode does kick off, it's one of the most incredible things you'll ever see in person. If you're staying near Volcano Village or planning a night out at the park, This is exactly the kind of thing I help people time in our planning sessions since a well-timed evening at the crater rim can turn a good trip into one people talk about for years. If juggling shuttle schedules, tour permits, road closures, and eruption timing sounds like a lot, I get it. There's actually a way to see most of this without any of the logistics. Last one, and it's good news for a change. Norwegian's Pride of America is bringing back its Na Pali Coast sail by, starting with the October 3rd sailing out of Honolulu. Pride of America is the one big ship that does a full week around the Hawaiian Islands without ever leaving the state. And for almost 20 years, the final afternoon of that cruise included a slow pass along Kauai's Na Pali Coast before heading back to Honolulu. Norwegian pulled that sail by back in 2024, and it's been off the itinerary for about two and a half years. So here's what changes. On the new schedule, the ship leaves Nawiliwili at 2:00 in the afternoon on day seven instead of 5:00, cruises the coast that afternoon, and gets back to Honolulu the next morning around 7:00. So you're trading about three hours of extra time in port on Kauai for the sail by itself. For most people who've done this cruise, that's an easy trade. It's weather permitting like everything else, and if conditions cooperate, the ship generally angles it so both sides of the ship get a view, though port side cabins tend to have a better position on this particular itinerary. If you've been going back and forth between a Pride of America cruise and straight resort stay, this exact question has come up with three different clients of mine this week alone, and it's worth putting back on the table. The appeal of a cruise has always been that you unpack once, hit four islands, and let the ship handle transportation and lodging. The Na Pali sail by was a thing that used to seal the deal for a lot of people, and now it's back. Before I get to today's resources, I wanna pause for a second. This podcast just crossed 50,000 downloads total, and our Hawaii Travel With Kids Instagram just hit 10,000 followers. That's not a small thing to me, and I don't say this to pat myself on the back. I say it because so many of you found the show through word of mouth, one friend telling another friend to listen before their trip, so thank you. And on that note, if you ever have a question about something I covered in an episode, Instagram is the fastest way to reach me. I'm at Hawaii Travel With Kids there. Everything I covered today, the shuttle, the Kalalau Papa tour, the road closure, the volcano status, the cruise change, is the kind of detail that changes fast enough that even the best blog post can be out of date by the time you land. If you want someone double-checking all of this against your actual dates before you go, that's what my sixty and ninety-minute consultations are for. You can grab one at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Travel Consultant. And if you just want a running list of the tools I personally trust for things like shuttle reservations and park permits, all that lives at hawaiitravelwithkids.com under Hawaii Resources. I keep that page updated as things like the shuttle and this tour come online, so it's worth a bookmark. That's what's actually happening in Hawaii right now. I'll keep you posted as more of this rolls out over the summer. Talk soon. Aloha.