What to Book Ahead in Honolulu, and What Can Wait
Why a few places need planning
Honolulu is a city of free and open places: public beaches, parks, streets and lookouts that you can visit on a whim. But a few of its most visited sights have introduced reservations in recent years to control crowds, protect fragile places and give residents room, and those few can shape your trip. If you want to climb Diamond Head, see the USS Arizona Memorial or snorkel at Hanauma Bay, book before you fly, or at least as soon as the booking window opens.
This page lists what needs a booking and what does not. It gives the mechanism, never a price or a time: the operators set and change those, and their own sites are the only reliable source on the day. None of these places takes bookings through this site.
Diamond Head
The walk to the summit of Diamond Head is the most popular hike in the city, and the state now controls numbers. Visitors who are not Hawaiʻi residents must book an entry reservation in advance, and a parking reservation too if they drive into the crater; residents with valid identification are exempt. Book on the state parks reservation system, choose an early entry to avoid the midday heat, and bring your confirmation. Walk-up entry cannot be counted on, especially in busy seasons.
The trail is 0.8 mile each way with a climb of 560 feet, and State Parks suggests planning an hour and a half to two hours.
Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial
The Pearl Harbor National Memorial, run by the National Park Service, is a day trip from the city. The visitor center and its museums are free to enter, but the program that takes visitors by boat out to the USS Arizona Memorial is reserved through the federal Recreation.gov site. A limited number of standby tickets are given out on the day, but the Park Service strongly recommends booking ahead. Bags, including backpacks and purses, are not allowed in the memorial or the visitor center, and there is a storage facility near the entrance.
Your reservation is for a program at a set departure: a film and then the boat across the harbor to the memorial, which run at intervals through the day until mid-afternoon. Arrive early enough to store any bag, walk through the museums and reach the theater on time. The ships and submarine museum nearby are run separately, with their own tickets.
The memorial stands over the sunken battleship in which most of its crew died on 7 December 1941. Book it as you would a visit to a grave, and plan the rest of the day around it.
Hanauma Bay
Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a sheltered bay in an old volcanic crater on the southeast coast, is the island's best-known snorkeling spot and a day trip from Waikīkī. To protect the reef, the city limits numbers. Visitors who are not residents reserve admission through the city's online reservation system, which opens two days ahead and goes quickly. Every visitor watches a short educational film about the bay before going down to the water, and the preserve shuts two days a week. Check the city's page for the current days and rules.
ʻIolani Palace and Shangri La
The rooms of ʻIolani Palace are seen on guided docent tours or self-led audio tours, and the palace says reservations are highly recommended, with walk-ins taken only when space allows. You can walk the grounds freely without a ticket.
Shangri La, the house Doris Duke built in Honolulu for her collection of Islamic art, can only be visited on tours that begin at the Honolulu Museum of Art, and reservations are required. Book it early.
Evenings and performances
For evenings, book seats for what you want to see. The Hawaiʻi Theatre in Chinatown, restored and reopened in 1996, holds concerts, dance and theater through the year, and its tickets go on sale through the theater itself. The Waikīkī Shell in Kapiʻolani Park holds open-air concerts, with lawn space as well as seats, and the Doris Duke Theatre inside the Honolulu Museum of Art shows films and holds concerts and lectures. Popular concerts can sell out, so book those as soon as you know your dates.
The Neal S. Blaisdell Center, the city's arena and concert hall in Kakaʻako, hosts larger shows. Check each venue's calendar when you plan, rather than relying on listings in hotel lobbies.
Smaller places with their own rules
A few smaller places run visits by arrangement. Washington Place, the queen's house beside the Capitol, is a museum whose visits are arranged in advance through its own foundation. The King Kamehameha V Judiciary History Center in Aliʻiōlani Hale welcomes individual visitors but books group tours ahead. Lyon Arboretum in Mānoa keeps its own days and visiting rules, as do the Mission Houses beside Kawaiahaʻo Church. None needs booking far ahead, but each is worth checking the week before you go, especially if you are traveling as a group.
What does not need booking
Almost everything else. The beaches of Waikīkī and Ala Moana, and Kapiʻolani Park, are free and open to all. The Capitol District can be seen from its streets and lawns, and the statue, the Capitol's open atrium and Kawaiahaʻo Church's exterior need no ticket. Chinatown, Aloha Tower and the murals of Kakaʻako are walks. Punchbowl has no entry charge. The Tantalus road and the Mānoa Falls trail are free.
Museums such as Bishop Museum and the Honolulu Museum of Art charge for admission but are not reservation-only; check their sites for special exhibitions, tours or events that sell out.
A simple plan
Before you travel, decide whether Diamond Head, Pearl Harbor and Hanauma Bay are on your list, and note when each one's booking window opens. Book the palace tour for a day you will be downtown. Leave the rest of the week free for the beaches, the walks and the valleys, which need nothing but good weather, and see itineraries for ways to fit the booked days around the rest of the city. If the Arizona Memorial is full, ask about the standby tickets on the day.
Some links on this page are affiliate links. If you book through one we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not affect what is recommended here, and no sight page on this site carries one.
Two things worth sorting out before the day: