Submarine Ride & Beach Visit – Day 1

Due to the time zone difference (2 hours behind PST) , we woke up early and started the day with the standard breakfast. As we had done all of our grocery shopping the previous day, it was a pretty easy one to lay out the breakfast & lunch menu. Breakfast included oatnut bread, bagel & low fat cream cheese, Go Lean Kashi Cereal, fruits & Coffee. It was indeed a healthy breakfast 🙂

Since we booked the vacation via Expedia, they had the complimentary half hour tour trip talk and provided some tips & discount choices in the island. We decided to buy the Maui Value Pass from Expedia concierge desk as we had the Expedia voucher credit that we could use towards this pass. I would recommend buying this Pass from local activities stalls outside Front Street in Lahaina.The Maui Value Pass contains access to Submarine Ride, Maui Tropical Plantation Tour, Ocean Center Aquarium and the Bailey Museum

We took the Submarine Ride first – This was operated by the Atlantis Submarine group. We boarded mid-size boat first and had to travel like 20 minutes in the ocean before hopping onto the submarine. This was the first experience for the adults as well as the kids to hop onto the submarine in the middle of the ocean J. We were waiting for the submarine to rise up the sea level and a small steel plate bridge connected the submarine & the boat. The kids had a wonderful sight watching the submarine closer to the boat and the experience of climbing onto the submarine from the boat.

Every individual had a window seat inside the submarine and we travelled to different sea levels watching various fish types like Angel fish, eels, sea urchin, sea cucumbers, unicorn, sting ray, puffer fish etc. The submarine travelled down to a maximum depth of 130 foot almost touching the sea bed. It was overall a very good experience travelling inside the submarine for each one of us.

It was almost lunch time and we were so hungry that we headed back to our resort to have some good lunch prepared by Padma & I. As we stayed pretty close to the bay, it was an easy stroll to stop by & have lunch at our resort

Madhavan & Mani felt so sleepy after the lunch and took a quick nap. The kids & the Mom’s did not allow them to sleep any longer 🙂 – we woke them up and started our next journey to the beautiful sandy beaches.

Kaanapalli Shores is a very good spot for the beaches. They have many sandy beaches along the Kaanapalli and many resorts like Westin, Hyatt are located there. This is another excellent spot to book a resort if you visit Maui.

We spent almost the entire afternoon in this beach. The kids were almost out of control when they entered the beach J – There were lot of excitement from Arvind & Dhishita and they had tons of fun playing in the beach, sand art work & collecting shells.

We stayed in this beach to watch the sunset and too many photos captured in this spot. Mani & Madhavan were the photographers in this location capturing the beauty of the beach & of course us 🙂

Whalers Village one of the malls in Maui was pretty close to this beach. We had few refreshments in this mall and some window shopping

Tips & Recommendations

1.Hotel/Resort Booking – If you want to stay very close to the beach, you can book in Kaanapalli area. We stayed in Lahaina and very easy access to shopping & other access points to the Snorkel & Submarine adventures. There is also a small beach that is 10 mins walk from Outrigger resort.

2.Maui Value Pass – Get the pass only if you plan to see all the 4 places. Except the Submarine ride, rests of the attractions are very small ones and may not interest everyone.

3.Visiting Beach – Needs good planning for this one. Take plenty of back-up dresses with you especially if you have kids.