Rental Cars-Maps???

[teacherman]

This will be our first trip to Hawaii and we are renting cars at all of our stops. This trip is a total of 28 days (3 cities, 2 cruises) and we don't want to take guide books. Do the rental car companies furnish us with basic maps to get to the main places we wish to visit, which are basically tourist attractions on mostly main roads? We have never use a GPS, did not request them, and prefer to use maps. I have heard that there are no "signs" in Hawaii directing you to the attractions. Any info/advice is welcome. Thank you.

[CruisingGoddess]

I haven't been yet but I never like to rely on someone else for something I need.

 

If you already bought guide books, you can photocopy the maps inside them to take with you. (That's what I'm doing with the "Revealed" books.)

 

You can also request a free Visitor's Guide for each island and the guides include maps:

 

http://www.gohawaii.com/visitor-guide

 

They're about the size of a thin magazine so they're easy to take with you.

[sceptic]

To answer your question, yes, the car rental agencies provide maps. In addition, there are tons of brochures and "road guides" and "this week on Maui (or Oahu, Kauai, etc.)" brochures all over the islands, most of which have decent maps for the main highways and tourist stops (and lots of ads, which are both pretty and easily ignored). When you get off your plane just look for them, and grab one for each island you'll visit.

 

I'm kind of surprised you are eschewing guide books. They're great for alternatives in case your first choice is closed or rained out or uninteresting. The "revealed" series is superb, and don't weigh all that much.

 

Also, re signs to attractions - unless it's obscure, the attractions indeed have signs (waterfalls, scenic roads, aquariums, etc.) In fact, the attractions in Hawaii are very easy to find compared to those in many mainland cities because you have the mile markers on the main roads (used in the Revealed book maps) and there aren't all that many major roads on most islands - the attraction is either mauka - towards the mountains, or makai - towards the ocean, from the main road. Oahu's a little more challenging re directions, esp. around Honolulu, but the places still have signs.

[pizzalady1]

The maps are called Hawaii Drive Guides and are given out by the rental agencies on each island. In addition they will show you how to get wherever you want to go, just ask. You can see the Hawaii Drive Guides at http://gohawaii.about.com/od/hawaiivacationplanner/ss/free_hawaii_publications_2.htm

[salty dingo]

The Thrifty rental places provided a booklet which had some maps, but honestly we never used any of them so I can't comment on them.

 

We used our GPS that we brought from home. I had put all the points of interest into it ahead of time, so when we got there I just picked one and it told us how to get there.

 

The best thing we did was put in the rental return location into the GPS so it was easy to get back. That is probably the only time you will have any sort of schedule, since you need to be back by the time of the last shuttle bus to the port. The GPS calculated travel times which took into account the speed limits and it was pretty accurate.

 

The only glitch was we put in a wrong location for the Wal-Mart in Kona. We could actually see the building and sign as we tendered in but the GPS took us to a place about a half mile away. I think the map in the Wal-Mart website is wrong because we used that to program the GPS.

 

So, we found the Wal-Mart the old fashioned way, by stopping at a gas station and asking for directions. Man, how I hate to do that!