Will I find parking after an evening luau in Maui?

[cruisin'sz]

Going to Feast of Lele on day one of Pride of Aloha cruise - will I find parking when I return to the Port (Kahlui) at around 10 p.m. or am I better off returning my rental car straight to the airport and getting another one the next day?

[LakeErieLady]

Do a search on this- it's the $65,000 question- I'm going to OLL and have the same dilemma but I've decided to keep the car overnight as we want to get an early start to RTH the next day- we'll take our chances

 

But others have different opinions.....

[Parsp]

Just returned from POAM. Can't addess the 10pm parking availability as we parked earlier in the afternoon with no problem, but I can tell you DO NOT PARK NEXT TO THE FENCE, cars were being towed right and left the next morning. We parked by the seawall and we were lucky we were not blocked in by the double parkers. If I had it to do over again I would have parked further down the seawall (we were in about the 2nd spot). Double parkers filled the open space between the road and the parking spaces but left enough room for us to barely sneak the convertible out.

[AZ Karaoke Girl]

Just returned from POAM. Can't addess the 10pm parking availability as we parked earlier in the afternoon with no problem, but I can tell you DO NOT PARK NEXT TO THE FENCE, cars were being towed right and left the next morning. We parked by the seawall and we were lucky we were not blocked in by the double parkers. If I had it to do over again I would have parked further down the seawall (we were in about the 2nd spot). Double parkers filled the open space between the road and the parking spaces but left enough room for us to barely sneak the convertible out.

Common to have double parkers at the seawall. We had a ship excursion to a luau so we parked by 4pm and had no trouble. But since CC warnings, we parked further down so there was no room in front of car unless someone parked in the street in front of us so we weren't blocked in. Early morning snorkeling excursion to Molokini the next morning so we couldn't get blocked in. Something some people recommend is to drop off the car at the car rental & take the shuttle back & forth. They will do this even with a 2 day rental. But I know they don't run shuttles round-the-clock so you might have to take a cab at 10pm.

[whale-watcher]

double parkers?!? the more I read about overnight parking in Maui, the more I want to just drop of the car at the airport and take a second one-day rental for day 2!

[scapmando]

I will have the same concerns on my POH cruise stop on Maui. Doing the PWF lanai snorkel the second day. It leaves Lahaina at 8am so if you do the math that means leaving the port very early. Rented a 2 day car and will have to park near ship. I do not want to have to rely on rental car place closed or no shuttles that early and miss our snorkel. Plan to be back at ship early enough to have a spot, but concerned about getting blocked in as well. So far, some of the suggestions are going into my trip planner.

[AZ Karaoke Girl]

I've also heard of people parking at the mall and walking back to ship. Seems like quite a distance IMO. And I've also heard that mall security will have you towed but not sure how true it is. Do a search on here to find out what people say. I know Maui parking is a nightmare.

[cruisin'sz]

Sounds like I'll probably do better returning the car to the airport location - does anyone know how late the shuttle runs or how far the airport car rental places are from the ship? Thanks.

[14ersco]

Was on the POAl at Maui on 11/16 & 17. The daily ship newsletter said not to park at Maui mall. Came back from Hana road trip about 8 pm and there was plenty of parking spots along seawall. Left on day 2 about 7:30 am and no one was parked behind our car. If you want to get two separate rentals check into either Advantage or Enterprise. They are both at Maui mall (about 6 blocks from port) and the week before our cruise they both dropped their rates to under 18 per day for a compact. Had a Toyota Corolla from Advantage which was quite nimble for the curves of Maui (RTH and volcano).

[Sally Forth]

I'm really surprised some enterprising person hasn't come up with a paid overnight lot with shuttle.

 

Viv

[ehough]

If I were to do it again, I would return the car the first night and then re-rent the next day.

 

We were back from the RTH at about 6pm and there was NO parking in any of the places we were told we could park. In our desperation, we drove back to Thrifty, who said we could park at the mall (which was not a far walk from the ship). Lo and behold the next day we found our car, still at the mall, but with a big sticker on the window threatening to tow us. So, I guess you could take your chances at the mall, but who knows if they'll get tired of the threats and eventually start towing? There was nothing in our Freestyle Daily saying not to park at the mall, either.

[papillons4u]

How do I go about renting a car on Maui? Do I do it online? Do I call each company? How do I find what company is there? Please help.. this is our first time renting.

[moonchild]

If I remember right, Hertz told us 10:00 pm is the last shuttle.

I found the similar experience of double, sideways and I can’t believe they did that parking along the seawall. :confused:

Back in if you can when you park your car; Ocean salt sprayed the front window so bad we had to find a gas station to clean the front window. DH and I know better too, we are always at the beach, I can’t believe we did that.:cool:

[moonchild]

How do I go about renting a car on Maui? Do I do it online? Do I call each company? How do I find what company is there? Please help.. this is our first time renting.

 

I believe all the major car rental companies were represented. They are located at the airport; and have shuttles running from the airport rental office to the port. We used Hertz; they are probably a little more expensive than the others. I never had any problems with picking up at shuttle going either way.

Rented online.

I did a preliminary itinerary to decide what we were going to do at the port and rented if I did not have an excursion. I would definitely reserve a car before going.

[papillons4u]

There are six of us in our group so we need a large car. I will check online to see what I can find so we can reserve a car ahead of time. Thanks so much for your help.

[AZGrandma]

We have a two-day rental with Budget. We will return from Old Lahaina Luau, probably about 9:30. They asked that we get there by 10pm or let them know . . . that is as late as they want to run the shuttle! But they have promised me they will wait to shuttle us back to the pier at that time.

 

I am NOT willing to risk a towed car, and don't want to purposely do something illegal, like park in the mall lot. So, I asked Budget, and they said we could park overnight for $10 at the airport. Sure, they should offer that for free, but what's another $10 when we are spending $$$$$ on the cruise anyway, right? $10 for peace of mind is cheap. ;-)

 

I also plan to let them know what time we need the shuttle pick up for the next morning. They may not routinely send a shuttle on cruise day two so I am expecting that I will have to remind them.

 

Leslie

[Terre]

How do I go about renting a car on Maui? Do I do it online? Do I call each company? How do I find what company is there? Please help.. this is our first time renting.

 

We rented from Budget on our recent cruise there. DH did a search on the boards and found info on rentals for all of our ports. He reserved all cars on line with the cheapest rates possible. We took our confirmations with us (they will e-mail you a confirmation) to the rental company and we had no problem. We would leave as soon as we could get off the ship and hopped on the shuttles to each car rental and were always the first ones there.

 

Parking in Maui -- we parked against the sea wall, too because the cars in the lot at the ship were all new rentals and they weren't letting anyone park there. I'm thinking we got back around 4:00 or 5:00, but really can't remember. We didn't have a problem with double parking, but like others have mentioned, it was a huge problem.

 

POAm Review: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=680281