Big Island Hawaii Driving Tour App Reviews

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Indispensable resource for anyone traveling in Hawaii. Our family has used Shaka Guide for both Maui and Big Island and it really is the best. It’s like having a personal tour guide in your pocket but you can do everything at your own pace. The app is easy to use and the guide is fun and informational. Hard pressed to find a better value (travel books probably cost just as much and aren’t interactive with your live location). We plan on using Shaka Guide for whenever we decide to travel back to the other islands. They also do regular updates so the tours stay relevant. Great job and mahalo for getting us around the island!

Loved this App!!. This app was exactly what we needed on our trip to the Big Island! We love the history and stories it provides like a tour group but in our own car at our own pace! It had so many wonderful suggested routes and stops and the information as you were guided through was second to none. While speaking to another traveler about the app he told us it had taken him years to hear some of the stories we had heard while using the app. If you like the history, culture and entertaining stories behind all the beauty you are seeing and you like to take your time, go at your own pace. This is the app for you! It also provides information about the upcoming stops. Like what is involved (parking, a hike, how far the hike is, if it’s worth it) so you can decide if you want to do it or if you’d like to keep moving. Uncle Shaka (voice) is an awesome addition to the road trip!

A Must Have for Independent Tourists. I used the entire set of the Shaka Guide for the Big Island and it made my and my husband’s driving all around so much more enjoyable, safe and educational with great information and music. It gave us freedom to go at our own pace and take as much or little time at various places depending on our interests and time. We had a whole week, so the whole set was useful and then we went back to some of the places to spend more time on another day. If you have a very limited time, then get a full day for North Island Loop or South Island Loop. Each loop does take almost 12 hours. If one is prone to motion sickness, then prepare for it before taking off. Some roads are quite narrow and curvy. Thanks for helping us create wonderful memories of the Big Island of Hawaii!

The BEST way to tour!. On a whim we tried Shaka’s Road to Hana tour on Maui. We were hooked! It really is like having a local tour guide in your car, one that is both entertaining and informative. The app worked well for us, used our phone GPS instead of data, and provided helpful options to preview and review the tour. We ended up buying their tours for everywhere we went—Maui’s Road to Hana and Haleakalā, Kauai’s Waimea Canyon and North Shore, and the Big Island’s Volcanoes National Park. Unfortunately their Big Island Circle tour is still under development, so we tried the competitor driving tour app. It was informative, but dry and not as user-friendly. We were so glad to hear Shaka’s friendly voice and corny jokes when we did the Volcanoes loop! Enthusiastically recommend!

Like a private tour guide. We have been to the Big Island four times now. By using this app, we found there is so much more to the big Island than just Kona and Waikoloa!! We were able to enjoy a “private tour” of the big Island, where we enjoyed learning about the rich Hawaiian history and culture! Saw SO many things that we would’ve never found on our own! Never felt pressured or pushed to seeing a site , and never pressured into visiting a restaurant or anything like that! (speaking of restaurants, definitely stop at Tex drive-in for the donuts as Shaka suggests. Do it now!) My teenage daughter and I fell in love with Hilo by using this app! So many things we didn’t know about Hilo town! Loved the narration and the music ! Would do this again and again! (Do give yourself 8 to 12 hours to explore. So much to see!)

Great app!!. This app is so helpful with its stories and local legends. It takes you step by step they the area and because the tour is gps enabled, you’re able to take your time with the local sights and then pick back up right where you left off once you’re back in the car. When listening to the narrator tell the stories along your tour, you’ll feel like a local is talking to you. The only suggestion I have for improvement is the waypoints should turn colors once you’ve already stopped and completed them to help you keep track of where you have been. Overall, the best money we spent on vacation; there is no way we would know most of the history and legends that are dictated in each tour. If you’re traveling to Hawaii, make sure you download the app for your designated island(s) and get the individual tours. You won’t be disappointed!!

Great way to see the Big Island of Hawaii. We did the National Volcano tour yesterday and it was the best narrated tour I’ve ever been on. We are three seniors and didn’t want to do a bus tour because of a crowd. This was a perfect way to spend time at stops we were interested in and either skipping some of the stops or spending a short time there. We talked to people on the way who were just using the supplied map at entrance and we told them things that were not on their maps. This was our third Shaka tour on this island. We did three Shaka tours on the island of Kauai last week and after we learned how the first one worked we were very happy with all three tours also. Thank you for making these tours available. If anyone is planning on driving on these islands look into these tours. You don’t have to purchase them to find out about them. Well worth the money.

Absolutely loved Shaka Guide!. My husband and I purchased the 5 tour bundle for the Big Island and LOVED it. I had already planned on us driving around the Island, and the Shaka Guide made it so much easier! There’s so much knowledge and information within the Guide, and the spots the Guide takes you to are amazing. We didn’t have any issues with sound or navigating using the app, so our road trip was seamless! We only ended up using 1 full tour and a little bit of another, but I’m not upset because the tours don’t expire! We definitely recommend Shaka Guide and I’m so glad our friends told us about it in the first place.

Worth the price for the amazing trip and history lesson!. Generally, When vacationing in Hawaii, Thom and I prefer to just let the wind takes us wherever on a road trip to explore the island we are visiting. However, this time we decided to get a little help as there were just too many possibilities to see in a week. We downloaded the Shaka Guide app and couldn’t be more pleased! Through a narration that was entertaining and informing, we were able to take the backroads with ease and find beautiful locations all across the island! We learned a lot about the history of the island and the Hawaiian people which was truly the best part! Using the GPS on our phone, this guide gave us turn by turn directions and options for side trips along the way! It almost felt like the “Choose Your Own Adventure” chapter books I loved as a kid! Except with this guide I didn’t have any regrets! If you are planning a visit to any of the Hawaiian Islands, I highly recommend this app to guide you!

We loved the Big Island with Shaka Guide!. This was a last minute purchase the night before we left. I’d never purchased a $30 app before (and I never review them!), but I’m SO glad I bought this. I can’t imagine driving all around the Big Island without it; we would have missed so much! All the must-see spots were included between all the tours in the bundle, and the history was so very interesting. (We loved the music, too!) The app itself worked perfectly once I figured out how to pick the correct direction, and we really appreciated that we could play and navigate while on airplane mode! We loved hanging with Uncle Shaka and will get the other islands’ tours when we return to visit them again. Mahalo! Thank you!

Good, but needs updating. We love Shaka Guide! Definitely download the app for the island you’re visiting. You don’t have to do the whole tour, you can just hit play as you’re driving around where you want to go anyway - learn some fun facts and discover some things you might not have otherwise. This app, however, needs to be updated to reflect the latest conditions of the volcano. It discusses eruptions that have since stopped and does not reflect the eruption of 2021. Recommend updating those portions yearly. I also wish the apps displayed on Carplay. Last, I wish they either had more Hawaiian music to play in the dead spots between talking or better integration with the user’s chosen music application (Shaka guide will interrupt my music, but my music app will not resume playing automatically when it’s done).

Highly recommended if you drive the volcano park by car. If you drive through Big Island Volcano National Park by car, I highly recommend this App. Great guide, GPS guided (it knows where you are and therefore guides at the right time). Tells you also some secret places not on the park map and recommends what to leave out (they are right!). Its also funny. When the tour is finished and you drive back uphill from the ocean, they narrate different Hawaiian stories. Simply nice! I am sad the other Big Island tour guides are not available yet (soon to come). I would buy them all! But not sure when and if I return to Big Island. PS: Have an USB 12V charger for the cellphone and a cellphone holder for the car. Just makes your life easier.

Perfect tour guide for people who don’t like tour guides. My girlfriend and I are both servers. We worked for 14 months to pay off a 8 day Hawaiian cruise. On this cruise we went on multiple excursions off the boat. Large groups and bad tour guides on some of those excursions really made us question why we spent so much money. But on our trip to Volcano’s National Park we rented a car and downloaded this app. Just the two of us in our car using this app to go where we wanted to, when we wanted to, all while receiving great information from to audio tour on the app. It follows your gps locations and gives great recommendations on where to stop. It even tells you about the spots in the park that aren’t worth your time. This app allows you to make your tour your way and it is pretty funny at some points. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants a great time without the hassle of large groups and subpar tour guides

This app made our trip so special. I can’t say enough great things about this app! We had no solid plan for our trip and purchased all five tours “just in case”. After our first day, we decided to try one out and we absolutely loved it! After that, we decided to do the rest of them. The amount of research that went into these tours is astounding. We learned a ton about Hawaiian history and got to see so many places we would have missed out on if we had been on our own. Especially with COVID, it was really awesome to be able to essentially have our own private tour guide that took us all over on our terms. Next time we come out to another island, we’re going to go with Shaka Guide! Thanks so much for the amazing experience!!

Thank You Shaka!. We purchased the Shaka tour for the Big Island and we were not disappointed. The tour is entertaining and filled with history and “talk story”. We would never have visited or known about several of the places we visited. We liked the fact that you could join the tour anywhere you were. This was helpful as we traveled multiple days through the island and didn’t stay in one place. We liked the restaurant/coffee/bakery/shave ice recommendations because they were local and Hawaiian or family owned. Not the chains or mainland places which you can find online anywhere. The app was easy to use and saved a lot of time from research. We just play and go! Can’t wait to use Shaka on the other islands.

Made a Fine Day Fantastic. The app is simple and easy to use. Shaka clearly spent time & $ making the UI refined, colorful and intuitive. But they really shine with the content. We used the Hawaii Volcanos tour from Hilo through Jaggar and all the way down to the Petroglyphs. The Guide was informative in a folksy way, knew his Hawaiian pronunciations, and let us know the best places to stop as well as skip. Each stop was anticipated and described so we were more informed and prepared than the tourists around us. Even better, the long ride back up the Chain of Craters road was filled with tales and stories - helped keep our child from getting bored. Such a great value - we highly recommend this app!

So easy and informative!. We stayed in Kailua-Kona, but did parts of all of the tours for the big island. The bundle was perfect! We just turned it on and it played through the car’s speakers as we drove along. We saw and learned more than we ever would have been able to through our own explorations. The jungle drive was AMAZING! The narrator had a great way of incorporating just enough humor and friendly reminders to keep us intrigued. Even at night when we couldn’t see things in the distance, we learned about the history significance of each area. I LOVED this app, and look forward to using it when we visit other islands.

My favorite travel app. If you don’t like organizing a To Do list on your trip then this app is for you. I was blessed to find it back in 2020 when I visited Kaua’i, then used it for O’ahu during 2020 during the pandemic out of boredom (I was born and raised in O’ahu and still reside there 😀) and now, 2022, I’m using it on the Big Island and it is still amazing! Monday we did the South tour and it took us 14 hours! We left Waikoloa at 7am and got back here at 9pm 😳 AND… we only stopped at 10 of the 25+ items listed! Over 200 miles! There’s so much driving so be sure to know what you really want to do(watch travel vlogs about vacationing on the Big Island if that’ll help you narrow down some choices) I got all the tours for $30-what an amazing deal! It’ll give you the option when you go to purchase 1 tour(cause I was freaking out before that lol)

Excellent Guide!. We are so glad we found the Shaka Guide! The driving tours were the highlight of our two weeks on the Big Island. The Hawaiian music in between narration was beautiful, the narrator was fun and told great stories about the history of the island and its people, and as a bonus we learned how to pronounce names and places. We enjoyed all five driving tours and liked the ability to choose which hikes to take based on the information provided. It was such an adventure finding all sorts of out of the out-of-way places we would’ve never seen on our own was such fun. Well done! Mahalo nui loa!

Best investment of our whole trip!!. We have small children and knew a group tour wasn't going to be in the cards for our family of 5. Our littlest can't sit still and has to pee every 20 minutes, so the freedom of these self guided tours was honestly the best thing that we purchased on our week long tour! We were able to buy all 4 tours for the big island and completed them all! There are places hidden that we would have never been able to see if not for Shaka Guide! Thank you so much for making an app that helps out the regular family who wants to learn and tour around!!! I hope we travel to the other islands so we can use you again!

Great Volcano Tour. We enjoyed every minute of the tour. This was a stress free day. I did not have to worry about how to get there and what I was going to do when I got there. The Shaka Guide app mapped out my trip and tour and it was so easy to use and very informative. I definitely would not have learned as much as I did if I did not have this app. I have one minor improvement. There is a movie at the Visitor Center that stops showing at 4 pm but it wasn’t mentioned until the end of the tour, so I missed it. I suggest you mention this at the beginning of the tour to give the person the option to go then or at the end of the tour.

Highly recommend!. I was skeptical but after reading the reviews we decided to use this for our family trip. We absolutely loved it! Even our 7 and 9 year old girls were really into it, and it really helped pass the time on our trip from Waikoloa to Volcanoes National Park. You will definitely need a car charger to keep your phone alive, because this provides GPS navigation as well as the commentary. I would recommend buying the bundle because if you do the south coastal journey it pauses at Volcanoes and prompts you to switch to that tour, so you really need both. You can use each tour in bits and pieces once purchased, so one day we went to Kona for a couple hours and just listened to that portion of the south coastal journey. My family and I highly recommend this guide!

Absolutely worth it. I’ve traveled the Big Island twice before. This time I brought my parents and our activities were limited to driving tours due to mobility. Purchased the app after reading reviews online. By far the best $30 spent for the vacation. App highlighted spots I’ve never read about, great navigation, solid recommendations, informative history and told us what wasn’t worth the time. A few reviews said app stops after a couple sentences. That only happens if you choose to drive past a stop as the audio is linked to your GPS location. I will strongly recommend this to friends traveling to any of the Hawaiian Islands.

Pay it forward. Don’t have time to do reviews but making an exception. This app is really well done. The sync with the drive is spot on - my biggest surprise. The spots they identify are things I’d never heard of and I’ve visited here many times. The voice over is spot on. Great positive inflection and well written script. Seriously worth every penny. Package price is a no-brainer. Get it. Suggestions to the developers: 1) add more great Hawaiian music. I enjoyed every song and was sad during the breaks when it stopped. 2) I’d pay more to have the map display using CarPlay. Keep my phone screen off and use the display in the car to follow along with the drive. 3) when I get out of the car and walk the trails, give me an option to GPS navigate the walk to the point of interest. That’d be awesome. Hopes this helps others as it did me. Thanks Kyle and Susan for the suggestion to get Shaka guides. When I visit the other islands I’ll be doing the same.

Another huge success for our vacation. Big Island was our last Hawai’i Island to explore. We had done the rest of them with ShakaGuide. Before Big Island we did zero planning as we knew we had a reliable app to guide us. This time we had a 10 year old with us and he absolutely loved the tour, so did we. Everything in the tour is made so well and thoughtful, including rest stops and meal breaks. It is an absolutely perfect app for family vacation, it takes care of need to talk - everybody is just busy listening to stories, wonderful music and enjoying all of the stops. I am ready to alter my vacation plans depending on what country ShakaGuide covers next.

Pleasantly surprised !. Fun stories, historical facts and covers all the places one would like to visit. Suggestion also includes food recommendations, hidden gems along the way. Where to stop and where not to waste time for viewpoints. My teenagers were highly involved hearing Shaka guide tell stories and fun facts of Big Island. They even learned Hawaiian accent ha ha ha. The best part was it’s GPS enabled and even when our signals were choppy at the island, Shaka guided us through all the points of interest. Would highly recommend to anyone visiting Hawaii! Our Hawaii trip would not have been so enjoy full without Shaka guide. Thank you!!!

Highly recommended-Great Driving Guide!!!!. Loved this app. Once you get the hang of using the app it is a great hands-on tour guide. We got to see a lot more of the island and learned a lot about the history just by using this app. Enjoyable and even has music! You can start and stop the tours any time which is a great help! You can go at your own pace and when you desire. The map and the information helped us greatly and was very informative. I would recommend this for anyone! It would’ve cost us over $800 for five people to do these tours if we book them with an agency. Would love to see an app for each state in the United States!

ONE OF THE BEST APPS OUT THERE. On the big island of Hawaii now using this app. It has been easy to set up (in a rental, no less), extremely user friendly, really educational, and your guide, Mr. Shaka is just downright fun to listen to. Gps is on point and takes you off the beaten path to really cool hidden spots as well as popular spots. Just pick one of their tours and head out for the day. That’s what we did, and hubby and I both agree, this is one of the best apps out there. Oh and, I splurged and bought the $9.99 option which gives you about 5 different tours on the big island alone. You have the option to purchase each adventure by itself but seeing we were going to be here for 1 week, it made sense to get the bigger one. Great deal. Worth every penny. Spend the money. You will love it! Make more of these apps please!!

Wonderful tour guide. Stumbled on this little gem doing internet searches and found the app was well made and with great pricing. The narration was nicely done and our family learned a good deal on history of Hawaii and other interesting tidbits that I’m sure will come in handy as conversational topics. Linking the waypoints to gps location makes navigation easy and straightforward. The app ran smoothly with 0 hiccups and the intro to usage was simple to follow. The developers put in a lot of time and effort and it shows. I ended up getting all 5 tours because the price point was just right. My only recommendation on the next release of this 5 star app is to give the user some selection over the waypoints to fit into time allotted for the tour and that could be either through a menu to click and choose or pre-picks based on popularity. And personally I wouldn’t mind paying $10 for this premium feature. And if it so happens that the developer of this fine app finds this suggestion useful and decides to implement, I wouldn’t mind being a beta tester and free lifetime user ;-) Mahalo from J Chia in CA

No other way to tour. This app was spectacular! It made the week on The Big Island so much more enjoyable than if we had used a tour book. We stopped at places we would have never known about had it not been for the app. The developers of the app took a lot of time thinking about what users of the app would need (i.e. downloaded content vs using data) and thoughtfully gave options to reverse the direction of the tour depending on user preference. Even better how current the content was, as if the developers had just been on the road. The app was well worth the cost (I purchased all 5 Big Island tours) and if future tours are available for other of my travel destinations, I will definitely purchase! App well done!

Love this app. My husband and I visited Big Island . I just stumbled upon this app on Trip advisor when I was checking out 'things to do' section. This is an app that lets you do a self guided tour and that too on our your own pace. All you need to do is download the tour before you trip and then just play it once you start driving. It will detect your location and start narration for the nearby areas. We used a tour on our way to volcano national park and it kept us busy for full 4-5 hours . The Shaka guide is so enthusiastic in narration and it kept us engaged through out our drive. Also loved the story telling about Hawaiiian culture. Definitely recommend!!!

Amazing!. We love the Shaka apps! This was our second island to use the app on and it didn’t disappoint! I did a lot of research for our Big Island trip and had a long list of things I wanted to see. The highlight of my trip ended until being a trail mentioned in the Volcanoes National Park tour that wasn’t on my list! Without this app, I’d have missed the best part of my vacation! Only complaint is that the North and South tours are too long. We skipped several stops and were running out of daylight despite being on the go well before 9 am. We live on Oahu so haven’t used the app here yet, but I plan to download when my parents visit and I have no doubt we’ll learn all kinds of things! Keep up the great work!

GET THIS APP!!!!. I can’t say enough about this app! We downloaded the package for our trip to the Big Island. We were able to complete 4 of the 5 tours. They were so informative. We learned so much history along our drives, and also there were a lot of suggested stops we would have never come across ourselves. It was especially helpful when letting you know what beaches were good for snorkeling and which ones you should just admire and not swim, as well as describing hikes so we knew what to be prepared for endurance and time wise. I HIGHLY recommend. It was worth EVERY penny of the $25 for the tour package. We are looking forward to doing the tours again, and also doing the tours on the other islands. I wish I had a guide like this for every trip! My only suggestion is that there would be a “farewell” tour on your way back to the airport lol. We enjoyed it so much we played the tour on our way to the airport again just to hear all the history and music. We all thought it would be fun if there was a last little tour for the way home. Hopefully maybe others will feel the same and they’ll add one!!! ~Aloha

Thank you Shaka Guide!. This app was such a lifesaver! My husband and I traveled with our nine and seven year olds. We contemplated booking one of those six to twelve hour tours around the island, but I just couldn’t imagine such long tours going well with our kids. We needed more flexibility with our schedule but didn’t want to miss out on all the neat historical facts and sights only a proper tour guide can point out. Shaka Guide was our answer! Everyone in our family thoroughly enjoyed the app, the fun stories, facts and cool music. This app is so well made! We purchased the bundle package and used three out of the five tours. Each one was awesome! Thank you Shaka Guide! My only regret was not being able to spend more time on this amazing island with its amazing people!

Amazing Service, amazing value. My Husband and I just spent most of a month on 4 of the Hawaiian Islands. Since my Husband permanently uses a wheelchair, most tours and beaches are not available to us so we rely on exploring on our own a lot. So often we drive by something and wonder what it is or maybe what it’s greater significance might be. With Shaka, it’s like you have a high quality travel guide right in the car with you. Literally, there are times we would see something and say Wow and 2 seconds later, Shaka would say wow and then explain what you are seeing. We loved the Hawaiian music between points of interest, we loved that this app is incredibly seamless— truly you set it and go and never have a glitch the entire day. It’s an amazing value for the service. Now that we’re home, we find ourselves missing Shaka and his corny jokes and laugh.

Fun and informative. Our family used this app so much in The Big Island. It was such a fun way to see the island, get lots of information and listen to happy music on our way to a destination and make some unexpected stops along the way. We had some great laughs with this app. One recommendation I’d make is to have a brief intro at the start of each tour that gives some helpful info such as appropriate clothing and shoes to pack if you’re stopping at certain points on the tour and things you may need to do before you get to certain points (like eating in certain points on the route because there is a long way after it with no restaurants).

Better than a bus tour. We loved this app and all the info that it provided on what to see inside Volcanoes National Park and the stories that went along with them. We rented a car and drove through the park ourselves. The tour is guided by your GPS location so it's always relative to what you are seeing. We even got to walk up to Devil's Throat crater that wasn't even on the map because the guide recommended it. The rich stories brought this Park to life in a way I never expected. You can even download the tour ahead of time so that it doesn't use any cellular data on the drive. If you're planning on driving through Volcanoes National Park, I highly recommend you take this app with you.

Love this app!!!. Stayed in Kona but not only did we have a great time touring Kona at our leisure pausing at places we wanted to stop at along the way, we got to tour all over big island even Hilo . It was amazing road tripping , sightseeing ,hiking , eating & shopping all over Big Island. Very informative with interesting facts / history along the way. Love the music I wouldn’t mind if it played all the way through the quiet times between points . The voice made it all the more interesting and funny at times to my husband and I . To each their own but definitely worth the money we spent. You shouldn’t drive fast around the island for safety reasons anyway & also if you do you can easily miss a turn . Great app!

Wish I found it sooner. My boyfriend and I have been on vacation in Hawaii for the past week. We started in Oahu and ended on the Big Island. I wish we had found this app sooner on Oahu because it has given us such a fun and informative view of the Big Island and I’m sure the Oahu one is just as great! The narrator/tour guide is funny (in an extremely cheesy way, especially with the laugh), as well as knowledgeable with sharing the different legends and stories of the land and that go with the land scapes you’re seeing. On top of that, he also tells you when to turn, so you don’t have to be swapping between apps and trying to figure out where you’re going. We have done the tours of the Volcano National park, as well as the North Island Jungle loop and Shaka took us so many different places that we wouldn’t have even batted an eye at looking at, but we are so glad that we did! Another great thing about it is that it puts together an itinerary for what to see and do and what you shouldn’t miss without having to do the research yourself (if you’re lazy like us)! The only thing I can give criticism for is that the tour isn’t very “time-oriented”, meaning that some stops he mentions how it’s best viewed at night or that this beach is best at sunset, etc. it would be nice if the “start location” aligned more with the order you should visit them, according the time. Great app, overall, and we can’t wait to use it for the rest of our trip!

Great tour for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park!. When my fiancé and I were planning our trip to the Big Island, we knew we had to visit Volcanoes National Park but we didn’t want to pay big bucks for a guided tour. I stumbled upon this app and I am so glad I did. This app was amazing for our visit to see the Volcanoes. This app takes you to every single spot available at the park and you can go at your own speed. You have the ability to pause and/or go back to any spot at any time. It tells you which spots are a must see or which ones you can skip and go back to later. It tells you about all the hikes available and it gives you the history behind the park. We spent about 6 hours in the park and loved using the tour. This app is so easy to use and we recommend it to everyone!

Great use of GPS!. This is our second time using these guides (Oahu and now the Big Island), and we've always found them lots of fun. They're a great way to get the kind of information and easy to miss sights that you might get with a bus/van tour, but still be able to do your own thing. They however need a CarPlay/Android Auto app so that is easier to control and use the app without needing to look at your phone, especially with wireless CarPlay becoming more common. A dedicated app would also be able to show the the map with directions, include pictures of plants, animals, and places that the guide is talking about, and add other features to the tours. Well worth the price!

Oahu and Big Island. My wife and I used the Oahu and Big Island Shaka tours on our honeymoon. The apps were amazing. They took us to the normal spots but also took us to little know areas which greatly enhanced our trip. The apps provided music, fun stories, and got us to the areas efficiently. Only issue was when doing the opposite way tours there were some spots that told us the wrong turn directions but it was very obvious which way was the correct turn way (ie volcano National was one spot). There were times we doubted we were heading in the right direction but we should have trusted the app because we got to some great spots. One area for future expansion it would have been nice to have a “find a place to eat” option. It did call out some places to eat but they were off our eating schedule based on when we started the tour. I would - and have recommended - to others this app. A great addition to our trip.

Perfect way to explore the Big Island!. My girlfriend and I went to the Big Island for a week. We did every audio tour in the Shaka app and they were so worth it! A perfect way to see the Big Island by car. Honestly, we were mostly there for the beaches and volcanoes, but we ended up picking up a bunch of cultural knowledge anyway just listening between stops. Lots of great stories as well as practical info. We didn’t follow the tours exactly, but they were very easy to modify and fit into any itinerary. Highly recommend if you’re planning to do any driving, especially from one side of the island to the other.

Better than an actual tour guide!. My teenage son and I came to the Big Island and didn't want to be herded around like cattle on a tour nor did I want to spend $150+ per person to see the Volcanoes. We downloaded the App, rented a car and set out on our adventure. At first I didn't think my teenager would be listening to the stories or even be interested but he not only listened, he repeated them several times throughout the trip! One of the best things about the trip were the hidden secrets and the best places to stop or keep going. There was one stop called the Devils Throat with no signs and was the "best kept secret". We pulled over on the side of the road and someone following us pulled over too. When we got out and walked down a small dirt path, whoever was in the car behind us decided to keep going since there were no signs as to what we were visiting. Too bad for them! It was so exhilarating to see this crater ... even a little eerie and definitely the best view of all the views. Needless to say ... this was ABSOLUTELY the best tour App I've ever downloaded! Hopefully you will leave the Islands and travel around other places and create the same app!

Glitchy and restrictive. I’ve used other GPS tour apps before and loved getting information on a place as we drove. They had always worked well, though I thought I’d give a different app (Shaka) a try for our trip to big island. After use, I wish I had stuck with ones I’ve used before. Despite needing to download the guides prior to use, the app never automatically worked if there was no cell signal, which if you’ve been to Hawaii you’ll know a lot of places on the routes fall into that category. If I tried to queue it myself when I saw we missed it, it still often wouldn’t play and seemed to cause extra problems for the next ones. I often had to completely quit the app and restart the tour. We missed several things and stories because of this. This happened even when we were specifically following a route as defined by the tour. I dislike the distinct numbering and routes often used in the tours, such that you can’t start anywhere or do it backwards. Often, the direction of the tour or the routes conflicted with where we were or had planned for a day. Other GPS tours I’ve used haven’t been this restrictive. We ended up using this much less than anticipated, and when we did it provided more headaches than information.

Informative, Easy to Follow, and Entertaining. The tours we followed (Volcano, North Jungle, Kona) were easy to follow and kept us busy the entire trip allowing us to see and experience things we would never have otherwise. There are many interesting tidbits of information included about the history, cultural significance, and descriptions about many places. We were able to go at our own speed, stop when we wanted to and keep going when we didn’t, and come back a day or two later when we did not finish. There is plenty in each tour to keep you busy and it guides you through everything there is to experience.

Yah man!. This app is a game changer. Once in a while a technology comes along that blows everything else out of the water, and this is it for guided tours. The ability of the app to keep up with us and chime in when and where we choose to go was amazing. Couple that with friendly and informative banter, thematic Hawaiian music, and easy tech setup, it was a total success for us. If you have a car and plan to explore, you really should get this. We bought the full package for the big island, which gave us the flexibility we needed. Only used about 20% of the content and it was still worth it. Love love love Shaka Tours!

Amazing Guided Tours. I took a family vacation to the Big Island. We spent a few days driving around the island and seeing all of the amazing sites. This app made planning my routes a lot easier. I paid for the guided tour and it was absolutely amazing. There were a lot of good suggestions on different things to see that we normally wouldn’t have known about and great places to eat. The added details about the different locations where we were driving, along with native Hawaiian stories behind those locations, kept us all interested, even my teenage kids. There was a great explanation of altitude sickness that we listened to while driving up Mauna Kea. It ended up being very helpful while we were hiking near the visitor center. My daughter started having symptoms of altitude sickness and we wouldn’t have known what was wrong without the explanation we just heard. Thankfully we knew what was going on, so went back to the car and headed down the mountain. She felt much better once we got back to the main road. Overall it’s a great app, especially the guided tour, and I highly recommend anyone to use it.

Great Tour Guide. We did 4 of the 5 tours for the Big Island, and they were great! It was so nice to hit all of the must-see areas as well as the lesser known ones simply by following spot-on directional cues. The only trouble we had was when we did Volcanoes and we went the opposite direction of the tour to avoid crowded parking lots. Once we got back on track with the Shaka tour, though, it was great. The only improvement I would like is more music between locations. Sometimes we would wonder if the app was still connected because of the silence. We have recommended it to others we have met on our vacation.

Cynical traveller won over. I’m one of those folks who hate guided tours- I like to go my own way and do my own thing. But that means I miss a lot if cool info and hidden gems. I was skeptical about letting Shaka into the car, but they (he) turned out to be the perfect passenger as we went around the Big Island. You can turn it up or turn it down and he really knows all the best places (well I wouldn’t know if he was keeping a few local secrets). There’s lots of interesting backstory and history and a very engaging Hawaiian host. If you’re choosing between him and the Google lady for directions, go with Shaka!

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Great tour guide. This app was great driving around the Volcano National Park in Hilo. Just like having a personal tour.

Oahu Circle Tour. Very informative app for travelling the island with local history and directions. There were places that we would have missed without the app. Coming from Australia and driving on the right hand side of the road for the first time it was great to have thorough and timely directions eg turn right after the big tree etc. This made it a lot easier to keep on the correct side of the road :) With the GPS functionality it was like having a Guide in the car with you. Also good to know that it is a Hawaiian produced app.

Recommended. This is such a great audio driving guide. I really recommend it for Anton visiting Hawaii. I used the Volcano National Park tour on Hawaii Island plus to other tours on other islands and they were all fantastic! Excellent directions, beautiful background/history/cultural stories and fun for the whole family.

Great little app. We really enjoyed the app and did all the drives it was easy to follow we got to see places we might have missed and the historical information was great - loved the app and we will use it again on our next trip

Great. Easy to follow directions, very informative.

Easy to use!. This app is a must, it’s excellent the information it provides and the directions are spot on. The music between information is prefect to set the mood.

This is a great app. We decided to do the volcano tour on Big Island and were looking for some on-line information when we came across this app. It made our day! It was easy to use, easy to listen to, and very informative. Once we got it going the narration would just start up whenever an interesting landmark was coming up. Direction were clear and the stories were fun. Very clear instructions on what to do before starting out, how to Bluetooth it to the car and how it operates using GPS without using up data. Although it suggested downloading before getting on the road we started out before reading the instructions and found ourselves in low signal heading south of Kona and the download of the app was slow, but as soon as we got into good signal at Captain Cook it finished downloading and we didn't miss a thing. This is my first trip to Big Island and this tour and Shaka Guide were a highlight. Highly recommended.

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Wish CarPlay was integrated.. Good stories and decent cultural content. Well timed GPS timing. Tons of content and I would recommend this app to friends. However, the humor seemed tacky after a while. We also wished there was Apple CarPlay integration for an auto tour app like this.

An absolute must!. Let me start by saying I never review anything like this but was so pleased I just had to! Just got back from a fantastic day of touring the island. Tons of spots to see and lots of hidden gems you wouldn’t normally find on your own. Very informative and loved the flexibility of being able to choose what places we wanted to stop. Great idea and for a great price. Highly recommended! A+++

Great Narration. Wow, well done Shaka Tours. We are only on tour #2 so far and already have to leave a review. The narration is entertaining, the history very informative and it all makes the long parts of the drives fun. The great directions and local knowledge are really appreciated. Very helpful to know when a stop is really worth it if you have time and when just passing on by is ok. The owner at one small stop along the south tour was amazed she was on your tour and for us it was worth the stop!!! Coffee, shortbread and macadamias were just what we needed. Love the music as well. I highly recommend Shaka Tours if driving the big island!

Does what it says on the box!. Very informative and useful guide. We used 3 routes on the big Island and found hidden gems and places to stop which we would have driven past without the guide. We also learnt a lot about the ancient history of Hawaii as we drove. Highly recommended if you want to get the most out of your drive around the island.

Highly recommend. Amazing tour while on the big island. We always buy the multi pack because you can always either start a tour at the beginning or wherever you are on the map. Be patient as the Shaka guide will start talking only upon reaching the number within the tour. We’ve also bought the oahu and Maui guides and each have been amazing. Highly recommend- make sure to download before starting your trip!!!!

An unexpected highlight of our trip. My partner and I downloaded the full package for the Big Island after we used (and loved) the Maui guide for the Road to Hana. It’s a great, well-paced mix of practical, cultural and historical information that we would never have known without it, with a beautiful music playlist to boot! It felt like many of the benefits of having a personal guide (though honestly, we learned more from this app than from any of the tour guides we had), but with our own pacing. It added so much more depth to our understanding of Hawaii, and we both felt that cruising around with Shaka was a big part of what made our time there so incredible.

Amazing support for exploring Big Island. We just finished a trip around big island and we’re so thankful to have the Shaka Guide along with us. From great stories to explanations about what we were driving past to interesting cultural information this app has it all. It worked well and was reliable, car play would be a nice addition to see when stops were coming up on the screen. Overall great app that helped us to find more cool opportunities and experiences than we expected. Made our trip that much better! Highly recommended!!

Some Glitches. Overall Goid. We had a great experience with the Kauai tour so purchased this for BI as well. It is not as good. There are long gaps of silence between spots so you have to keep checking it’s still working. It also doesn’t give accurate turns or instructions to turn in time to make them.. so you’re constantly reviewing where you are against the app map. We were disappointed with the Volcanoes tour… directions not always clear. At the same time, we overcame these challenges and we saw so many wonderful places and learned so many interesting things thanks to this app.

Best $ spent. I’m so glad I stumbled upon this app during my trip to Kona. My kids and I really enjoyed listening to the info/stories as we toured the island. We enjoyed the South and Volcano Park tour. My only regret was that I found this too late in our trip to get to tour all 5 routes. Best money spent on our holiday. Great value, fun and interesting.

Took our road trip from enjoyable to awesome. So lucky I stumbled upon this app. Love the GPS angle - allows you to join a tour at any step of the way. We did smile a little at the narrator’s “uh?” and “bro’” references and his artificial laugh, but what a great way to learn the history of the island and the volcanoes. There were several times we made discoveries (like the lava tubes) that our other guidebooks completely neglected. All four of us agree that this app improved our trip immensely. Wish they had one for every major tourism destination.

Volcano National Park Hawaii - closed. Due to federal shutdown it’s close right now, so minus two stars, you should not sell app knowing the parks are closed. Waist of money. It’s like selling a car which doesn’t drive. PS. Asking your support “Leo” keep saying like a BOT we have other trips coming, trying to explain that we are here right now and if you don’t have anything available can you recommend any other guide, just doesn’t work. Have a screen shots of that.

Wonderful guide. Easy to use, great information, loved being able to tour on our own and still get all the info, local flavour, and interesting stories- plus music!

Very useful app!!. If you’re going to Hawaii you definitely need to get this app!! We used it on Maui and Big Island and we actually thanked the Shaka Guide many times for views and activities! The stories and music were a big plus as well. Definitely worth the price!

Amazing!. What an amazing concept! Thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend to anyone to make the most of the car adventuring and touring! Thanks!

Absolutely brutal. I loved the Shaka app for Kauai but this one is a hot mess. Unorganized, mixes all the tours together and doesn’t allow you to change directions in a HUGE island. Completely useless. Can’t even use it.

Awesome!. This app greatly enhanced our trip to Volcano National Park. We did the entire park following its direction. I strongly recommend it to anyone new to the park.

5 stars. We had so much fun listing to the Shaka guy and he gave great recommendations

Driving in the Rain. This is our second visit to the Big Island and Volcano Park. With Shaka as our guide we explored more, saw more, learned more and were completely entertained the whole trip! The app is a great way to see the park at your own pace with your own witty travel guide pointing out the best hikes, views and historical events. Download this before you go to really enjoy the Island.

Loses its way. Not reliable. Failed to pick up location although gps was still showing our correct location.

Fantastic tour guide. We used the guide for our tour through Volcano national Park. The Shaka guide is excellent. Lots of anecdotes and stories about local landmarks. Worth every penny! I recommend it!

Shaka is like your own personal tour guide. Love the Shaka guides. We used the road to Hana one on Maui and loved it. This time we bought the Hawaii big island bundle but with the size of the island and varied routes it can make it tricky as you can’t do the tours in reverse. Still love all the history and tips it gives though.

App made our vacation!. HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!! I was really excited when I came across this app a few weeks before our trip. It almost seemed too good to be true since it sounded exactly like what I imagined I wanted. We wanted the curated elements of a tour but flexibility of self guided. It blends both perfectly! We started on the big island and the soon realized how informative and useful Shaka was. We hopped between mist of the tours as we prioritized the sights we wanted to see. As soon as we got to Oahu I downloaded that version too. The routes are well thought out with a good mixture of history, local info, major tourist sites and off the beaten path gems. We learned and saw so much we wouldn’t have otherwise. Decent controls to choose limited starting points and occasionally direction. The only downside is that not all tours have a clockwise and counter-clockwise option. It would also be nice to start the tour at any point on the map. The price seems a little steep as far as apps go but for the quality of what you get it’s absolutely worth it. A great value when you compare a fully guided tour. Will definitely use again and urge anyone I know who is visiting Hawaii to download. 5 star! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Too expensive. Is a good app/ tour. Would recommend to anyone at half the price. As is is a rip off

I’d definitely purchase this for other islands. Great self guided tour. Easy to use, easy to follow directions, and always the options to do as you please.

Big island tour Hawaii. Very good info-good humour and lovely music- enjoyed the tour . Did get lost a bit but found our way finally - thanks to Shaka

Awesome. Would never seen as much of the island as was possible with Shaka Guide. Lots of info and history. Great GPS with no data or wifi. Best money I spent on the island.

Made the trip to Volcano National Park 100% better. My partner and I loved the tour for the volcano national park. I was hesitant to pay $20.99 CAD for the app but I would’ve paid more after recognizing g the value we got from it. It was full of great and interesting info and if we didn’t have it we would’ve just driven around and said “oh, that’s interesting, more lava rocks.” We did the whole thing and felt so satisfied with the trip. We both agreed that if we didn’t have the tour that we would’ve missed a ton and not felt as blown away as we were with the park.

Great App. Enjoyed the tour. Will definitely use it again. Mahalo

Increasable Awesome App. This app is amazing. The history of the islands while travelling is informative and entertaining. The turn by turn instructions are exceptionally accurate and the timing is impeccable. We highly recommend this app and wish it was available for other locations around the world Awesome job Karl & Lori

Un MUST!. Nous avons acheté les tours pour l’île de Oahu et Big Island et nous avons fait un extraordinaire voyage. L’application (en anglais) nous guide vers les meilleurs attraits touristiques, sans prendre de données cellulaire, nous fait faire de petit détours pour voir des sites qui ne peuvent être visités par les bus de touristes et nous raconte des histoires intéressantes et pertinentes. Application facile d’usage.

LOVE THIS APP. We have used Shaka guide 3 years straight now, Oahu, Maui, and this year Big Island. It has been critical to the experience of Hawaii every time. With the help of Shaka guide we have checked out local spots, scenic hideaways, and learned SO MUCH about Hawaiian history, we have completely fallen in love with this state. So much of this is due to the security and comfort we feel exploring on our own with Shaka guide. We definitely recommend it without reservation.

Awesome app. This app allows you to tour the island in the best way possible: free of organized tours!

Great tour guide!. We enjoyed listening to you as we travelling around Hawaii. So much history here and thanks for sharing some great tips!

I love it!. Great app! We hate tour groups, but love fun facts and history. This app gives us the history and tips of a tour guide with out the crowds and with the freedom to stay or go when we want. Far cheaper than a guided tour and just more comfortable driving ourselves in our rental car. The guide was also witty and informative, would definitely recommend and use again.

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Great for self-guided tourists. We really appreciated having the Shaka Guide on the Big Island. It was great hearing some stories and history as we traveled. We also enjoyed taking the back roads. The only improvement I would suggest is giving more notice before turns or landmarks (e.g. the lava caves on the North tour). There also needs to be a few places where complete driving instructions need to be added, e.g. after pulling off at Tex Drive In the app says to stay straight, but after you cross the intersection you have to stay to the right. However, I would still highly recommend this app to anyone who wants to “do” the island exploration on their own.

Worth every penny!. We were travelling with a car-full of boys, 9 to 12 years old, and wanted them to pay attention to the scenery of this beautiful drive rather than just playing their video games in the car. They were skeptical but were immediately enthralled and entertained by the guided narration. The guide was fun and helpful, pointing out interesting side trips that we would have passed up otherwise, and helping us avoid crowded areas that would have wasted our time. This app added so much value to our vacation. It should exist for every single vacation area in America. Not just Hawaii. Thank you!!!

Best Tour Guide!!. We did all of the Big Island tours, with the exception of the South Loop. We just ran out of time, unfortunately. Both of our boys, ages 4 and 9, loved listening the the guide as we traveled around. They learned so much!! We were able to see lots of things that we would have otherwise missed. We had a guide book but the audio tour was so much better. We could just turn it on and drive. I didn’t have to look down at a book the whole time to see where we needed to turn, etc. Definitely the best $20 spent on our trip!

A Trip Necessity!. I’ve been planning my trip to The Big Island with my two adult daughters for a couple of months. I researched all over the web and started to get overwhelmed with planning. Then I found out about the Shaka Guide app. I purchased all the tours on The Big Island. WOW! So worth the investment even before going on vacation! This app made planning so much easier! And, having the shakaguide playing in the car as we traveled around the island was so informative and FUN at the same time. Thank you! I’ll be recommending this app to everyone!

Excellent app.. I loved this app that I came across. This is money well spent. You could spend 200 a person for a trip or go on your own time and sync this up to your car and listen as you drive. The app knows where you are and as you pass certain places it will explain what’s there. Also has Hawaiian music in between. My only complaint ( the reason for four stars) is that I wish that there was more talking. You won’t be sorry you spent the money to get this app. You will have explored the whole island in your timeline at your own pace. Loved it!!!!

fantastic tour guide app!. My fiancé and I visited the Big Island and had an amazing time thanks to the Shaka Guide! We bought the 5 day tour bundle and used about 3-4 of them and it was still so worth it! Lots of fun music, cool history, and it’s easy to use. We saw some awesome things including Akaka Falls and Volcano National Park. The guide had some great little viewpoints to stop at long the way and I love that it tells you how long things take and how you can skip stuff if you don’t have time. Also 10/10 food recommendation! we tried Cafe 100 in Hilo thanks to the Shaka Guide and it was one of the best and most affordable meals I had on the island!

Amazing!. First tour with Shaka and we loved it! This made sight-seeing a breeze on our honeymoon! The hike down pololu valley was worth the exercise and finishing through Waimea was spectacular. Loved the balance of music and information. Only suggestions we have to the creators are an option for continuous music in between talks to keep the Hawaiian vibe going and consider moving “#9 turn left” on the Kohala tour a little sooner up the road. Someone was on our tail so we missed it and had to turn around. Other than that everything was timed perfectly.

This is the best travel tool we’ve ever used.. This week was our second trip to the Islands. The first was two years ago when my family and I visited Maui. On that trip we used The Shaka guide for the first time. It made the entire visit so much more enjoyable. We got great tips on where to stop, entertainment and history all in one. Fast forward to now, again we downloaded all the tours for the big island. The tours did not disappoint. Thank you for creating such a fun way to get around. We are leaving today and we feel like we know so much more about the history then before we arrived.

Connect with the land, the space and the people. We immensely enjoyed the Big Island Shaka audio tours. The tech is great with auto play triggered by GPS, but also the history, food recommendations and background. Saw so many things on our 2nd trip that we had missed on the first and really enjoyed knowing about the people behind the shops and restaurants before we entered, giving a great connection to the people that live here. So much better than a traditional tour, with time to stop, admire and absorb

It was wicked awesome!!!. Couldn’t have felt more satisfied with an app! We did the Hawaii volcanoes National Park tour and every step of the way, which is multi layered w a driving point to point map and recordings of interesting facts, we had the time of our lives!! If you like to explore on your own time this is also a great way to go. Make sure you download this before hand as it took a while to do. We also didn’t stop at every single POI just the ones we really wanted to see. Thanks so much SHAKA!!

Love it!. Thank you Shaka Guide! My family loves visiting the Hawaii island and for the most part we do the touristy stuff. But with this App, it made us explore and learn more about the island. As a first time user, my family was so Impressed with me that I found this App and helped us navigate the island better. We are at the big island right now. But for sure will use this guide again when we visit the other islands. We enjoyed the stories and history during the tour! Well done Shaka Guide!

Like a personal guided tour. Driving the Big Island and visiting Volcano National park would be good without this guide, but it is GREAT with the guide. “Shaka Guy,” as we called the narrator, not only gives detailed directions to the best sights, he also shares his deep knowledge and love of Hawaiian culture and history, all with enthusiasm and humor. The music is sometimes themed to what you are hearing on your tour, and sometimes just background between narrations. One suggestion would be to enlarge the library of background music which did get repetitive, especially by our third island! Worth every penny and more.

Really glad we went with Shaka. We found the app easy to use and very well thought out. There are lots of options for which way to do the tour including skipping around and going in reverse order. The tour guide also told some very interesting stories and was really informative about what we were seeing. The voice-over coordinated with our location very well and integrated well with Google maps (not so much with Apple Maps as it dropped out of the maps app unexpectedly). Highly recommend this app, particularly the 5-tour price discount.

Totally awesome!. I absolutely love this app and I’m so glad I found it. It made my second trip to the Big Island even more awesome. We did a lot of driving because there is a lot of beauty to see, and getting to find out along the way the history of the places we were passing and the hidden gems we would not have known to stop at was priceless. And the narration and the interlude music was so upbeat and fun! Will definitely be using this app again during my future trips. Wish there was one for California (where I live)!

The ins and outs. This app was absolutely helpful to get to know and see the culture of the big island while hitting any and every gem. This might sound backwards but you get to experience the ins of being a tourist (why you may be visiting, that’s known for the island) and the outs - stepping out of tourism and getting to do local stuff. Definitely recommend! We loved how we got to do our own thing at our pace. Would recommend just buying the package to have it all.

So helpful!. These guys are great! I’ve used it all over Oahu several times. I had issues with the Maui ap on my phone and I contacted them for help and they were able to fix the ap issue on the backend within a couple days and then make an ap update! It was amazing to see them fix the ap so quickly and be so attentive to my issues! I’ve also used the Big Island ap many times and there’s always so much info to learn and new places to see! Can’t say enough good things about these guys!

I Don’t Do Reviews. At almost 50 I can count the amount of reviews I’ve done on one hand…to that end, this was the best value we received while visiting Hawaii for the first time. We were able to do and see so many things on our trip. The accuracy of the guided tour was truly amazing. Words cannot express how impressed we were with this app. A friend recommended we buy HAWAII THE BIG ISLAND REVEALED on paperback - so glad that didn’t happen; we would have never stumbled across this app… If this is your first trip to the Big Island, as was the case for us, this app is a must! Great job!!

Amazing Audioguide. We spent the day at Hawaii Volcanos National Park and had an amazing day thanks to this Audioguide. While the sites were spectacular, our experienced was enhanced by the guide as we drove through the park. We heard the folklore about the volcanos, learned the history of the Park and even saw some unmarked sites that are not on the regular map--none of which we would have experienced without the Audioguide. If you are planning a trip to the Volcanoes, I would definitely download this app. We did not have our kids with us this trip but, they would have enjoyed it as well.

BUY THIS APP!. Best $20 we spent on our trip. We downloaded the app based on a rave review from a coworker. It did not disappoint. Our first day on the big island, we used Shaka tour on our way to hike in Pololu Valley. On the way there, it gave lots of good history and pointed out scenic / historic points where you might want to pull over. But our favorite - without Shaka, we would have driven back the same way we came. Because of Shaka, we took an alternate route home through Parker Ranch, which was STUNNING and is now one of our favorite parts of the trip. Thank you, Shaka guides!

Private Guide on your Phone. My friends recommended me one of these apps after they’ve been to Hawaii. So, I checked all of the 4 applications for Oahu, Maui, Big Island and Kauai, since I had a cruise around all these islands. I was happy to find out these guys made it easy for travelers to hear local history, must see places and easy navigation, especially with limited time to spend on each island. I bought the packages and could easily combine some of the tours, depending on our route. Great music, nice jokes and easy planning for us, which is a lot of work! Mahalo very mucho!

Shaka guide big island & Oahu. Bought both packages for driving & walking. Enjoyed both & found them valuable assets to travel. Especially enjoyed the music. I do wish the app was more seamlessly integrated to allow for easier recall of saved articles & referrals back to highlights & points of interest. Constantly find ourselves tapping one menu after another without luck. The feature article on south coast Hawaii pictures turtles but there’s no further reference to them. I could swear I read turtles are an expected encounter on the green beach. Shark bay on Oahu does NOT have turtles but mentioned an encounter. The volcano park tour is way out of date.

Another great tour guide. A friend recommended Shaka Guide when he found out we were going to Hawaii. We started our trip in Kauai and the guide was great on that island so we downloaded the big island tour for the second half of our trip. It has been just as useful as the Kauai guide. We’ve done the Kona big kahuna and the Pololu Valley trips so far and they have been excellent. We’re finishing off the trip with the South Island loop tomorrow. Hope it’s just as good as all the other trips have been

Great App for The Big Island. I used 3 of the 5 Shaka driving tours this week on the big island and, while there were a few minor glitches, 99% of the time it was very beneficial and accurate. We were there for 6 nights and did the South Loop Epic tour from Kona to the Volcanoes National Park, where we switched over to that tour. Once finished at Kilauea, we continued the South Loop tour back around to Kona. You can skip certain aspects and do them another time, which is convenient and economical. The topics and monologues along the way were informative, and the music was fun to hear.

North Coast Kona tour. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the tour. As others have mentioned turns could be announced a bit sooner, and really wish it integrated with apple or google maps so I could see turn by turn on the car play screen. I also noticed the first part of the tour didn’t have music between stops which was a bummer, but all in all I can’t see rating any less than 5 stars. Also, be honest with yourself - if you’re going to do more than one tour - just buy the bundle.

Great app for touring on your own!. This app is great to have on your phone and works well with your phone GPS to know exactly where you are on the tour and where to stop and checkout a tourist site. You can move at your pace and stop and start anywhere along the tour. This is well worth the price and we are so glad we purchased this app before venturing out on our own to visit the Hawaiian Volcano Park. The tour guide was informative, entertaining and included some music too. The directions were accurate and helpful. A great site seeing navigational tool!

Best money spent. We purchased this ahead of our vacation to the Big Island and we pulsar be happier. Very impressed with the level of detail of the tours. We completed 4 out of the 5 purchased and actually found ourselves missing the narrator when we didn’t have it on driving places. One item to watch for is if you drive a bit faster than the speed limit in some spots you may hit the next point of interest and narration before the previous one is completed. Will hunt down more from these guys for future vacations.

Great audio tour of HVNP. This app is worth way more than $4, in my opinion! I LOVED the guide (Gray). His voice was like buttah. So smooth and easy on the ears. As a fellow voice over artist, I appreciate fantastic voice-over work when I hear it!!! It was a joy to listen to. Our van full of people really enjoyed the stories, information, and the jokes (which we repeated for the remainder of our trip). I recommend this app to you if you're driving yourself through Hawaii Volcanoes Nat'l Park. I can't wait to hear the other tours they're developing for the Big Island! Mahalo for everyone's hard work in making this awesome app!!!

Great Tours. Lots of historical information. Great routes. Notice some of the tours overlap so you can skip some if you’ve already been through them. Was a little tough with the kids because we were in the car a lot. But the stops were great. Wish we could have done them all. For my family of 5 it was better because we went at our own pace and got to pick and choose when and where we stop and how long we spend there.

Very informative and pretty entertaining. I did every Big Island tour on the app and repeated several parts during my recent solo trip. Very informative and pretty entertaining. I especially enjoyed the island musical interludes between sites. Sometimes corny but certainly not more so than your average live tour guide. Like having an informed local in the passenger seat who you can tell to get out whenever you want. The app worked very smoothly for me and I recommended it to several fellow travelers along the way. I’ll definitely buy the other guides when I visit the other islands.

Grateful for this amazing guide!. We didn’t put much time into plan ing our recent trip to the Big Island and decided to “wing it”. After landing at the airport I remembered using this app on Kauai a couple years ago and down loaded the bundle for the Big Island. Wow! What a great week we had touring all around the island. We enjoyed all of the added stops we would have cruised right past on our trip around the island. We learned so much about the history and the culture of Hawaii. Mahalo for this wonderful resource!

Wonderful enhancement to our driving tour. We are amazed and enchanted how the app helps us appreciate the sights as we tour around the Big Island. We purchased the five tour bundle before we left home and are now finished the first two tours with three more tours coming up in the next few days. The guide informs us with immediacy about the parks, scenic overlooks, historical monuments and personalities we would never notice had we only a guide book. I had mapped out beforehand the leisurely pace to where we wanted to go, and the tours dovetail our plans very well. Well done!

Five Star App. We used the VNP as well as the Kona tour. Both were AWESOME! The narrator told such interesting legends, gave great tips, clear directions, and great suggestions about what to stop and see as well as advice as to whether or not you may want to pass by a stop. My kids’ favorite stop on the Kona tour was Two-Step and say thanks for the recommendation! On the VNP tour, my family really really enjoyed devastation trail! This app is a great addition to your visit to the Big Island! Great value and worth every penny! We will definitely use the app again and look for added destinations in the future!

Wonderful app! Can you make it go backwards?. This app is wonderful and awesome and lives up to the great reviews. However, we needed it to go in reverse. We didn't start down Chain of Craters road until around 3:00. The first few attractions it described were great! I love the local insights and stories. However, The sea arch sounded really neat so we ignored all of the other stops and headed there next so we wouldn't run out of daylight. But then, on the way back it wouldn't talk about the attractions like it had on the way down. Is there a way to turn it around and have it talk about them from either direction? Other than that we loved it and would use more tours on it.

Sensational. We downloaded all the Big Island tours and loved them. It was the perfect mix of directions, music, history, legends, culture, food recommendations, points of interest and silence. We saw so many things that we would have missed. The pointers were so dead on we trusted the app to completely guide us. Best audio tour we have ever taken as it synced up driving directions with narration. Loved all the little side trips on roads we would never have explored on our own. We can’t wait to try it on the next Island!!! Big thumbs up.

Great Tours, need updated. We enjoyed several Shaka tours while in Hawaii. Directions are clear and accurate, and info is interesting and useful. We definitely saw more because of the tours! However, the Big Island info is outdated. This is particularly problematic on Big Island, where eruptions change the landscape and what you can see, and this tour is about 4 years and 2 eruptions behind. As a result, there are things they think are closed that are not and no mention of how to see the current eruption. For the price, I would expect more timely info…at least an update each year, as travel books do.

Trip of a lifetime!!. Spent 2 weeks on the big island and used Shaka Guide off and on the entire time. We did all or at least part of each tour. The sights were spectacular and the information along the way was informative, funny, and interesting. Saw things l know we would not have found on our own. Had no issues with the app being downloaded and played through Car Play in our rental. Would highly recommend this app and (hopefully!) will get to use other island tours in the future! Thanks, Bruh!!

Big Island Tour. This was out first visit to the Big Island and the Shaka app did not disappoint us. We were able to do self guided tours around the island and take our time at the individual areas along the way. The app is user friendly and we liked that the guide gave us history, stories, and music to enjoy while driving. The hikes, beaches, food, waterfalls, rainforests, and small diversions like the donkey ball factory and bee farm were excellent. I recommend the SHAKA app to anyone that is going to Hawaii. Thank you for experience and making it a memorable one for us!

Better than a tour guide!. Can you imagine a cheap tour guide only talks when you want him/her to, not forcing you to visit anywhere, play music and tell you everything they know, and make your long drive not miserable? This guide has it all!! We had a good experience with their Maui guide so they are our first choice when we visit big island as well! The app and guide doesn’t disappoint with all the updated information after the recent volcano eruption. My experience is better this time than last visit with a tour guide actually. A must have!

Makes it easy!. We loved our Shaka Tours! We did the Volcanos and Big Kahuna for two of the days we were on Big Island. We bought the package for Maui as well, we enjoyed these so much. He makes it easy to follow along once you get oriented to the map. We enjoyed the tidbits of history along the journey as well as the highlights of places to stop and look at. Made our trip very memorable. Only feedback is we wish the map moved directionally up (like Google maps does) instead of keeping true north (or maybe we didn't figure it out!). Highly recommended!

This is a wonderful app!!. I don’t normally leave reviews for apps but you should know this is very well done. I typically buy some type of tour guide when I go to Hawaii or want to explore a new place, worth it to find adventure. I believe I bought the app made to explore one of the other islands about 3 years ago and I though it was great because it would show you on a map where the different internet points where. This app takes that and uses GPS and completely guides you the whole way. It’s like the dude is in the car with you telling you exactly when to turn and when to look. You can tell these guys spent a lot of time getting down the timing of what is being said to where you are driving. Besides the fact that they are telling you what to see and where to go, they are providing history, context and even a little humor. Honestly, they did a great job on this and it was money well spent.

Impressive but a little dated. We loved having the app talk is through the big island and kept the time moving! Also took us to some hidden gems. Hawaii I know is just coming out of the Covid issues but we were bummed to have a couple stores not be opened during regular business hours. We will be purchasing more guides on our next island trip on Monday to Maui so take any negative as still 100% supportive of buying again! Ps the directions were spot on!

Shaka has been our guide for years!. Shaka has been our guide for years and now I feel like a pro on the big Island! We have seen so many amazing sights that we would not found on our own!Than you! I’ve used this app extensively on Maui and love the Shaka has been our guide for years and now I feel like a pro on the big Island! We have seen so many amazing sights that we would not found on our own!Than you! most visitors just drive by! The narrator is amazing and intermixing HI music with fun facts and history, make the drives so much more enlightening!

First time User. Please give yourself enough time to practice.(Kona south tour, two tiki statuettes)At times we went around in circles, or had to turn around and go back in the other direction. We continued to use the app and we were directed to places we would not have seen such as the bee farm and donkey balls bar. At the end of the day the app is a lot cheaper than a tour bus, some of the roads are inaccessible for a tour bus because of the narrowness of the road. Did see a truck that ran off the road. Note please do not give go back the way you came, if you are paying attention to the gps, you were not looking at landmarks to lead you back in the direction you came. Going out on another tour today. “Never Give up”

Must have!!. This is a must have if you plan to do any driving around the island. You will miss so much and not learn nearly as much if you don’t pay the small fee for this! It gives you directions, history, places to eat (although we found a few were closed) and is very user friendly. This app made our trip around the island easier and informational, I truly couldn’t recommend this app enough! Thank you to whoever created this

Totally Worth It!. This app was the perfect way to tour around the Big Island. I purchased and followed all 5 of the tours. All of the highlights we wanted to see, like the black and green sand beaches, were included, but also tons of great sights that we likely would have driven by without stopping. The stories, history and narration were great, informative and funny. We enjoyed listening to “George” (as we named him before learning his name is Gray) and we’re sad when the tour would end. If you’re going to rent a car to sightsee on the island, this app is a must!

Absolutely Amazing!. Our family has done 2 out of the 5 tours for the Big Island and these GPS guided tours are absolutely fantastic! The information shared throughout each tour has been easy to understand and very great to have. Only wish there was a little more Hawaiian music in between each of the recordings. This is a great app! We would’ve never seen or done half of the things on this island without this app. Thank you Shaka Guide!! Buy this app today… you won’t regret it! Aloha’oe

Amazing as Always. We used the Road to Hana guide when we were in Maui and it was amazing. So this time we bought all the tours for big island. We had such an amazing trip thanks to Shaka guide tour! It was fun, informative and easy to use. We were so used to have the tour guide talking while driving to a point that we felt weird when we were not using it lol. I’ve recommended to a lot of ppl I met during the trip and highly recommend to everyone reading the review!

HIGHLY recommend, especially for first-timers. This app was recommended to us by a family member and it was probably the best money we spent while on vacation. We got the entire tour of the big Island and literally drove the entire way and listened to the app tell us all about the history in special places to visit. We were able to pick and choose the places to stop, and decided to go back to a few places that we missed. All in all a absolutely worthwhile investment.

Better than any group tour. We did 4 of the 5 tours on big island. The downfalls I see are... 1. The music doesn’t always stay on, so you’re not sure if the app is running. And we all liked the Hawaiian music, but the slow stuff was putting us all to sleep. 2. There was a hike to see pictographs THAT WAS KILLER! We were not prepared, and the guide said it was easy. NOT TRUE. Also not worth it unless you are a science teacher, or history teacher. Overall We enjoyed the tour way better than waiting for a group of people on a tour. Also, the king Kamehameha rock is in the wrong position on the tour. It’s actually one giant rock too late.

Good app!. My husband and I just had our honeymoon in Hawaii. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars a person for a guided tour, I found this self-guided tour and it was a bargain! We did the volcano National park tour. I give this 4 stars because of the tour we did. The tour was fine but I wish there were more options for it. The park is so big I was surprised there was only 1 tour on this app for it. The tour itself was fine but we wished it would have rated the stops better. Instead of saying that they simply liked a stop, it would have been nice to have sort of a rating of each. Overall, amazing for the price!