Atlantis Adventures Maui Website

The whole tour takes 1 hour and 45 minutes, with 45 minutes on the submarine – from the moment it submerges to the moment it resurfaces, and 1 hour spent on a boat on the way to the submarine and back, watching the submarine to resurface from the previous tour, waiting for previous group of tourists to unload, and then waiting for your group of tourists to all come down into the submarine.

The submarine submerges to just over 100 ft deep, the ride is very comfortable. Our guide was very lively and provided interesting information. People in the submarine sit on a long two-sided bench along the middle of the submarine, facing round windows. There is one window for every two persons, so one has to share a window with a neighbor. When the submarine is near a sight (a school of fish, a sunken boat, etc.), people sitting along one side of it have the view first; then the submarine has to turn so that the other half of tourists along windows on the other side can see the same thing.

We signed up for the morning tour, because the water is supposed to get less transparent in the afternoon when the trade winds pick up. But on the day of our tour the waters were somewhat murky, and fish and corals didn’t look very colorful. We didn’t happen to see any sharks, manta rays or other fancy stuff. Our group became very animated when we passed by the sunken Carthaginian ship, that was transformed into an artificial reef and we saw a group of divers on it. They were excited to see us too; we all waved and photographed each other.

To tell the truth, we were disappointed. Our son wasn’t very impressed, because there wasn’t much to see. He already did some snorkeling with us on Kamaole Beach Park III and the fish there was much more colorful and interesting. As for adults, there are many great snorkeling spots in Maui, that provide much better views of coral, fish, turtles, etc. If one can snorkel, I would certainly recommend saving the money. It might be that this trip can be more interesting during the whale season, but I don’t believe the sub can go near enough to a whale; I would suppose you can get better views if you are whale watching with binoculars and good wine