Maui Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook

This book is a must have if you are traveling to Maui. It has great info on places to see, restaurants, and activities. I would also check out the app what you have to purchase separately, but worth it. It is GPS enabled and narrates as you are driving around the island.

After reading this guide from cover to cover, making all kinds of notes, and cross referencing it with information from internet sources such as Trip Adviser, it's easy to see why it has such high reviews. I started with the Fodors Hawaii 2016 guide to get an overview of all the islands. That's a great book in its own right, and it was a good resource for helping us decide which island to visit for our upcoming trip. But after making that decision, this guide devoted to Maui offered FAR more specific insight about things to do and see, where to stay and eat, and all kinds of great details. I generally consider travel guides to be completely useless when it comes to lodging and dining because the information is always so generic, and it is often there because the business paid to have it included. This is the first guide book I've ever used that actually has useful information about lodging and dining. The details about the road to Hana are particularly noteworthy. Knowing what's not worth stopping to see and what's important to see, as well as how difficult it is to access some of the sites, is great to know. In short, DO NOT PLAN A TRIP TO MAUI WITHOUT READING THIS BOOK.So why, then, did I give it only four stars? The main reason is that I don't like how the subtopics, such as beaches and adventures, are separated into their own sections. It would be far more convenient to include them in their respective regional sections. For beaches in particular, I had to constantly flip back and forth between the beaches section and the regional sections because all the maps are in the regional sections. The second issue issue is that the book doesn't offer any insight into staying in condos and other rentals. Instead, it includes information only about resorts and hotels. You'd be amazed how inexpensive it is to rent a condo or even an entire house on Maui. Almost all of them are concentrated in South Maui (which, as the book points out, is actually the eastern shore), in Kihei and south from there. Obviously the authors can't stay in all these rentals and review them, but they could at the very least point out that that kind of lodging is an excellent option in that area. Doing my own research, I found that the vast majority of the rentals are in the same handful of condo developments, so it seems like the authors could at least provide reviews about those developments, such as their amenities, convenience, how quiet they are, etc.Those criticisms aside, I still say this is an outstanding resource, and I'm very glad I found it.

This guidebook is well worth the price. It made touring the island much easier and more enjoyable. It discusses the history of the island, places to stay, places to eat and things to do. It will help you get to know the island much more intimately. I loved, loved, loved this guidebook. When you get home, it'll be great reminder of all the things you saw and did while visiting Maui. It will also help you plan your next trip when you go back again.Towards the front of the book, it mentions an app you can get for your phone. Pay attention to this. It has three different tours that you can take while traveling the road to Hana. We would have missed many sites that would not have been obvious otherwise. Just like a real tour guide, it pointed out the different sites and then gave us some background on each. At times, it would point out sites but would suggest that we not stop there because there was a better one ahead. It works with the GPS, so if you stop, it'll stop and wait for you.

I purchased this book because it is highly recommended by multiple sources (after I purchased it even my brother said I had to get this book). It does contain a lot of really good and useful information. They give honest and realistic reviews and tell you what is what, including alternatives to the popular sights that are better. They don't really give accomodation reviews in the book and it mentions they have them on their app. I downloaded the app hoping that I would have free access since I purchased the book but there is a fee and it was more than i was willing to spend. There is one other thing to keep in ming, this book is a couple years old and while most of the information is still likely to be accurate it is possible that somethings have changed and businesses have closed or undergone significant changes. I still believe the books has value for our needs.

Extremely detailed book on almost every aspect of vacationing in Maui. You can use this as your sole guide book and plan out your entire trip. It lists the pros/cons of almost every hot spot, but the only problem is that there's so much information it's easy to be overwhelmed. I had no idea which places were really the "must-do's" in Maui. It would be nice if they had a ranking system "best overall beaches, best hiking trails, best snorkeling spots, etc." Although everybody's opinion of "best" is different, it would give us a place to start to know what's the most popular sites. I think the best way to use this book is to skim through it once of twice and highlight anything that catches your eye, and then also look online to see what are the "must-do's" and double check what the book says. It's a lot of work, but if you're buying this book, you're probably the type that's going to plan out every detail anyways. Highly recommend

Our upcoming vacation to Maui

Bought this right after it came out and used it during a recent trip to Maui. I had used the 6th edition on previous trips to Maui and loved it. This new edition stayed consistent with older editions while containing clearly updated information, such as slight changes in restaurant selection, etc. I highly recommend Maui Revealed, especially for people traveling to Maui for the first time. The book gives some really helpful information beyond what to see, eat, sleep and do... I love the section where the authors share some lessons on the Hawaiian language, or the traditional dishes you might find at a luau, or safety things to look out for. It's a very comprehensive book on Maui. However, I wouldn't base all of the activities/restaurants/etc off of this one book. Found a few "new" good restaurants on Yelp that the book didn't have. But, the book had a lot of restaurants and activities that other sites had, too.

Great book!

I am going to travel to Hawaii next Summer and bought this travel guide for the preparation.Because we will visit also some of the other islands, I also bought the Revealed series for Oahu, Kauai and Big Island to have a complete series for all islands that we are going to see.For comparison, I also bout other books such as the Lonely Planet guide which covers all islands in one book.The complexity of the Revealed series is very high. All relevant sights are described and there is a lot of background information and helpful maps.I can really recommend this book and all other parts of the series. However, the complete compendium might be a little too heavy for my backpacking trip because each book has a weight of more than 300 gramm.

This book was awesome for our week in Maui - it was accurate, useful and very entertaining as the writing is quite witty. We used the very useful beach descriptions to hit up a new beach every day. It was a great asset to have for our drive around west Maui and all the way around back to Kahului. And the restaurant recommendations were spot on - we only ate in the ones given an ONO and they were all great.

We were told by friends to get this guidebook for our recent 10-day trip to Hawaii and we are glad that we did. Read through most of it prior to the trip and referred it many times while we were there. It was especially helpful for the Road to Hana and we bookmarked many of the recommendations. The beach section is fairly comprehensive with good overviews and pros/cons for each of the beaches. It also sometime notes good places for parking which was helpful. We didn't make too much use of the restaurant section because we normally just use our phones and check Trip Advisor or Yelp but it was useful to have when we didn't have our phones on us. Overall, a great companion travel guide and would definitely recommend for those visiting Maui for a week or more.

We love this series of travel books. I have now purchased sever versions of this book and I am never disappointed. I loved the out of the way recommendations for sights and restaurants. With so much advertising for tourist activities the advice in this book is very valuable.