A Luau experience by Ka Moana Luau. Back to all Oahu tours.
Tour Summary: The closest full-scale luau to Waikīkī, about fifteen minutes from the hotels at the Aloha Tower Marketplace. It runs six nights a week, more than any other big luau on the island, so it is the easiest one to fit into a busy trip.
The evening show builds to the fire segments after dinner. 
The lei greeting happens at check-in, in the marketplace courtyard at 1 Aloha Tower Drive in downtown Honolulu. Feast courses are brought to the table; the standard Ka Moana tiers dine from the buffet. Pre-show activities give kids something to do before dinner.
6 Tour Highlights:
- Fire-knife finale to close the main show
- A full hour of cultural activities before dinner: lei making, hula, ukulele, coconut-headband weaving
- Coconut tree climbing and fire making demonstrations
- Buffet with kālua pork, shoyu chicken, lomi lomi salmon and poi
- Cast meet and greet from 7:45 to 8:00 PM
- Fifteen to twenty minutes from Waikīkī, five nights a week
Important: The site is fully open to the weather with no tent or cover, and rain is not refunded.
Tour Information:
| Price: | Adult | Youth |
|---|---|---|
| (excluding taxes & fees) | $129 | $89 |
Price note: Sold in three seating packages: Classic $129, Splash (mid-level) $149, and Moana Celebrity (premium) $199 per adult. Youth 13 to 17 pay $109 / $129 / $179 and children 4 to 12 pay $89 / $109 / $159 by package; lapchildren 3 and under are free. Round-trip transportation from Waikīkī is $30 per person, and self-parking and valet are available at Aloha Tower.
Tour Provider: Ka Moana Luau
Activity: Luau
Tour start time: 4:45 PM check-in, 5:00 PM entry (main luau), 5:15 PM (Diamond Head Luau Feast)
Duration: 3 hours
Included: Shell lei greeting on arrival. One drink ticket per person. Buffet dinner. Coffee, tea and fruit punch. Seating in your booked tier
Cancellations: Cancel at least 48 hours before the start time for a full refund on direct bookings. The luau runs rain or shine; if extreme weather cancels the evening, the reservations team contacts you.
Read more: about luau in our Oahu luau guide.
Read more about Ka Moana Luau
Five nights a week, fifteen to twenty minutes from your Waikīkī hotel, at the lowest entry price of any full-scale luau on Oʻahu. Ka Moana runs Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Only Tuesday and Saturday are dark. The show itself holds up.
This is a marketplace courtyard at Aloha Tower, not a beach and not an oceanfront terrace. Third-party listings sell it as waterfront and it isn’t. You sit on artificial turf at picnic-style tables in front of a low stage, with no water view from the seats.
Lei making, hula, coconut climbing: the hour before dinner
Check-in runs from 4:45 PM, and the first hour is the cultural program: lei making, hula lessons, coconut-headband weaving, ukulele lessons, a coconut tree climbing demonstration and a fire making demonstration. Dinner is a buffet from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, with kālua pork, shoyu chicken, a daily fish, lomi lomi salmon, poi, rice, fruit and Hawaiian sweet rolls. The main show runs 6:30 to 7:45 PM, and the cast comes out to meet guests until 8:00 PM.
Should you pay up for better seats?
Our read is no. The stage is low and the floor is flat, so the front-of-stage tiers, Splash and Splash Premium and Celebrity, buy proximity without reliably buying a sightline. Classic seating at $129 gets you the same show, the same buffet, a shell lei and one drink ticket, and the child rate is $89.
The Diamond Head Luau Feast is a different night out
Same venue, same operator, a completely different format: a six-course plated tasting menu served at your table, each course drawn from a different island culture, Hawaiʻi and Tonga and Aotearoa and Tahiti and Fiji and Samoa.
It starts later, at 5:15 or 5:30 PM, runs three hours and sells every night of the week, including Tuesday and Saturday when the main luau doesn’t run. Standard is $275 per person, Premium $325. Book this one to eat at your table instead of queuing.
Parking at Aloha Tower is paid, roughly $10 to $18 depending on the day and which lot you use, and the exit afterwards is single-file and slow, so budget twenty extra minutes at the end. There’s no tent and no cover anywhere on the site, and the late-afternoon sun sits directly behind the stage, so bring sunglasses.
The performers and the staff carry this one, and the fire-knife closer holds up even for people who were lukewarm on the rest. The buffet is the weak link, with dishes running out before the back tables get through the line and food arriving cool more often than it should. Join the buffet line early rather than late and you avoid most of that.
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Booking through this page costs you nothing extra and is made directly with Ka Moana Luau. We earn a commission from the operator, not from you, and it is what pays for the research that keeps lovebigisland.com free and free of paid placement. We only list operators we would send a friend to. Details on our affiliate links are here.