Aulani from Toronto - L.A. Stopover?

[lorenni]

The last time I did a stopover was before the advent of online booking for flights (yup - a loooong time ago in a lifetime far far away).

We're thinking about Aulani in 2018 and would like to combine with a few days to see DL and the San Diego Zoo.

Has anyone done the Toronto-Hawaii trip with a stopover?

Any recommendations for booking with a stopover (websites, TAs) are also quite welcome.

 

[alohamom]

We have done this a couple of times but it has been a while because the price of airfare from Toronto to Honolulu has been very reasonable in the last 18 months or so. We paid $570/per person round trip last summer from YYZ to HNL and a similar fare in the high $600s two years before.

We found it was well over $1000 more to do the California stop for the time of year we went and although it makes for easier travel, it meant less money for us for Hawaii so we chose not to do a stop over for those two trips.

We have travelled through LA to Hawaii twice. Both times it was from Buffalo to LA and then on to Big Island. The reason this worked for us at the time was again cost. The cost was about the same from Toronto but only to Honolulu. On these trips we were going to have the cost of an inter island round trip flight from Oahu to Big Island on top of the Toronto to Honolulu so that actually made it more expensive then taking the stop in LA. The flights from LA went right into Kona on the Big Island.

I find that you can get sometimes get very good prices from San Diego to Oahu rather than LA so if you are planning to go to the Zoo any way maybe you should price both routes, just to compare.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I would always do a stop over if I could, it really helps with jet lag and then you are not dealing with super long flights.

 

[starvenger]

We did YYZ -> SFO -> HNL in 2015. Went to Maui and flew back from there, so will skip that portion. Paid $875pp. Probably higher than alohamom's due to the open jaw + inter-island flight.

This was a same day connection though.

As an FYI: the San Diego Comic Con is scheduled in 2018 from July 19 to July 22. So if you do decide to do a layover via San Diego, the airport will be quite busy on the 22nd and 23rd. I actually ran into this issue a few years ago when my brother got married in Cali.

 

[lawboy2001]

I definitely recommend doing it with a stopover. No recommendation for booking, except that I would use a TA or call in to the airlines....if you do a quick overnight stopover you might actually get a better price than a continuous journey and better than booking it online as a "multi city" trip.

 

[EastYorkDisneyFan]

Westjet operates flights out of Vancouver to Hawaii. You could see if they have a good rate for your dates.

 

[kiford]

We're doing this in November. Fly to LAX and stay at DL for 4 nights then on to Aulani. I had hoped to do a flight back to Vancouver and then take the train back to Toronto but the days no longer line up. We'd have to stay another 3 days in Vancouver which would mean we'd have to take 3 weeks off work which is too long for us at that time of year. So we're flying back to Toronto from Honolulu with a short (1-ish hour) stopover in Dulles. We had originally thought about flying to LA and staying at DL for 2 days, fly to Honolulu and then fly back to LA, stay another 2 days at DL and then fly home but the constant packing, repacking every few days didn't appeal.