USS Arizona Memorial drawing SRO crowds
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Affairs Writer
Want to see the USS Arizona Memorial?
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
The line forms here, snakes down the visitor center walkway for a few hundred feet, then cuts across to Halawa Stream and back up to where the boat ramps are.
These people can expect to step aboard the USS Arizona Memorial ÷ after a wait averaging about three hours.
Estimated time of arrival to O'ahu's most-visited attraction: 3 hours.
Pearl Harbor patriotism whipped up by the movie, National Geographic and History Channel programs, and the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack has peak summer crowds reaching epic proportions at the national park.
"We have been getting quite consistently 1,000 people waiting when we open the doors," said park superintendent Kathy Billings. That's at 7:30 a.m.
"So we recommend to people if you want to come out, arrive before noon if you want to get a ticket," she added.
Last year, the average summer wait to see the 23-minute film at the visitor center and take a launch to the Arizona was two hours. This summer, 6,000 people have been showing up daily for the free program that can accommodate 4,500.
Billings said visitors also should be prepared to stand in line for more than tickets.
"We have long lines into the restrooms, long lines into the museum, long lines into the bookstore," she said.
The park is seeing the kind of numbers it did for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when 1.5 million people visited in 1991 and 1.52 million visited in 1992.
Billings expects the big crowds into September, a lull in October, and a resurgence again in November and December for the anniversary.
