Flights from the east coast

Sara4242

Even though there are so many other things we could be obsessing over at this point, one of our biggest stress issues right now is the flight to Maui. We're coming from Indianapolis, which is hardly East coast, but it's still a six hour time difference, and further than either of us have ever flown before. 

We'll be arriving in Maui around 4:00 p.m. local time, but our body clocks will think it's time for bed. Should we stay up and try to fight the jet lag right away? Or just sleep when we're tired and do our best to not sleep on the plane? We're staying for 11 days. 

Insight from others who have traveled abroad and across multiple time zones?

WinstonsGirl

Just stay up.  If you can go to sleep on local time, you'll get onto it faster.  You'll be tired from travel too, but do your best to go to sleep and get up on normal local time and your body will aclimatise faster.  I'd say check in, go for a light dinner and have a quite night in before bed.  Have a great trip!! 

breaness

We just came back from Maui and we live in Baltimore which is totally east coast. We landed at 3 PM and went straight to a Luau after getting checked in. It was an awesome way to start the trip and yeah, we were tired, but it was well worth it to get to bed at night time on Maui. We were pretty well adjusted to the time change by our 2nd full day there.

kimmykupcakes

Stay up! You won't even want to go to bed when you get there.

starlite7378

I was born and raised in Honolulu but currently living in New England - totally east coast!   Takes about 17 hours to travel home.

My recommendation is to do what the others have suggested and STAY UP!!   Enjoy, explore, eat dinner TWICE if you have to, and just force your body to adjust to local time.  The good thing is that you will likely be UBER productive the first couple of days since you will still wake up very early HST. 

Keep yourself entertained, and maybe even go for an evening walk along the beach to make yourself SUPER tired to get full rest on the first night

The harder adjustment will be when you leave Hawaii to go back home.  Not only will you have the had-to-leave-paradise blues, but your body will be adjusted to HST and you will have to deprive yourself of sleep to go back to work on time!

AKWinterBride

I agree - stay up. My BFF/MOH and her boyfriend flew from Minneapolis to Maui and had to stop in LA and finally got to Maui at 3am their time.  They stayed awake and just grabbed something to eat and went to bed early that night.  It's really the best way to adjust to the time difference from what I've found. 

FSForever

My mother just moved from NY back to the West Coast and to be honest it has never been an issue getting to our destination but the time change when we get home always hits us harder when we travel. You will be so excited when you get there that it may not even hit you on the going side. 

Tanq&Tonic

Definitely stay up.  Most of the island shuts down for the night around 9:30 or 10pm anyway so by the time you have checked in, gone to dinner, and listened to the waves on the beach, it's bed time.  I also find that you sleep more soundly through the night when you force your body to stay up, and one solid night of 8 hours will work wonders for switching your body clock around. 

I would also be mindful of sleeping on the plane -- if you sleep the whole way there, you'll be doing yourself a disservice because 4pm HST will feel like morning.  Once you get to the airport, try only to sleep during "night time hours in Hawaii" so that you start to train your body on the new timezone.  That's usually what gets me -- I stay up watching movies and eating and totally lose a 12-20 hour opportunity to start readjusting the body clock.

jtoly

I'm worried about this to. We arrive on a Monday and get married Wednesday morning. Hopefully the time difference will be out of my system by then!!

MrsKathyC

I have a question about flying from the east coast as well.  Where do you have your layover?  We're thinking of flying to Seattle first, staying overnight & then to Maui the next afternoon.

Sara4242

We considered flying to the west coast and staying overnight, too, but it ended up being more expensive and more of a hassle. Our layover is in Dallas. 

jtoly

MrsKathyC.....I'm from PA but leaving out of Newark with a layover in Los Angeles. On the way home we have a red eye non-stop flight back to Newark. Hopefully we will sleep most of the time on the way back!