Nate, I've been to Hawaii and I'm glad I went as its was absolutely beautiful and amazing that it is part of this country, but I'll probably never go back. It was the most expensive place I have ever been, and the flight absolutely killed me. It was a 9hr flight from Detroit to Honolulu. We spent like 3 days there and then went to Maui and stayed in (sp)Kannapalli. It was very cool in that we were there when the humpback whales were in the migration there. Honestly for the money that trip cost me I could have gone to Europe. I went to Europe last year with my wife and her parents and it was amazing. We went to Italy and France, and Italy was absolutely amazing. I woke everyday and said WOW! It was the most amazing thing I have experienced walking around Rome on roads and paths that are 1000's of years old. My favorite place to go on vacation is Aruba. Its not a lush jungle/tropical island, its actually a desert but the people are the nicest of anyone I have ever met in my travels, they speak english (which is nice for me as I'm your typical dumb ass american that speak any other language), they take american money so you don't have to worry about exchange rates and such, and there is the perfect amount of activities IMO for a vacation. There are just enough so that you don't get bored, yet there are not so many things that if you sit around on the beach all day you won't feel as though your missing anything. Europe was the opposite, it was not a relaxing vacation as you were always on the move and you really were missing out if you tried to just lay around and relax. Hawaii was similar to Aruba in terms of the type of vacation it was, but the landscape was beautiful in a different sort of way. I've only known one person that went to Aruba and didn't like it, but they thought it was a tropical island which its not.