The Visitor Center at the Pearl Harbor National Monument is where you can watch a 23-minute documentary film of the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, and can explore 2 well organized museum exhibits, "The Road to War" and "Attack". You can also walk around the grounds and see the interpretive wayside exhibits and visit The Remembrance Circle all while taking in views of the harbor with the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri in the distance. All of this is free although parking is $7. The USS Arizona Memorial is also free but requires obtaining tickets in advance. The USS Missouri, USS Bowfin Submarine and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum all require separate entrance fees to visit. If you limited time, the Visitor Center experience gives you a good overview, but there is so much more to see when at Pearl Harbor.

We paid for the delux combo narrated tour and VR through recreation.gov, but chose not to go to the Arizona memorial, USS Missouri, the sub, nor the aviation museum, and spent the better part of the afternoon just doing that. The tour was great- it adds so much more to the static displays of the two sections of the museum. Highly recommend if you’re into history or like museums. The VR was like a 70’s cheap movie - it may as well have had flip cards and painted on flames for realism. You can pay for just the tour for $12, or waste 10 minutes of your life and an additional $10 by buying the deluxe version like we did. Otherwise, the museum is open, so ambient weather will be what it’s like indoors. If you want to bring a bag in, you’ll need a clear plastic stadium bag to do so, as they don’t allow non-see through bags (not sure why not). All in all, the visit was very poignant and informative!

The visitor center itself has two interesting mini-museums in addition to multiple statues, artifacts, and signs outside that give you a lot of historical knowledge. I recommend getting the Visitor Center Official Multimedia Tour (its a set of fresh headphones and phone/tablet that you plug audio stop numbers into). The extra audio really adds to the experience in my opinion. I was expecting to only be at the visitor center for about an hour or two hours before moving on to the other connected attractions/museums like the Aviation Museum or the USS Missouri, but you can definitely spend 3 hours alone at the visitor center especially on a nice day if you want to read every plaque and listen to every audio stop. Also PAY ATTENTION TO THE BAG POLICY for the visitor center and its sister attractions/museums. They won't let you bring in bags bigger than a wallet, but you can buy a tote bag at the visitor center gift shop to care your stuff around in.