Arthur Murray Dance Center Hawaii

Worth every penny. Not only is this fun and social exercise, but you learn how to do something new. In addition to the private lessons and group classes mentioned in some of the other reviews, the studio organizes a number of dance outings and events to improve skills in a more public setting. The staff are ridiculously fun and creative!

I can’t say enough about the amazing time I am having learning ballroom! Lance and Jacob have both been my private instructors and I have a blast every time I go in. Trust me when I tell you if you want to learn fast, pay for the private lessons.

The staff is super friendly. You can forget all your daily concerns and have fun here. It has one large one small saloon.
the packages based on number of private classes that you take and group classes and practice parties are free in it. So go as many group classes as you can. I like to go special-​themed dance parties because all students come and enjoy it.
Jacob is amazing, creative and fun! Gisella is really nice and excellent. The whole crew is full of awesomeness.
Parking on street if possible. Parking is validated at the building so park floor H. the fee increases at every 20 mins.
A little expensive but totally worth it. so benefit from it as much as you can. You may try to get one private lesson in every two weeks and attend every group classes.
PROS: They really teach you how to dance perfectly.
They organize special classy events.
They are always smiling.
They creat a nice fun family environment.
I wish the dance lessons will be longer. You actually forget the track of time :)

My fiancé and I had initially signed up for dance lessons for our first dance at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Kailua. On our first introductory visit, we shared the dance floor with another couple and it was difficult to dance with the other couple’s song on. Our song was not able to be played because they only accept ipods there and not CDs (although I was told on the phone to provide a CD copy of our first dance). Our instructor was really nice though and very friendly. We then signed up for a package deal that we prepaid for. It included 6 classes total, and we paid upfront half (the total of 3 classes). We scheduled when and where to meet. It was very expensive. About $ 100 for 20 – 25 minutes of lesson (which may or may not be with other people on the dance floor).
On 2 occasions, we showed up at the Kailua Studios during the time we were supposed to meet our instructor and no one showed up. We live quite far from the studio so it was a drive to get there for us. After 2 «no-​show» appointments, unfortunately we could not continue and decided since it was getting so close to the wedding that we would just dance on our own.
They did eventually refund our money and offered a complimentary lesson.
All in all, very nice instructors, but the scheduling and confusion as well as sharing a dance floor with other people and different songs made our experience a negative one.

We LOVE Arthur Murray Dance Studio!
My husband and I signed up for a dance package back before we got married. This was a couple of years ago. Well, between then and our wedding day, my husband went on deployment. They did such a wonderful job teaching us the dance steps, we were actually able to use what we learned at our wedding. Even if we didn’t choreograph it, we still knew how to rumba because of the lessons they taught us.
Just last night, Valentines Day 2012, we decided to finish up our package and use our one last private lesson.
That’s what is great about signing up for a private lesson! They have group classes, too! Yesterday’s was perfect because it was a rumba group lesson and we followed it up with a rumba private lesson.
Lance taught both the group and private lesson. He was AMAZING!!! It’s great watching other people who know how to do the dances (our group lesson was small and intimate but filled with different levels of dancers) and it gave us someone else to watch instead of ourselves. It was easier to follow and mimic the other women so I could get the foot work right. Same for my husband (though he sorta has two left feet and very little rhythm) who was able to follow the instructor and dance with other partners to get a better feel for the moves.
We were invited to purchase another intro package which we might have considered but unfortunately we are leaving the island in a month.
I recommend Arthur Murray if you are the type of person who benefits from watching others. It really helped us to see what we were working towards rather than just doing our basic box step. Plus they have group lessons every day! This is great if you buy a package for private lessons because not only can you learn your one type of dance but you can also learn every variety they teach.

My fiancé and I wanted to take some dance lessons for our wedding because all he knows how to do it fist pump. haha.
Well like the post says below there are some pro’s and con’s to this studio.
Cons: You are on one floor with other couples which does make it hard sometimes to focus on what you need to be doing. BUT it does help for learning how to maneuver around objects while dancing. I mean, the only time we are ever going to have a whole dance floor to ourselves is our first dance, so it’s nice to know how to move around so when we take our dancing out in public we aren’t lost and bumping into each other
This place is not cheap. Actually it made me kind of sick to know how much we are spending on these lessons. I have taken dance classes all my life and didn’t even spend half as much in a year that we paid for 12 classes. My fiancé found the place though and I didn’t want to tell him he did a bad job so we just went for it especially because Mia, the instructor is a complete sweetheart.
I feel like they take it a little slow. We had an introduction where we learned the basic foxtrot, then our second lesson we went over that and learned how to turn. I know for a fact that it doesn’t take 40 minutes to learn one step. And I was a little disappointed because we want to practice at home and if we only learn one thing at a time it will be real annoying, real fast.
Pros: Staff is GREAT. I have worked with Mia and Lance and they are both fantastic. Plus everyone that works here seems to be having a lot of fun (probably because their job is awesome) and they are always upbeat and cheerful.
With a wedding package you also get unlimited group classes, which are every day Mon-​Fri at 7:30 p.m. This makes me a little more at ease with the amount of money we paid for our lessons. The group classes are fun! They split it into two groups, one group for beginners and another group for more experienced dancers. So it’s really for everyone. This is good for us because we are military and my fiancé won’t be here at all in August so if I want to I can go there by myself for a group lesson as many times as I want while he is gone.
I would say, if you can afford to have lessons here DO IT.

My husband and i decided to go here for dance lessons for our wedding. We’ve both never taken ballroom dancing before so we were excited to do it to learn our «First Dance.» Our experience with Arthur Murray lets just say wasn’t a good one. Hmmm where to begin???
I don’t know about you but when i think of dance lessons i think of private room one on one with the teacher. If that’s also what you’re thinking of then don’t go here. The dance room i’d say is about 600 — 700 square feet at most. There are usually about 2 – 3 other couples there at a time. The room isn’t sectioned off so everyone dances all over the place. Its really hard to learn a «First Dance» here when they only have one stereo system for everyone. I’d say about 90% of the time we weren’t even practicing with the song we picked. We would do it one time with our song and then someone would change the music to country, hip hop or something else. Also to add to this they didn’t give us the cut version of our song until the last class which was 4 days before our wedding. We kept asking for it, but supposedly the person that does it wasn’t available. It really made things hard on us when we wanted to practice at home.
I don’t really like to complain about things but if you’re spending $$$ on lessons then you want them to be done right. This place isn’t cheap at all so i really wanted to get our monies worth. The first day we went there they had us learn the basics to see where our dance skills are at. Then they sat us down and give us a recommended package… which just so happens to be really expensive. We looked at the price and it was shocking… who knew dance lessons were this expensive. I believe it was $ 1000+ for 10 lessons. This definitely wasn’t in our budget range. Luckily, they gave us a few minutes alone to discuss and as we were sitting there we flipped through the pages and found a cheaper package that would fit our price range better. I believe it was 6 dance lessons and 1wedding party lesson (since our wedding party lives mostly in the mainland we decided to use it as an extra lesson). WARNING: They don’t seem to like to tell you about this package so make sure you ask. They like to try and get you to do the $ 1000+.
The worst part about this entire situation was they messed up on the count of our lessons. Our instructor told us that our last lesson was the week of our wedding which was good it gave us one last chance to practice. Well the day of the lesson about 2 hrs before we were to go I got a voicemail from the Manager at Arthur Murray telling me that we had used up all of our lessons, they made a mistake and we’d have to pay for the additional class tonight. I was infuriated how could they not tell me about this before. Why would they wait until 2 hours before the class to drop the bomb on me? It was just madness and i wasn’t going to let this one down with out a fight. There was no way we were going to pay for this last class, it was their mistake and we shouldn’t be penalized for it, right? Anyway so I call the Manager back and told her that we used our allotment for dance lessons for our wedding budget and we couldn’t afford to pay anymore. She then put me on hold for about 5 mins and then picked up and said that they would give us the class complimentary and figure it out. Her tone was very rude as if i was the one that made the mistake or something. Anyway i tried to brush it off and just do our last lesson and be done with it. When we arrived you could cut the tension in the air with a knife. They weren’t welcoming at all. You could tell they were mad about having to give us a free lesson. The entire last lesson was horrible, we just couldn’t vibe because it was so uncomfortable there. We couldn’t wait to be out of there.
Overall we weren’t impressed with Arthur Murray. For the price you pay there for dance lessons you would think it would be more accommodating. If you’re looking for dance lessons for your wedding, i would recommend going somewhere else where you don’t have to fight over the stereo system with other couples for music. It’s really hard to learn a dance to music you won’t be dancing too!
The only one good thing I can say about Arthur Murray was our dance Instructor, Lance, was a nice guy.