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I also LOVE tripadvisor. An awesome travel site for sure - although you do have to take some reviews with a grain of salt... you can tell who the high-maintenance types are at times. 
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Agreed, when there are 99 great reviews, and 1 person ranting & raving, you can usually dismiss it
I usually just sort by overall rating, and pick a place that has been reviewed at least 25 times.
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What about hotwire for car rentals? I've gotten some good deals through them.
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Never actually tried there for car rentals but good idea! The prices look pretty similar to Orbitz from what I can see, but it never hurts.
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So are these flights mostly last minute deals that you're finding? My family wants to go to Hawaii at Christmas time, we'd all be flying through Vancouver probably (leaving from Van, Kelowna and Calgary). I've been checking westjet and Aircanada but the prices don't seem that great yet.
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They're not always last minute, the crazy flight deal I got for a June trip to Dublin (<$400) was way back in January. The Tokyo deals were showing up in late April for May/June.
As for Hawaii at Christmas. Well, I hate to say it, but I'd be pretty surprised if you found a great deal to Hawaii (or practically anywhere) at Christmas. If you did, it would likely be a Christmas Eve or Christmas Day departure. Or if you can go a week before Christmas, and come home a few days after New Years you might find something.
Right now it looks like the cheapest days to depart for Honolulu are the 17th/18th/19th ($870 USD). And then it just gets worse from there...
20th - $1005
21st - $998
22nd - $961
23rd - $1005
24th - $957
Contrast that with the first week of January ($683) and you see what a premium there is for the Christmas holidays.
You never know though, I didn't think I'd ever see sub-$500 flights to Japan either!