My LIH Avis experience:

I landed at LIH on Friday, June 4th at about 12pm. I'm Avis Preferred and had a reservation in hand which was booked in February (one week for $225 using a corporate code). Took the shuttle to the reservation desk, which was shared with Budget and Payless. I was relieved to see tons of cars in the lot. The normal line looked a mile long (I'd guess about 40 people), but fortunately, the Avis Preferred/Budget Fastbreak line only had a couple of people ahead of me. But what was kinda annoying was that there were only 2 agents working the rentals, one person servicing the Preferred/Fastbreak line, and the second person for all the other Avis/Budget/Payless customers. Needless to say, that line was moving glacially. I got there around 12:30pm, so I dunno, maybe a bunch of employees were taking their lunch break. But I wouldn't be surprised if some folks were in that line for several hours. Anyway, since I was Preferred, they had everything pretty much ready to go when I reached the agent, and I probably spent less than 2 minutes completing the paperwork and getting the keys.

I had booked a Compact, and what they ended up giving me was an Intermediate. Car was a Hyundai Elantra and I think it was brand new because it had less than 300 miles on it. Surprisingly, it had California plates on it. So I'm guessing the LIH Avis put out a red alert to have cars shipped to them asap to meet demand, and they were in such a hurry that they didn't even have time to properly register the car with HI plates.

With all the stories I had been hearing about car shortages and long lines, I was relieved that my experience went relatively smoothly. However, I'm sure it would have been extremely frustrating if I hadn't been Preferred and had to wait in that massive line.