Planning 1 | Planning 2 | Planning 3 | Travel | Disneyland  (Day 1 – Day 2 – Day 3 – Day 4) | Arrival | Surfing | Aulani | Excursion | Hyatt

After our surf lessons, we headed towards Aulani.  We’d booked six nights at the resort and only had plans to leave the resort for one day.  I’ll talk about the resort itself with this post and detail the excursions in another post. 

We arrived at Aulani around 4 PM or so.  I dropped the ladies and luggage off at the front door and went to park the car.  Since we had rented DVC points for our room from David’s Vacation Rentals, we got free parking for our entire stay here.  We grabbed our luggage and went to check in, which was smooth and friendly.  The ladies each received a flower lei and I received a kukui nut lei. 

The lobby of Aulani is beautiful.  It is open air, like most things in Oahu. 

Room

We choose a Pool View room when we rented points, mainly because it was the lowest cost room available.  Our room was on the 2nd floor, which is the level you enter on.  Overall, the room reminded me of our stays at the Wilderness Lodge.  Lots of dark warm wood.  There was one large bed and a sleeper sofa.  The kids slept on the sleeper sofa, but it was actually pretty comfortable compared to some others they’ve slept in.  The room also included a fridge, toaster, microwave, and coffee maker.  Here are pictures of the room.

 

After some unpacking, we headed out to a nearby Target in order to stock up on some basic food supplies.  We wanted some sodas, snacks and breakfast food to take the sting out of the food costs of staying at the resort for six days.  I didn’t want to eliminate any fun snacks, but $15 chicken tenders everyday for lunch for four starts to add up quickly.  We got some coffee, sandwich stuff, and chips and crackers.  After loading up, we headed back to the resort.

What can we say about Aulani?  Generally speaking, it reminds me of Animal Kingdom Lodge in Orlando but with more of an open air feel. The resort has beautiful landscaping and tons of pools, including a lazy river.  Here are a few pictures of the resort.

 

Things to Do

Aulani has mulitple pools, slides, Rainbow Reef (a snorkeling pool) and a public beach for use by guests.  Every day, guests of the resort that want to use the pools will have to go pickup a wristband by presenting one room key.  You can also pick up towels at the same place you get your wristbands.  The chair situation by the pools can be really tough.  When we were there in July, we had trouble getting chairs unless we went down early (8 AM or so).  The cast members go around and try to free up chairs, but finding four chairs together after 10 AM is almost impossible.  We had success finding them near the kids splash area, but I think that was because it was closed for the entire time we were there.  We never had trouble getting chairs down on the beach, but it was really hot down there. You can also rent paddle boards on the beach as well, which the girls did one day.  The girls also tried snorkeling in Rainbow Reef — they enjoyed the experience, but did not stay in the water too long (they keep it very cold, due to the sea creatures that live there). 

In addition to the excursions which you can arrange while at Aulani — a wide range of activities from surf lessons, to historic tours of Oahu, to horseback riding and hiking Diamond Head — Aulani has other options for entertainment.  Aulani has a kids club, called Aunty’s Beach House, for children ages 3-12.  Since our kids are older, we didn’t try it, but it sounds like a nice amenity for parents who want to get away for a nice dinner.  Our kids did try the Menehune Adventure Trail activity, which is a high-tech scavenger hunt that takes participants all over the Aulani grounds.  We also had the chance to meet characters in their Hawaiian gear — our favorites were Hawaiian Stitch and Duffy the Disney Bear (the latter was an especially nice opportunity for our youngest, who loves Duffy and is sad that he no longer appears at Epcot).  Finally, we attended Auliani’s Starlit Hui, a free evening show featuring Hawaiian music and entertainment.  It looks like this show is no longer available, but Aulani does have a luau with dinner (for a fee, of course) which is an alternative if you’re really interested in experiencing the Hawaiian culture.

Food

There are a few places to eat on property.  Ama Ama, Makahiki, The Olelo Room, and the Ulu Cafe.  We ate at three of the four, choosing to skip Makahiki, which is the buffet.  Ama Ama is the upscale restaurant at the resort with beautiful views of the inlet.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have the best service here.  I’ve read other reports that indicated the same sort of thing.  The Olelo Room is a bar that serves appetizers, which we decided to make into a meal one night.  It was actually our best meal on property, with great service and good food.  The Ulu Cafe is a quick serve location, where we ended up buying a few $15 orders of chicken tenders. 

There is food across the street in the form of a few restaurants as well as a convenience store.  We really enjoyed going across the street to Monkeypod Kitchen for dinner.  It was much cheaper (compared to Ama Ama) and the service and food were better.  There is also Pizza Corner, which had delicious pizza.  We went down the street to Roy’s and really liked it (we had eaten at the one in Waikiki as well).   We had made reservations for both Monkeypod and Roy’s, not wanting to chance a long wait like we experienced in in Waikiki.  There are lots of places to eat within driving distance if you have a rental car.

There are also outdoor barbecue grills that the guests can use, but we didn’t take advantage of them.  I believe you can go to Guest Services to check out utensils for use with the grills and we saw lots of people using them, so that is something to keep in mind.

Overall

We loved staying at Aulani.  I actually think we probably spent too many days at the resort.  After relaxing there for more than a day, it became just like any other Disney resort.  Its very  nice and the service is good, but the food is expensive.  I felt like we could have easily have been in Orlando at Animal Kingdom Resort without the animals.  I think if we had alternated one day at the resort with one day out doing something else for the duration of our trip, that would have been ideal.  The resort is beautiful and we had a great time though.  We definitely plan to go back.

 

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