After reading all the posts on here this last year, it still amazes me how wonderful this place is. I am here with dd 14 and ds 10 also wonderful dh. Any questions ask away!
Yes please give us details. I've never been and hope to get there eventually. Tell us about your room, view, activities, crowds, food....
Have a wonderful time!
Stitches mom......can you see if there is a label in the pillows on the beds. My son is wanting one....now that we are home lol. If so, can you send me the info?
I just arrived home this morning - we arrived 7/8 and checked out last night - and I thought it was packed! Everyday we spent a good 15 minutes looking for chairs that were not taken and usually had to enlist the help of CM's. It appears that if you cannot get down to the pools before 8 am and have someone reserve chairs, you are out of luck. At one point, my friend and I with our babies in tow, finally found 2 chairs after 15 minutes and started walking over (we were maybe 10 ft away). A man saw us and started running for them and threw his stuff down and then looked at us, gestured that he was taking them (pretty sure he didn't speak English) and then he left to go to the pools. It took another 10 minutes of searching to find chairs and we only got them because another family offered them to us as they left.
WOW! We were there at the same time! Arrived 7/5, left 7/13. Wonderful week in paradise. It was crowded on the weekends, considerably more on Saturday when it seemed like lots of people checked in early AM and headed to pools waiting for their rooms AND lots of people checked out and spent the day at the pools. SO... note to self, maybe weekends are good times to do Oahu's OTHER things? Deck chairs seem to be an issue from 10am-3pm on weekend days if you need more than one (we're a fam of 4 and often just plopped our stuff on one while using the pool, then either gained another for lunch or ate elsewhere). Our deck chair fallback position was to put our stuff on an ottoman by a towel shack, leave it there while we lazy rivered, pooled, etc and then move it when we found a chair that we wanted later. That said... the chair issue DID NOT ruin our vacay! It was great! DS's loved playing Wii at Auntie's and Pau Hana, night runs from 7-8 in lazy river and making "tube trains", the Dole maze, the submarine at Pearl Harbor, two dinners at Monkeypod... it was ALL good!
But I am writing a nice note to the hotel manager with a few suggestions. Anyone else is free to write your own:
- maybe add cubbies at the towel shacks with "bag check" and further limit the unoccupied lounge time?
- sub out the hot food set meal (who wants pork loin dinner at lunch?) at Ulu Cafe and add pizza-by-the-slice, hot nachos, or add back the tacos and such from One Paddle, Two Paddle (still miss the kalbi tacos w/ kimchi and the salad).
- mix in the cold food from Mama's to Ulu Cafe (there is fridge space) so people don't have to stand in hot dog line for a cobb salad or wrap
- allow kayaks out beyond the lagoon with waiver
- fix the non-working Menehune Trail items and fire pots on pu'u kino (volcano)