Aulani bound in August and at a complete loss with planning...

[rlk]

We are an NYC family too. We stayed at a hotel in Waikiki for one night followed by 12 nights at Aulani in August of 2014. I wish we had stayed at least two nights in Waikiki. At the time of our vacation, my children were 12 & 13 (both boys), so perhaps their interest are a bit different from your daughters. We are not a sit at the pool/beach all day type family, therefore I made sure to book several excursions. I think we had a good mix of relaxing at Aulani and exploring Oahu. We planned only two days where we didn't leave the resort, the rest were either early morning excursions and then a relaxing afternoon at Aulani or the reverse.
These are some of the excursions we did:
Dolphin Excursion Snorkel Adventure-This was our favorite. We did the earliest tour and were able to swim along side hundreds of dolphins. We also got to see turtles and lots of other fish. They will take video of your family (for a price). They are located pretty close to Aulani.
Shark Cage Dive-My boys loved this. I really liked it until I got sea sick on the way back to shore. It is pretty amazing to be so close to the sharks.
Surf lessons/outrigger ride-We did this on the first morning we woke up in Waikiki. My boys had watched an episode of The Brady Bunch before we left for vacation and asked to surf on Waikiki Beach. It was great to do the early because we were awake from the time difference.
Pearl Harbor-Not to be missed. This is were I wished we had another day in Waikiki. We drove in from Aulani and traffic is as bad as NY traffic at times. Try to plan going into Waikiki or Honolulu after rush hour.
Hanauma Bay-we RD this snorkel spot. It was great to snorkel before the place became too crowded. As we were leaving they were turning away cars. If you are planning to do a lot of snorkeling around the island, I suggest renting snorkel equipment for the length from Snorkel Bob's, located in Honolulu.
Polynesian Cultural Center- Lots of people love this place, but we were not very impressed.
North Shore-We made a few trips to see various beach and sand towns. Make sure you drive on all the highways, some of the scenery is not to be missed, such as the Pali Lookout.
Various hikes depending on your stamina.
Aloha Swap Meet
Submarine ride-We thought this was a waste of money.

We enjoyed driving around and stopping at various beaches and towns. One of our favorite memories was driving along the North Shore and stopping at a brick oven pizza cart on the side of the road. This guy from New Jersey moved to Hawaii years ago and decided to build a mobile pizza oven.

Car rental-we rented from Hawaii Car Rental and got a good rate- $645 for a large Jeep for 13 days. We could have gotten a better rate, but my husband insisted on a jeep.

 

[SonomaCountyDad]

We started our trip in Waikiki and ended at Aulani. Each day in Waikiki, we used the car to go do some activity in the morning, and then we hit the beach for the afternoon. Once we got to Aulani, the car never moved from the parking garage for the four nights we were there. We easily could have spent another night or two without feeling the need to venture out again. While you are in Waikiki, I would definitely recommend the Diamond Head crater hike. Once you get to Aulani, you don't want to be driving back and forth again to Waikiki. Anything you want to do near Waikiki, I'd definitely recommend doing while you are staying close by.

 

[crystal1313]

Hi fellow planner! I too am the one who does all the vacation planning. Totally understand wanting to figure stuff out. My kids are younger, so we plan to not do a whole lot away from the resort......for airport transportation, I was also bummed there wasn't any kid of magical express, but we signed up with speedi shuttle through Disney. I am usually not one to access a shuttle like this, but have read good reviews about it here on the Dis. So I am hoping we can say the same (we go in July). Also, there is 6 of us, so it's not as easy for us to rent a car. And we figure that way we can all take in the views on the drive. We plan on renting a car for a day or two from the Alamo on site. One day for sure, so we can drive to Pearl Harbor. I am really holding myself back on over planning this trip. We just really want to relax and enjoy all Aulani has to offer. If we get restless, we can rent a car and go explore. I've just been reading all the tips here on this lovely forum, and trying to familiarize myself with all there is to do at the resort and beyond so when we are there, we are not doing research. Only things set in stone are two dining reservations at Ama Ama and my kids activities at Aunty's. This is really hard for me! LOL. Have fun planning!

 

[Mom2disneygirls]

I am a complete nut about planning...my family makes fun of me, but it makes me happy to know things are a little planned. One tip I had received before our first trip was to plan a resort day and then an exploring day and alternate. That worked well for us last time and have that planned again this trip. We loved our trip to Hawaii...our youngest cried the entire trip to the airport saying she didn't want to leave and asks often to go back, so it is safe to say we enjoyed our trip.

To answer the questions you had:
Rental car-we got a full sized SUV from Alamo for 11 days for about $650 dollars. I drive a full size SUV at home, kids are used to it (they get car sick in small cars, we learned that last trip). Last visit we rented a car, again thru Alamo, for about $350, it was a mid sized car...barely fit our luggage. This time we are taking my mom along for the trip so we know we needed something larger than that. Looked at a mini van, but decided to get the SUV since we know the size, etc. I was hoping that prices would go down from that, but so far not, it is over double now. We are going over the July 4th holiday so I assume it is a high period. It is an island, they have a limited supply of cars and can't bring more in if needed...reserve early, if the price goes down, rebook, don't prepay.

The app was great! The guy narrating gave very interesting facts along the way and even includes parking information if you want to stop and look at something. We found some beautiful sites from the app, well worth the couple bucks for the app.

Paradise cove-I can only comment on the package that we booked. We booked the Royal box on our first visit. Our daughter has special needs and lots of people around her make her very nervous, so we booked that one and very happy we did. We had a great place to sit and watch the show, they served us dinner instead of the buffet and we loved talking with the waiter about his life on an island (remember my daughter was sure she was not flying home with us, she was gonna stay on the island at the rip old age of 10, lol). They give you cards with money on them to purchase drinks or items from the gift shop. It is expensive, but it is important that everyone enjoy themselves, so for us it was well worth the price. The pre-show activities were great, we liked the food and loved the show, we have the same package booked again. I've read the reviews about it not being nice, maybe we have low standards....but we liked it.

We are looking forward to trying some of the fitness activities when we go, yoga on a paddle board just sound interesting too me...it will at least be funny!

Restaurants that we enjoyed were Monkeypod across the street, the happy hour is fantastic! We are planning to go there at least 3 times this visit...we still talk about the truffle fries. We really liked Ama'Ama for breakfast and for dinner. We did the buffet for dinner and character buffet. The dinner was just ok, didn't feel it was worth the price. The character buffet we were so disappointed with. It was priced like WDW but we never saw any characters, they never came to our table while we were there. Our girls are older so they didn't care, but I don't plan to pay for it again. We really liked Zippy's (kinda like a Denny's if you are familiar with that). The food was inexpensive and we were eating with locals, we loved it! When we travel we like to eat at places that we can't get at home, I have a long list of places to try this time!! Must try Leonard's Malasadas, it is a truck off the interstate (on the right) on the way to Aulani....they are SO yummy!

Also, we did the private photo session thru Aulani and are planning again when we return. It was well worth the price we paid, we got a couple hundred photos...hopefully it will be just as good this time.

Good luck and have fun planning!

We'll be there 4th of July as well with our 3 girls (almost 8, 11 1/2, and 13). Also a planner only thing I have left is rental car...thanks for the advice my last step to get done needs to be done to get a big car. All your info very helpful as this is our first trip.