Aulani pool guest policy

[bostontim]

We will be staying at Aulani next month and I am wondering how strict their pool policy is. I have three friends who live in Oahu and I wanted to invite them over for awhile. Since there's just two of us in the studio, I know I can probably add two names to the reservation -- but for the third, I'm wondering if there is anything like a day pass or anything like that I can buy. Do they hand out wristbands or check id's in the pool area?

 

[boiseflyfisher]

There are no day passes for Aulani. You should go ahead and add your two friends if you want them to be able to use the pool, chairs, etc. We saw three people removed from the pool this past weekend who were not wearing wristbands. If your friends are local, I believe there are some pretty good resident rates for the hotel. That might be the better way to go.

There are two locations near the pool area to pick up your wristbands. They either checked off our names on a master list or looked us up on a computer.

 

[taaren]

I had the same problem when we had 3 people in a studio and my mom & brother had joined us for a weekend in Oahu but were flying home before us. It would have been nice if they could have come for the day to use the pool.

When I talked to a staff member they mentioned they were considering selling day passes in the future but at the moment the resort was too new and they had other policies, etc, they wanted to smooth out first. (This was in December.)

They were very strict about it, but hopefully in the future will be less so. At the Grand Wailea on Maui they sell the pool wrist bands are $50, which is well worth it for one or two extra persons considering the room rates are usually in the $400/night range, but there you can also get as many wrist bands as you want if you're staying there (we've gotten as many as 8 for one hotel room, no questions asked).

The kama'aina rate for an Aulani hotel room we got in January was $300 a night, and they did give us the free parking since I am DVC.

 

[boiseflyfisher]

I could see the possibility of selling a day pass during the week in low season, but I think they would have a riot on their hands if they sold them on weekends or when the resort is near capacity. It wasn't even full last weekend and it was a little difficult finding seating from around 11am-2pm. We were talking with a CM who said that there were a lot of angry guests over the holidays who were unhappy about the chair availability situation. Once the resort is finished, if they don't add more seating(and I'm not really sure where they would put them if they did add some), seating is going to be difficult to find anyway. It will be interesting to see what people report for the coming week as we were told that they were fully booked.

 

[Brancaneve]

We invited family members to join us for our upcoming June trip to Aulani. My husband, without doing a proper head count, ended up inviting my two nieces who ended up surpassing the maximum number of guests in a 2 bedroom villa. After doing research, calling the hotel, DVC MS and asking a friend who had recently been at Aulani, we basically had to "uninvite" my nieces. They were very disappointed at first but it was something we had to do. According to my friend, you must wear a bracelet and each day the color changes. Prior to giving you the bracelet, they ask each person their name and check the list of guests. My friend said that they even asked her 5 year old daughter her name and made sure she was on the list rather than taking mom's word for it!

I had to sadly uninvite my nieces because I want to be relaxed while on vacation. I didn't want to be stressed about breaking rules or sneaking around. That's just not our style.

 

[taaren]

We invited family members to join us for our upcoming June trip to Aulani. My husband, without doing a proper head count, ended up inviting my two nieces who ended up surpassing the maximum number of guests in a 2 bedroom villa. After doing research, calling the hotel, DVC MS and asking a friend who had recently been at Aulani, we basically had to "uninvite" my nieces. They were very disappointed at first but it was something we had to do. According to my friend, you must wear a bracelet and each day the color changes. Prior to giving you the bracelet, they ask each person their name and check the list of guests. My friend said that they even asked her 5 year old daughter her name and made sure she was on the list rather than taking mom's word for it!

I had to sadly uninvite my nieces because I want to be relaxed while on vacation. I didn't want to be stressed about breaking rules or sneaking around. That's just not our style.

Just FYI, your nieces can come to the pool, just one person wouldn't have a bracelet => that person wouldn't be able to use the slides/menehune bridge. They did tell us when we checked in as many people could "hang out" as we liked, and if we wanted to switch who got the bracelets each day we could, just we could only get as many bracelets as we had names on the room/room had capacity per day.

 

[scotttrippett]

I think the bigger problem is having too many people in the room. As it would break the rules and the fire code for the resort.