Do you spend more at WDW or Aulani?

[cruisehopeful]

Assuming flight costs are the same, do you overall spend more money at WDW or Aulani? Include other transportation that isn't airfare, all food and entertainment + souvenirs.

 

[Tigger's ally]

I voted Aulani. Everything on the island is just so expensive. Our trip this past summer all together cost me $38,000. Yeah that was for the whole family and roughly $11000 were flights. That still left $27,000 for the total and I have never spent that much at WDW. We did the same things too with the exception of the luau.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the trip. Aulani is drop dead gorgeous and my grandtinker loved the man made reef even though the water felt like winter.

 

[CarolynFH]

We haven’t stayed at Aulani, but we’ve visited Hawaii multiple times, and it’s easily more expensive than WDW. We were on the Big Island about a month ago, and a dozen eggs (might have been 18, can’t remember) were $10 at the local grocery. Restaurant prices are even higher. Gas was $4.75 a gallon.

 

[davidhr]

Coming from the northeast, Hawaii doesn’t feel that expensive to me. We spend slightly more at WDW just because we do more stuff that requires tickets. In Hawaii we do our own stuff.

As we’re only two, now the Delta companion certificate covers HI flights so our flights are not that expensive.

 

[Memorymakerfor4]

I keep a spreadsheet of all DVC trips and expenses and it's WDW, mostly due to ticket prices at the parks. Dining costs were about the same. The trips were about a year apart.

We're headed back to Aulani soon and I need to price out the activities we want to do. I kept airfare out of my comparison like you asked, but I will say that our airfare to HNL increased quite a bit, almost double what we paid last time. Our WDW airfare has increased a little, but not that much.

 

[drusba]

The first time we did Aulani was in mid-November 2024. Place was so "awful" we just had to do it again in mid-Nov 2025.

Being from the Chicago area, the airfare to get there is significantly more than flying to Orlando. As to other costs, most things in Aulani and Oahu cost more than in Disney World and the Orlando area, particularly restaurant and alcohol costs which are much higher in Hawaii and Aulani, e.g., doing Ama Ama for three was $375 for just the meal before drinks, taxes, and tip; the luau that includes a meal with taxes was close to $700; and we did a nearby seafood restaurant for dinner and paid around $800 with taxes and tip.

However, you do avoid the cost for park tickets in Hawaii, and the prices for extras at the resort, such as Rainbow Reef snorkeling, are not too high. Rental car costs for the most recent trip were just a little more than our April trip to Disney World, and like other DVC Resorts, DVC members have free parking at Aulani. Ultimately, outside of airfare costs, the total costs for three for our 8-day trip to Aulani was more than a like 8-day trip to Disney World (which includes park tickets).

Purely as a resort and its amenities, including character events, evening music, multiple pools -- and ignoring the Disney World parks -- I consider Aulani to be the best DVC Resort that exists. And weather is ideal, e.g., looked at the ten-day forecast for our last trip and everyday was predicted to be 80 as a high and 70 as a low, without high humidity, and that turned out to be an accurate prediction. I consider the trip to Aulani to have only two real downsides: (a) having to fly there and back has a high price, consumes huge amounts of time, and is like going through many hours of torture; and (b) driving from the airport to the resort is only about 25-miles but traffic can be bumper to bumper for quite a long time, e.g, our most recent 25-mile trip from the airport to Aulani took "only" an hour and 15 minutes.