First trip to Hawaii/First DVC trip

[smileyanna]

I enjoy reading everyone's trip reports so much, and excited to share a quick overview of our recent trip to Hawaii with our family of four.

Background - I bought a small CCV contract last year that loaded with a surprise extra year-plus of points. Some of those points were expiring in ten days, and with Disboards advice/help I was able to rent out a night in a grand villa and donate to Give Kids the World. That left a year's worth of banked points and we decided to travel to Hawaii and stay at Aulani for a few nights.

Room Availability - I was surprised to find easy availability for studios at Aulani at the 7 month mark for the week after Memorial Day! In fact, I switched between Ocean View and Island view a couple of times on the waitlist and each time the three-night request was filled quickly. We ended up with three nights in an ocean view studio.

Itinerary - We flew from the Northeast direct to Honolulu and then took a short flight to Hilo. We spent three nights in Hilo, which lived up to its reputation as the rainiest city in the US. It was incredible - Volcanoes NP, rappelling down waterfalls, ridiculous star gazing at elevation, coffee farm tour, and some beach time at Waimea (on the Kona/sunny side). The Big Island was amazing.

We flew back to Oahu, visited Pearl Harbor and made our way to Aulani. Our room was ready and we enjoyed the pools and beach. We also did laundry in the communal laundry room, which was efficient and simple. We asked a lot of questions (directions, recommendations, etc) and found the cast members to be incredible.

We went to the luau at Aulani that first night, and it was a big hit. We did not find it too long, which we had heard from a number of reviews. The only snafu was that our room (15th floor in the Ewa tower short wing) overlooked the luau and we watched parts of the show again a few nights later from the balcony - and my kids were devastated to find out that the "brother/sister" duo that sings about their deceased mom were played by different performers (at least the brother was). "Was it all a lie, Mom?!"

Oahu - We had ambitious plans to hike some of the ridges in the south and east but found we were out of gas by this point. We visited Kualoa Ranch, Waikiki and swam in a (pretty tame summertime) Sunset Beach. We spent a fair amount of time at the resort too. I think Honolulu/Oahu doesn't have a great reputation compared to the other islands, but we absolutely loved what we saw.

Aulani - Aulani is great, and our elementary/middle school kids especially loved it. To me, it had an unmistakable Disney feel: Lots of families, constant comings and goings, quippy Disney-inspired shirts for your people-watching-entertainment. I'll be totally honest, I preferred the looks of the Four Seasons and Marriott simply because they seemed a lot quieter or calmer. I have no idea if that is actually true, or what the price points are for those resorts. Also I have no doubt that my kids would prefer Aulani.

Bottom line - What a fantastic, beautiful trip. I'm grateful to DVC for serving as an impetus to travel to Hawaii!

 

[Tigger's ally]

Glad to hear the availability for that week. I am in the early stages of planning a 40th wedding anny trip for the wife and I next year. Also planning to surprise her by flying the three kids and the grandkids out for 5 days that she will know nothing about.. Arghhh. I will be renting with one of the rental companies and paying a high cost, but it will be a once in a lifetime trip.
Your trip sounds a lot like what we will be looking for. Thanks for posting.

 

[smileyanna]

Glad to hear the availability for that week. I am in the early stages of planning a 40th wedding anny trip for the wife and I next year. Also planning to surprise her by flying the three kids and the grandkids out for 5 days that she will know nothing about.. Arghhh. I will be renting with one of the rental companies and paying a high cost, but it will be a once in a lifetime trip.
Your trip sounds a lot like what we will be looking for. Thanks for posting.

I was very surprised that there were consecutive dates open and that I was able successfully waitlist other room types two times for the same dates. We only stayed for three nights, so maybe that helped.

Good luck with your trip planning! Your surprise sounds so incredible and I hope it all works out.

 

[Tigger's ally]

I was very surprised that there were consecutive dates open and that I was able successfully waitlist other room types two times for the same dates. We only stayed for three nights, so maybe that helped.

Good luck with your trip planning! Your surprise sounds so incredible and I hope it all works out.

thanks, I have surprised her a few times including flying from Bangor Maine to WDW in the middle of our second honeymoon. She thought we were going to be in Maine for 2 weeks and it was a split trip. I had the front desk call at 4 am for a wake up call and she was sleeping really good. I gave her a card and she said she would open it when she got up. I turned on the lights and told her "Well get up then" and she found out we were flying south in less than two hours. Talk about amped up!

 

[DVCSunDevil]

It sounds like it was a great trip! We did Aulani in April of last year for 10 days, split between Waikiki and Aulani. It was amazing! And your story about the luau is funny because we had the same experience. Our room overlooked the luau and we would watch parts of it at night…even though we attended the luau on our first night. My kids are older (college and senior in HS) so the shock value wasn’t as intense as your young ones, but we all laughed when we heard the different performers recite the same story. It is a good luau that I recommend to anyone who is going to Aulani.

We did a lot of the same activities as you did on your trip. We also did the catamaran snorkeling trip that leaves out of the harbor right by Aulani. That was a fun excursion. We plan on going back to Aulani at some point in the future. We would never have gone to Hawaii had it not been for our DVC points. What a trip!

 

[smileyanna]

We did a lot of the same activities as you did on your trip. We also did the catamaran snorkeling trip that leaves out of the harbor right by Aulani. That was a fun excursion. We plan on going back to Aulani at some point in the future. We would never have gone to Hawaii had it not been for our DVC points. What a trip!

I really wish we had done some snorkeling while we were there, like the catamaran excursion. My kids are strong swimmers but we had two rough snorkeling experiences in Bermuda a year ago, and they were turned off. We did the rainbow reef snorkeling on our last day and they seemed to get what a cool experience it can be.

I hope we can repeat the trip when our kids are your kids’ ages! So beautiful.