Here now: 04/16 - 04/23 - Current trip report/general observations

[NorCalFanatic]

.

 

[msboyd89]

Nice report! I found I enjoyed the Makahiki breakfast menu better than the dinner. The Kalua Pork Omelet is really good.
We used to have crazy shirts all over Calif. It's a great store, often buy many shirts there to take back home! We were happy to find the Leonards Malasada Mobille Off H1 in Waipahu, you can see it from the highway! Definitely worth the stop if you can swing it.

That's exactly what we did today! Absolutely delicious.

 

[scoobdoo]

- Makahiki three-course dinner was great, I'd say a 7 out of 10 for food but it was lovely to sit by the waterfall nearby and listen to the live music from the Olelo Room next door. I just think it's a real downgrade from the buffet they had pre-covid.

could not agree more — the loss of the buffet is tragic for the resort

 

[msboyd89]

It's our checkout day today, managed to get the last couple of hours in the pools/lagoon and going to get some breakfast at Ulu before heading off to the airport. I'll write up a proper summary at some point but going to add a few more random points here before I forget:

- We did the adult-only stargazing experience last night. We've done this twice before but this time wasn't as good unfortunately. The guide was giving interesting information but the event had 14 people meaning we had to wait quite a bit each time he had a new object for us to look at through the telescope. And as there were so many of us we only got 5 different things to look at throughout the hour, on top of that instead of the moon, mars, saturn and the rings like we'd seen before, this time it was relatively plain looking star clusters that he chose. This probably sounds like I'm being spoilt and unfair but the last couple of times I feel like we saw the "heavy hitters" that I'd like to think a lot of people who are doing it for the first time would like to see, instead we saw quite uninteresting items to the eye, even though they had interesting backgrounds to them.

- Snorkelling at the on-site rainbow reef was great, not very busy and we spent about 45 minutes swimming around. I love that it's here and makes me want to do the real thing in the ocean next time.

- Unfortunately most t shirts were in small and 4xl only the entire week which is a shame as we had a couple of designs that we loved but unless I wanted to get super thin or super big then there was nothing for me. We're told they get new stock every 2 weeks on a Monday so maybe tomorrow they will have items back in stock and we just missed the refresh.

- The former adult pool is still a quieter pool than the rest and didn't have too many kids in there as it's quite boring for them I imagine compared to the rest. This was good for us as an adult-only group but I really think this should go back to being adult-only at some point. There's so much for families across the resort and it would be good to have just one space for adults. There are the adult-only hot tubs but we had kids in there all week so the rules were not being followed.

This is more of a negative post than I wanted it to be, we've had the absolute best time and I've got lots of great memories here from this week. I'll give a more positive post next time but just wanted to give my opinion as someone that's been a few times.

 

[NorCalFanatic]

.

 

[Amw1064]

Thanks for the report. We head back in 5 weeks. We love Aulani. We haven't been since 2021. Did they change the rental cars? We have always had to get on a shuttle. If I read correctly we now just go out the doors and across the street. That will be awesome.

 

[NorCalFanatic]

.