How hard has Aulani been to book at peak season?

[bethy]

Peak seasons in my mind being Christmas and Summer. Our kids are getting older and we are starting to have to limit most of our travel to school breaks. We are in the market for more points and I would prefer to purchase them at our home/favorite/closest resort (VGC). But we hope to go to Aulani every 2-3 years as we love it there and at Ko Olina in general.

I'm now wondering if I should buy Aulani points even tough they have 10 times as many rooms as VGC does . . . .

 

[suyama]

I had no problem booking a March visit after the 7 month window opened. March probably isn't peak season though.

 

[JessLCH]

I was able to get exactly what I wanted at 7 months for late august. I had been tracking availability and early to mid August seemed a little but harder.

 

[Cinderpamela]

I know exactly what you mean about being beholden to the school breaks as we are in that season of our lives right now!

7 months out for an early August vacation at Aulani was not bad at all. I had to be flexible and spend more points on a higher point room category (had wanted Island view but had to splurge on poolview) but other than that it was great.

Christmas was more tricky, I was able to book at 7 months out for December.... I had to be flexible with the dates and did not get my first choice which would have been to stay through New Years day. New Years week was booked solid! Instead we stayed at Aulani December 23rd through till Dec 29th and prior to that we stayed at a condo in Waikiki.

To get 6 nights I had to peacemeal the reservation together starting out with only 3 nights together in a 1 bedroom (that was all that was available at my 7 month window) and then adding more days by stalking the website every day and snagging availible slots that opened up. At one point we were going to have to switch room categories 3 times during our stay. Was able to narrow that down by continuing to check back on the DVC members site, eventually getting it down to only one room switch from a studio Standard View on the first night to our 1 bedroom Island View for the rest of the stay.


That said I would still buy at GCV as that reservation is way harder to get than Aulani. Having the 11 month booking window at GCV is huge! Plus GCV points seem to have retained their value the best... probably due to demand.

 

[Anal Annie]

It can be done BUT you HAVE to book online right at 8:00 am when your 7 mo. window opens up.

We were able to book an OV studio for early-mid August 2013 which we ultimately had to cancel. When I started looking into re-planning the trip for about 30 seconds we considered spring break this year (specifically the week leading up to Easter) and Aulani was wide open - and for awhile too 'cuz out of curiousity I watched it a few times because I thought it was curious that it remained open. We decided to pass on that option tho for several reasons. One being that with the time diff. we would ONLY have 7 nights PERIOD for the trip and we wanted to island hop - esp. for the cost of the airfare to get there. We wanted at least 10 days in Hawaii. So then another reason was the airfare - it was ridiculous for Easter. Finally, it would've sucked down a lot of points for that "season". It just didn't make good use of our time, points or money to try to go over spring break. We are now re-booked for this August. We didn't have as many points to "spend" this year tho so grabbing an IV studio was important to us this time around (last time we had the flexibility to book an OV). We got it but before the day was out all of the studio categories had spotty availability. Actually, it was spotty by mid-morning and the IV was gone right away.

Good luck!!

 

[lovetotraveltx]

We got a dedicated pool view for August of this year. But, as pp said you have to be on your computer and ready at 8:00am Eastern time! Good luck

 

[nabi]

On this note, would transferring points between contracts (own both) prior to the 8am booking window, be suggested?