After seeing
@brownhaired_girl's pictures of her upgraded Hyatt room I think my experience at Hyatt Regency Maui will pale in comparison. But in case you are like me and seldom if ever get pixie dust like that here is how Maui went.
First, it was a cheap trip for just myself and DH. We have 3 girls 11, 9, 7 now so all our recent trips have been focused on family vacations. Specifically WDW. In fact, our last just the two of us trip was to Iceland in 2012. Our best trip was Scotland, Wales, Ireland in 2006...but that is another post.
At any rate this was a trip that was unplanned and therefore cheap using points as much as possible. Only reason we went is in September Delta had a skymiles flash sale. Roundtrip tickets across US to Alaska and Hawaii for 20,000 or 35,000 skymiles. I had the miles thanks to credit card bonuses so promptly cashed ours in for roundtrip non stop tickets from SLC to OGG. I could have done one of the other islands as well but settled on Maui. For those of you thinking of Hawaii Delta is something to keep in mind. If you could get to one of the west hub cities for Delta (SLC, SEA, LAX) there are frequent Hawaii flights. And obviously flash sales are fairly common.
I had got the Hyatt card February 2017. I got it then thinking I could use the free nights for an anniversary trip somewhere (our anniversary is February). After we booked the flights I looked into the Hyatt's in Hawaii. There are two Hyatt's on Maui but the Hyatt Regency is a lot easier to book with reward nights. I could not do it online, but was able to call and book our 2 free reward nights and then the other 5 nights with transferred UR points. I could have just booked the hotel with UR points in the Chase Portal, but once I started looking at it that the 30k something points a night through the portal were for only 20k nights in the World of Hyatt. PLUS if you book as an award night through World of Hyatt then there are no resort fees! Our only out of pocket cost to the resort was for parking every night ($20). We didn't get leis when we checked in (I guess no fee no lei) but that was not a huge deal.
Initially our nights were under two separate reservations but once we arrived that problem went away. First night arrival was about 1 am. Our first room was not too great...right over the valet parking. I couldn't help myself and went down and talked to them. We ended up getting moved the next day to an upgraded mountain view. A lot better room! A ton better with two beds a queen and a full. Also better from the balcony.
This is the look out of the hotel. We were in the tower that is left of the picture.
Checking Costco everyday I was able to get an intermediate car for $370. Not great but cars are so expensive there!
Food is expensive too so our Reserve's got used.
We went to Costco twice. Souvenirs for the girls, Hawaiian rum to drink in the room, coffee to take home all came from Costco. ALSO they had packages there in their gift card section. Maui Reef Vacations priced at $100 on the website could get gift card through Costco for $70. There was also a deal on doing a luau (sorry did not get that price). If I had it to do again and had such a late flight I might spend the first night at the Marriott that was by the airport and Costco (saving points/money), go to Costco next morning, and then onto the resort. Traffic is not great and the airport and Costco is kind of far from the resort area.
Hyatt Regency was on the beach boardwalk area. Right next to the Marriott which also was nice. At the end was the Sheraton (not as nice...I just ran through in the mornings but looked older). The entire area is really chill. February is whale watching season. We did a whale watching expedition that made me so sick that even this talk of cruises kind of makes me want to vomit. I am not a fan of the sea...a mountain girl for sure! One night walking down to whaler village for dinner a ton of whales were just off the beach.
Hope that is a little helpful. If anyone has questions please ask.
Leavin around
