My Aulani trip - Bestie & Babies

[MrsPinup]

Hi There! I am one of the DIS Diva's from over at the Disneyland pages and I am a HUGE Disney fanatic! I live with my husband, two sons, and baby daughter in Northern California and we try to go to DL at least a few times a year.

This past year, partly because of the new baby, and partly because we are saving for a long vacation at WDW in 2015, we have been on a Disney break. It is so hard to stay away.

Aulani has always just been this impossible dream for me. I had never been to Hawaii and would never have the money to go vacation there, let alone at Aulani. This past April that all changed.

I am going to share my story with you, as much as I can, and I hope you appreciate our time there.

This is also my first trip report, so please bare with me as I figure out how to link each post in this original post

Pre-trip
Tuesday (arrival)
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday (departure)

 

[MrsPinup]

On April 2nd, 2014, my best friend texted me letting me know she had a free trip to the Aulani. Due to certain contractual requirements, I cannot give more details at this moment.

At first I thought she was playing a belated April Fool's Day joke on me. She wasn't. Obviously lol.

The trip was for 6 days and 5 nights for airfare and the room. All other expenses were her responsibility. She had three days to return the contract. Her and her husband were excited to go and had started planning the trip; planning to also bring their young son and her father.

The next day, her husband's boss informed him he could not have a week off during the summer (the trip had specific dates to be taken by.) Because of my love for Disney, she called and asked if my DD (now 10 months) would like to join her and her son (now 17 months) would like to go. I practically screamed, "YESSSSSS!!!" "Are you sure you don't want to run this by your husband?," she queried. "Ummm, no. He will understand. It won't be a problem." And I know my husband. It wasn't. He was thrilled for me, truly.

We selected our dates, July 8-13, and soon we were given information for our flights and were contacted by Disney Travel with our paperwork.

The first thing I did was look up Pearl Harbor, because this was something I knew I must see. Pre-ordered tickets were already gone. I started to look into the standby tickets and get informed on that. My friend had not been to Pearl Harbor since her honeymoon in 2010 and many things had changed there since then.

Another friend of mine had recently moved from Oahu because her husband was re-stationed to Kentucky, but she was able to give me a lot of great information about places to eat and things to do.

We did hit a few snags in the planning, however. My friend did not want to rent a car for more than 24 hours, did not want me heading out on my own to explore, and wanted to just play everything by ear. I am a planner lol.

In the end, we settled on renting a car from Alamo for $84 for 24 hours from the Aulani so we could grab groceries at Target and visit Pearl Harbor (my birthday wish) and visit Dole Plantation afterwards (her desire.)

The three months we had to plan went by quickly and before we knew it, it was time to go!

 

[MrsPinup]

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[MrsPinup]

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[MrsPinup]

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[MrsPinup]

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[MrsPinup]

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[MrsPinup]

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[Dugette]

Following along! Look forward to hearing about the trip! We'll be at Aulani in 3 months with our 2-year-old.