Pool/beach areas at Aulani

glassslipper2004

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 16, 2004
How crowded/crazy are the pool and beach areas at Aulani? Can you go down in the afternoon and find a chair, or is it the kind of thing where people reserve seats with towel clips from early on in the morning? Will I see a lot of clips (should I bring my own)?

What's the vibe like later in the afternoon/evening? If we're coming back from a day's excursion, can we hang out at the pool or beach for a while?

Does anything happen outside in the evenings?

Any suggestions for navigating the pool areas? My family is me and DH and our two adult daughters.

Many thanks for any guidance!
 
Since you are all adults, you should be able to get pool chairs no problem at the adult pool. The rest of the pool deck can be hit and miss, depending on the time of year/how busy the resort is. However, the pool staff at Aulani are very good at going around and keeping track of pool chair use, and will remove items when necessary.

We find that later in the day it isn't so busy.

We also find that there is never an issue getting chairs/umbrellas on the beach, everyone seems to want to be on the pool deck!
 
They can be VERY crowded and there are issues during peak times getting chairs.
One time, mid afternoon in August, it was so busy we just put our flip flops beside a rock by the lazy river entrance along side of many other little piles of peoples belongings.
They really need to have more room during peak times.

As @keaster says, you should have no problem staking a claim at the adult pool and using as a base for your things while swimming in the other pools.
 
Thanks to you both. Any concerns with leaving belongings unattended? I've heard so much about theft in Hawaii but maybe it's not as much of an issue at the resort? I'll do a general post as well. Thanks again.
 


Any concerns with leaving belongings unattended?

As PP mentioned, any belongings left unattended for an hour or longer will be removed and I assume you can pick them up at lost & found or the pool kiosk. Otherwise, its just like anywhere else. I did read a story about someone's bag that was stolen on the Aulani FB group, so that stuff can happen anywhere. We didn't have any issues. Keep in mind that all beaches in Hawaii are public, and Aulani has an open path and stairway to the beach. Anyone is free to come on Aulani property, they just can't use the pool and chairs. So its not restricted to resort guests only.

I agree with PPs that pool crowds are hit or miss. We were there in September during low crowd season and had our choice of seat near the adult pool or on the deck in front of Ama Ama. The seats closest to the other pools were taken by the early riser towel clip people. The monitoring/policing of the pool chairs was newly in effect at the time, so I can't speak to how that has impacted how early people are reserving their spots. Never once had an issue getting a chair at the beach, and that seems pretty consistent no matter the time of year.

At night, we found the resort to be dead. They had some music at Olelo Room but not much else going on. We would go across the street to Monkeypod or down the road to the Marriott for something to do. But most nights, we found ourselves back in the room by 9pm watching TV and lights out by 10-11. I would say this was true for our entire trip in Hawaii - not much nightlife to be found throughout the islands in our experience.
 
Since you are all adults, you should be able to get pool chairs no problem at the adult pool. The rest of the pool deck can be hit and miss, depending on the time of year/how busy the resort is. However, the pool staff at Aulani are very good at going around and keeping track of pool chair use, and will remove items when necessary.

We find that later in the day it isn't so busy.

We also find that there is never an issue getting chairs/umbrellas on the beach, everyone seems to want to be on the pool deck!

Agree with this! In several stays at Aulani, I have never seen the beach area over maybe half full as to chairs availability. And even when it is very busy, like the first 1/2 of the day, we never had a problem finding 2 chairs together with a little looking. Even found 2 near the newest pool with great views when the resort was hopping. :cutie:

The resort is quieter in the evening. Part of this is because almost everyone is flying in from very far away. I mean, Hawaii is a minimum 5 hours flight from southern Cal! So folks' body clocks are not up to staying up late like they would on the mainland perhaps. I find this is true everywhere in Hawaii that I have been.

There is live music in BOTH lounges nightly at Aulani and it is SUPERB. Truly outstanding Hawaiian live entertainment, most being Na Hoku Hanohano award winners. Sitting and listening to this incredible music is truly a highlight for my DH and me each time we go to Aulani.

"Uncle" does fireside "talk story" storytelling nightly at least once per night. The pools are very pretty at night, and not NEARLY so busy.
 


We loved setting up our home-base lounge chairs in the adult pool area, Wailana Pool. Since it didn't get any through traffic, we felt comfortable leaving our phones and things at our lounge chairs while going to other pools, but it is certainly a risk. I went down early on our first day to make sure we had chairs, but quickly realized that that wasn't necessary. If you have particular chairs in mind, (for example, we wanted shade), you probably will want to get there around 8. If you're not picky, you don't need to worry about it at all, there were always available chairs there.
 
Thanks to you both. Any concerns with leaving belongings unattended? I've heard so much about theft in Hawaii but maybe it's not as much of an issue at the resort? I'll do a general post as well. Thanks again.

A woman was complaining in the bathroom last month when we were there that an employee had stolen her bag from her lounger and Disney wasn't doing anything about it. I presume she was in the family pool area, since she had kids. I mentioned about the lost & found, but she said it wasn't there and that security tracked her phone to an employee area. Anyway, don't leave anything that you don't want stolen.
 
We were there in late January. I'd say peak crowdedness around the pool was lunch time. It could be hard to find a chair in the desirable areas, but we were always able to find one somewhere. If you went out around 10, which we usually did, you would be fine. After lunch time it actually started to get less crowded (probably because of nap time).

There is a daily flyer that talks about resort events that day which will mention evening activities. Honestly, the place is pretty quiet in the evenings. There are dinner reservations of course and a couple bars that sometimes have live music, but I think they close pretty early.
 

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