heybets30
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2010
- Messages
- 453
I’m putting this under DVC trip reports, as we will end out trip with a stay at Aulani using DVC points! 2 weeks from now, we’ll be sitting on an airplane beginning our 2015 Hawaiian Adventure!! 14 Trips to Disneyland, and this is my first pre-trip, or any trip report, but for Aulani! By no means am I an unseasoned traveler, or one who is unaccustomed to flying with kids. My kids – DS (6), and DD (8), have each made approximately 25 round trip flights. About 15 of which have been between Chicago and Los Angeles, to visit their grandfather (who lives 30 miles from Disneyland), and the other trips were all to visit their grandmother in Houston every few weeks during her last few months battling pancreatic cancer. For some reason, getting prepped for HI, I spent hours, and hours, and hours researching what to bring for the beach, and what to pack if you are packing “lightly”. I was obsessed with research. For trips to SoCal and Disneyland, packing is saved until the night before, and our morning-of-flight conversation goes something like this … “if it didn’t get packed, oh well, we’ll buy it in California.” I know we can do that in HI too, but I’m REALLY hoping not to spend hours of my Hawaiian vaca in a Target or Costco, except to pick up snacks and drinks. (Admittedly, we did check out ALL of the Costcos we could on Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island during our honeymoon 10 years ago! And – in Chicago, we no longer have Safeway [our old Dominick’s] stores, so we will absolutely visit one for the deli – the olive spread for their sandwiches is to die for!!!)
US: My husband [John] (52) and I [Betsy] (44) spent our honeymoon in HI 10 years ago in 2005. We both work full-time, and hubby doesn’t get much vaca, I get 2 more weeks than he does. While his dad is still alive, we’ll stick to visiting him and Disneyland twice a year (his dad can’t fly due to an inner-ear issue), but this being our 10-year, we knew we would splurge!! On our honeymoon tour, we stayed at the Halekulani (Oahu), Four Seasons Wailea (Maui), the Grand Wailea (Maui), Hapuna Beach Prince (Big Island), and some hotel in Hilo I can’t remember (Castle something??). We spent plenty of time in the beach/pools, but we are explorers by heart – not so much hiking – but seeing sights. We are tourists by every definition of the word! Our kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the beach and pools. They are also intrepid travelers, so we will mix in some touristy sites as well as downtime at the beaches/pools of Oahu and the Big Island. They inherited by very bad trait of not being able to sit still. Not ADD, just I feel like I always have to be doing something. I don’t know how to relax. We chose Oahu just to stay at Aulani. Our kids are Disneyland vets (14 visits each), and they were kind of disappointed we were not taking our normal fall vacation to Disneyland. So, we are still embracing Disney, just at Aulani instead
Also, we promised them a trip to the Dole Plantation for a Dole Whip and lots of Duffy merchandise.
Them: The kids. Allison (8-1/2), Andrew (6). They LOVE to do adult activities. They think they are older than they are. But, they act like 2 little maniacs when put together in close quarters for more than 10 minutes (Except airplanes – they are AWESOME travelers). As I mentioned, we take them on 2 big trips a year, and they LOVE to travel. Allison is a very good swimmer - on a competitive swim team too, she’s really excited to snorkel in Rainbow Reef, and she wants to try stand-up paddleboarding too! Andrew loves splashing in shallow water and playing in the sand, but is freaking out as he knows the Lazy River at Aulani will be over his head (he’s 47.5 in now, I read that the river is 4” deep). So, hubby and I will be swapping places a lot with the kids – Andrew will probably be planted firmly on the beach, Allison will be trying every water activity at Aulani! With my irrational fear of big fish, jellyfish, and the ocean in general (grew up a land-locked suburban Chicagoan!), I'm letting them do whatever they want to try in the ocean (within reason, of course).
I wanted to sign them up for Aunty's premium Surf’s up with Chip & Dale, but it wasn’t showing yet ( around June 6), but I did eventually get them signed up in mid-July!. Right now, they are signed up for Fish are Friends for Friday, October 9, 11am too. Seriously. 4 months ahead. I had them signed up for an activity in October. In Hawaii. I can’t wrap my head around that for some reason. I think it’s the need to do it 4 months out. I registered for Aunty’s online, and I received an email that the kids are also enrolled in free activities Stitches Space Goo Wednesday the 7th at 10am, and another freebie, Keiki Hula – Thursday the 8th, 6pm. This scheduling puts the kids at Aunties almost the entire day on the 7th … I am hoping Stiches Space Goo will be offered another time so we can explore that morning.
We found out two VERY important facts about traveling to HI in October. Well, 3, if you include the first one: Rates are cheaper in October, the “off season”. Ok, the 2 VERY important facts: 1. Honolulu schools have a full week of vacation around the second week in October. The week we will be in Oahu. Supposedly, this creates a full-house at Aulani as resident rates are offered. I called Aulani, they are almost fully booked the days we are there L 2. If you travel to the Big Island, make sure you are not around during the Ironman Triathlon (there’s a ½ one in the spring – watch out for that too!). We are staying Oct 3-6 at the Fairmont Orchid … we get out of dodge right as that hotel kind of completely fills up with athletes. PHEW. We looked at the Four Seasons, but with 2 kids, the price almost doubles as they only allow 1 kid per room. Bummer. Didn’t make sense for the money, and the Fairmont Orchid looks fantastic! Honestly, I’m more excited to stay at the Fairmont Orchid right now than Aulani – I splurged on the Gold floor – got a great deal with a 30% off pre-pay deal. Once we had our flights, we knew our dates were set in stone so we went for it! The fear of Aulani being completely booked, when we thought we were going in the quiet offseason, has me worried, and not as excited as I could be.
We chose the Big Island for a few reasons over Maui or Kauai. We had a blast on our honeymoon visiting the little coffee plantations on Hawaii, visiting Volcanoes National Park, and also stopping to see Hawaii Tropical Botanic Gardens. I’m excited that my kids will get to see a super-lush botanic garden in the morning, then visit a volcano in the afternoon. There’s something so special about that! And, they LOVE coffee (yes, I’m the mom who will let her kids drink coffee – especially on vacation, especially in Kona!). Our stay in 2005 at the Hapuna Beach Prince, made us feel like we were really on vacation, more so than we ever felt on Maui or on Oahu. Maybe because we were way out of the town, in a resort. We’ll wait until the kids are older to visit Kauai – we don’t think they’d appreciate the beauty and nature yet, where we’d want to hike, explore, etc. Everybody has their own reasons why they are picking islands, those are our primary reasons.
My husband had accumulated just shy of 4 free tickets on American Airlines to fly us from Chicago to Honolulu. So, we transferred 4,000 miles from our son’s account to make the reservations. The bonus? We found the flights early enough (November 2014 – 11 months prior to flight day) that they were only 35,000 miles – EACH - ROUND TRIP!!!! The kicker? We had to fly outgoing from Chicago-Seattle, Seattle-Honolulu. We decided this wasn’t horrible. Our kids have done a total of ~30 legs between ORD and LAX, so they are used to the 4-5 hour flying time. We opted for the “last” free seats – the 7:30pm - out on October 1 – our actual 10th anniversary – from Chicago to Seattle. We also opted for the “first” free seats from Seattle to Honolulu on October 2 – 8:55am. American promised to check our bags all the way through from Chicago to Honolulu (even though the SEA-HNL stretch will be on Hawaiian Airlines as we are last out and first out flights). As American Citi Platinum MasterCard holders, we don’t have to worry about any fees for the first 4 checked bags. HOWEVER, this is the trip where we are determined to travel light, especially since our free checked bags allowance does not work for Hawaiian Airlines between islands. It could get expensive. We’re hoping to keep our checked bags to 1 for the trip over, and if we have a second on the final return, no biggie, as our return flight is American HNL-LAX-ORD, so we’re covered the whole way back for free checked bags. We bought a luggage scale as we’ve heard Hawaiian can get picky with weights of bags even being a pound or two overweight.
Our flight to Seattle had a change in time, 7 months out. Instead of leaving at 7:55pm, we leave at 5:05pm – I was hoping not to pull the kids out early from school. OOPS! We’ll need to pull them out about two hours early now(naturally, it’s picture day for them), and hubby and I will both leave work around noon or 1pm rather than get an almost a full day of work in so less PTO would be used (best laid plans, right?). But, this gets us into Seattle around 8pm, so we’ll stay at an airport hotel, get out, walk around, make sure the little legs get stretched out, and our flight to HNL departs at 9am on the 2nd. With the time change, we’ll be up early anyway. I was able to purchase inter-island flights for 4 people (HNL-Kona-HNL) for 40,000 miles using my AA miles, so very little spent on airfare, except the small tax charged us ($40 for Chi-HNL tix and $40 for HNL-Kona round trip tax). In Seattle, I chose the Cedarbrook Lodge as it is the #1 TripAdvisor rated SeaTac hotel. Looks like a gem of a hotel from all the online photos! Too bad we’ll only get evening hours, and maybe ½ hour of daytime in the morning before we head back to the airport. They have free ice cream 24/7, so my kids are PSYCHED!
In Honolulu for our first night, we really wanted to stay at the Halekulani again. We would need 2 rooms as that’s how they roll. We couldn’t justify the price for less than a 24-hour stay. So, we shifted gears and were SOLD on the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Then – you know what? The prices doubled from when we looked in Jan/Feb to what they are now for the highly recommended Ali’I Tower. I went onto the Chase Sapphire Preferred Rewards site, and saw that while I could book with 20% less points, the price ended up being still more than what I could get directly through the hotel. I stayed on the Chase site, and found the Outrigger Waikiki Reef Hotel. Cost me a lot less points, and we figure we won’t even be in the hotel for long, so pool isn’t a big deal, but kids can walk right onto the beach. And, it is free (well, I paid for so many other things to earn points.) I made a reservation at Duke’s for that first night because they mailed me a $15 certificate for our anniversary, BUT, they only had a 4:45pm reservation – one month ago – are you kidding me??? We will probably cancel and take our chances elsewhere. We enjoyed it back in 2005, but I remember having a reservation for 2 people and waiting an hour & a half for our table.
We knew we wanted Aulani, and we knew that we could get a discounted rate through David’s if we rented points (we are NOT DVC members – were interested at one point, but decided against it). I put in a bid in January, 10 months out. My reservation request was fulfilled in like 4 hours. I paid a premium for points, but got the Standard Hotel DVC room that we wanted. Why standard? We will never be in the room. We are hoping and hoping that a request for 2 queens will be honored. My kids don’t nap anymore, none of us can sit still – well, hubby can – and we are only at Aulani for 4 nights, so there’s not a lot of “just hanging out because we have a whole week” mentality! Aulani had some decent 25% off 4 nights or more with $50/night hotel credit, that would have been super-close to what we paid through David’s, but we’ll still come out ahead by maybe $200-$300. That’s 2 premium Aunty’s activities right there
The Big Island was tough – Hapuna Beach Prince was lovely for honeymooners, but we thought not for kids. The Four Seasons Hualalai was just way too expensive as we would need 2 hotel rooms per night due to their layouts, or a bungalow – I couldn’t justify it. We settled on the Fairmont Orchid. We have heard amazing things about this hotel, and while we were willing to pay for a premium experience, I was able to get a Costco package deal on the Concierge Gold floor Ocean View Room – includes so many extras that it was so worth it! We got ocean view here, as we will spend a bit more time in the room, given everything closes/ends by 8pm on the Big Island near the resort!
Then we head to Aulani. I have scoured, and scoured the DIS boards for everything Aulani. I feel we are going SO WELL PREPARED!! So thank you to all who have taken the time to answer everyone’s questions, and wrote up trip reports, your information has been INVALUABLE!!
When we return October 12, I hope to be able to share my Aulani knowledge with all of you!! Can’t wait to post a full trip report when we get back!! So, thanks again to all of you who gave so many GREAT suggestions! Can't wait to use my new knowledge of the Aulani/Oahu area to good use!
US: My husband [John] (52) and I [Betsy] (44) spent our honeymoon in HI 10 years ago in 2005. We both work full-time, and hubby doesn’t get much vaca, I get 2 more weeks than he does. While his dad is still alive, we’ll stick to visiting him and Disneyland twice a year (his dad can’t fly due to an inner-ear issue), but this being our 10-year, we knew we would splurge!! On our honeymoon tour, we stayed at the Halekulani (Oahu), Four Seasons Wailea (Maui), the Grand Wailea (Maui), Hapuna Beach Prince (Big Island), and some hotel in Hilo I can’t remember (Castle something??). We spent plenty of time in the beach/pools, but we are explorers by heart – not so much hiking – but seeing sights. We are tourists by every definition of the word! Our kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the beach and pools. They are also intrepid travelers, so we will mix in some touristy sites as well as downtime at the beaches/pools of Oahu and the Big Island. They inherited by very bad trait of not being able to sit still. Not ADD, just I feel like I always have to be doing something. I don’t know how to relax. We chose Oahu just to stay at Aulani. Our kids are Disneyland vets (14 visits each), and they were kind of disappointed we were not taking our normal fall vacation to Disneyland. So, we are still embracing Disney, just at Aulani instead
Also, we promised them a trip to the Dole Plantation for a Dole Whip and lots of Duffy merchandise.Them: The kids. Allison (8-1/2), Andrew (6). They LOVE to do adult activities. They think they are older than they are. But, they act like 2 little maniacs when put together in close quarters for more than 10 minutes (Except airplanes – they are AWESOME travelers). As I mentioned, we take them on 2 big trips a year, and they LOVE to travel. Allison is a very good swimmer - on a competitive swim team too, she’s really excited to snorkel in Rainbow Reef, and she wants to try stand-up paddleboarding too! Andrew loves splashing in shallow water and playing in the sand, but is freaking out as he knows the Lazy River at Aulani will be over his head (he’s 47.5 in now, I read that the river is 4” deep). So, hubby and I will be swapping places a lot with the kids – Andrew will probably be planted firmly on the beach, Allison will be trying every water activity at Aulani! With my irrational fear of big fish, jellyfish, and the ocean in general (grew up a land-locked suburban Chicagoan!), I'm letting them do whatever they want to try in the ocean (within reason, of course).
I wanted to sign them up for Aunty's premium Surf’s up with Chip & Dale, but it wasn’t showing yet ( around June 6), but I did eventually get them signed up in mid-July!. Right now, they are signed up for Fish are Friends for Friday, October 9, 11am too. Seriously. 4 months ahead. I had them signed up for an activity in October. In Hawaii. I can’t wrap my head around that for some reason. I think it’s the need to do it 4 months out. I registered for Aunty’s online, and I received an email that the kids are also enrolled in free activities Stitches Space Goo Wednesday the 7th at 10am, and another freebie, Keiki Hula – Thursday the 8th, 6pm. This scheduling puts the kids at Aunties almost the entire day on the 7th … I am hoping Stiches Space Goo will be offered another time so we can explore that morning.
We found out two VERY important facts about traveling to HI in October. Well, 3, if you include the first one: Rates are cheaper in October, the “off season”. Ok, the 2 VERY important facts: 1. Honolulu schools have a full week of vacation around the second week in October. The week we will be in Oahu. Supposedly, this creates a full-house at Aulani as resident rates are offered. I called Aulani, they are almost fully booked the days we are there L 2. If you travel to the Big Island, make sure you are not around during the Ironman Triathlon (there’s a ½ one in the spring – watch out for that too!). We are staying Oct 3-6 at the Fairmont Orchid … we get out of dodge right as that hotel kind of completely fills up with athletes. PHEW. We looked at the Four Seasons, but with 2 kids, the price almost doubles as they only allow 1 kid per room. Bummer. Didn’t make sense for the money, and the Fairmont Orchid looks fantastic! Honestly, I’m more excited to stay at the Fairmont Orchid right now than Aulani – I splurged on the Gold floor – got a great deal with a 30% off pre-pay deal. Once we had our flights, we knew our dates were set in stone so we went for it! The fear of Aulani being completely booked, when we thought we were going in the quiet offseason, has me worried, and not as excited as I could be.
We chose the Big Island for a few reasons over Maui or Kauai. We had a blast on our honeymoon visiting the little coffee plantations on Hawaii, visiting Volcanoes National Park, and also stopping to see Hawaii Tropical Botanic Gardens. I’m excited that my kids will get to see a super-lush botanic garden in the morning, then visit a volcano in the afternoon. There’s something so special about that! And, they LOVE coffee (yes, I’m the mom who will let her kids drink coffee – especially on vacation, especially in Kona!). Our stay in 2005 at the Hapuna Beach Prince, made us feel like we were really on vacation, more so than we ever felt on Maui or on Oahu. Maybe because we were way out of the town, in a resort. We’ll wait until the kids are older to visit Kauai – we don’t think they’d appreciate the beauty and nature yet, where we’d want to hike, explore, etc. Everybody has their own reasons why they are picking islands, those are our primary reasons.
My husband had accumulated just shy of 4 free tickets on American Airlines to fly us from Chicago to Honolulu. So, we transferred 4,000 miles from our son’s account to make the reservations. The bonus? We found the flights early enough (November 2014 – 11 months prior to flight day) that they were only 35,000 miles – EACH - ROUND TRIP!!!! The kicker? We had to fly outgoing from Chicago-Seattle, Seattle-Honolulu. We decided this wasn’t horrible. Our kids have done a total of ~30 legs between ORD and LAX, so they are used to the 4-5 hour flying time. We opted for the “last” free seats – the 7:30pm - out on October 1 – our actual 10th anniversary – from Chicago to Seattle. We also opted for the “first” free seats from Seattle to Honolulu on October 2 – 8:55am. American promised to check our bags all the way through from Chicago to Honolulu (even though the SEA-HNL stretch will be on Hawaiian Airlines as we are last out and first out flights). As American Citi Platinum MasterCard holders, we don’t have to worry about any fees for the first 4 checked bags. HOWEVER, this is the trip where we are determined to travel light, especially since our free checked bags allowance does not work for Hawaiian Airlines between islands. It could get expensive. We’re hoping to keep our checked bags to 1 for the trip over, and if we have a second on the final return, no biggie, as our return flight is American HNL-LAX-ORD, so we’re covered the whole way back for free checked bags. We bought a luggage scale as we’ve heard Hawaiian can get picky with weights of bags even being a pound or two overweight.
Our flight to Seattle had a change in time, 7 months out. Instead of leaving at 7:55pm, we leave at 5:05pm – I was hoping not to pull the kids out early from school. OOPS! We’ll need to pull them out about two hours early now(naturally, it’s picture day for them), and hubby and I will both leave work around noon or 1pm rather than get an almost a full day of work in so less PTO would be used (best laid plans, right?). But, this gets us into Seattle around 8pm, so we’ll stay at an airport hotel, get out, walk around, make sure the little legs get stretched out, and our flight to HNL departs at 9am on the 2nd. With the time change, we’ll be up early anyway. I was able to purchase inter-island flights for 4 people (HNL-Kona-HNL) for 40,000 miles using my AA miles, so very little spent on airfare, except the small tax charged us ($40 for Chi-HNL tix and $40 for HNL-Kona round trip tax). In Seattle, I chose the Cedarbrook Lodge as it is the #1 TripAdvisor rated SeaTac hotel. Looks like a gem of a hotel from all the online photos! Too bad we’ll only get evening hours, and maybe ½ hour of daytime in the morning before we head back to the airport. They have free ice cream 24/7, so my kids are PSYCHED!
In Honolulu for our first night, we really wanted to stay at the Halekulani again. We would need 2 rooms as that’s how they roll. We couldn’t justify the price for less than a 24-hour stay. So, we shifted gears and were SOLD on the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Then – you know what? The prices doubled from when we looked in Jan/Feb to what they are now for the highly recommended Ali’I Tower. I went onto the Chase Sapphire Preferred Rewards site, and saw that while I could book with 20% less points, the price ended up being still more than what I could get directly through the hotel. I stayed on the Chase site, and found the Outrigger Waikiki Reef Hotel. Cost me a lot less points, and we figure we won’t even be in the hotel for long, so pool isn’t a big deal, but kids can walk right onto the beach. And, it is free (well, I paid for so many other things to earn points
.) I made a reservation at Duke’s for that first night because they mailed me a $15 certificate for our anniversary, BUT, they only had a 4:45pm reservation – one month ago – are you kidding me??? We will probably cancel and take our chances elsewhere. We enjoyed it back in 2005, but I remember having a reservation for 2 people and waiting an hour & a half for our table.We knew we wanted Aulani, and we knew that we could get a discounted rate through David’s if we rented points (we are NOT DVC members – were interested at one point, but decided against it). I put in a bid in January, 10 months out. My reservation request was fulfilled in like 4 hours. I paid a premium for points, but got the Standard Hotel DVC room that we wanted. Why standard? We will never be in the room. We are hoping and hoping that a request for 2 queens will be honored. My kids don’t nap anymore, none of us can sit still – well, hubby can – and we are only at Aulani for 4 nights, so there’s not a lot of “just hanging out because we have a whole week” mentality! Aulani had some decent 25% off 4 nights or more with $50/night hotel credit, that would have been super-close to what we paid through David’s, but we’ll still come out ahead by maybe $200-$300. That’s 2 premium Aunty’s activities right there
The Big Island was tough – Hapuna Beach Prince was lovely for honeymooners, but we thought not for kids. The Four Seasons Hualalai was just way too expensive as we would need 2 hotel rooms per night due to their layouts, or a bungalow – I couldn’t justify it. We settled on the Fairmont Orchid. We have heard amazing things about this hotel, and while we were willing to pay for a premium experience, I was able to get a Costco package deal on the Concierge Gold floor Ocean View Room – includes so many extras that it was so worth it! We got ocean view here, as we will spend a bit more time in the room, given everything closes/ends by 8pm on the Big Island near the resort!
Then we head to Aulani. I have scoured, and scoured the DIS boards for everything Aulani. I feel we are going SO WELL PREPARED!! So thank you to all who have taken the time to answer everyone’s questions, and wrote up trip reports, your information has been INVALUABLE!!
When we return October 12, I hope to be able to share my Aulani knowledge with all of you!! Can’t wait to post a full trip report when we get back!! So, thanks again to all of you who gave so many GREAT suggestions! Can't wait to use my new knowledge of the Aulani/Oahu area to good use!
Have you tried Kohala Burger? I had that on my list ... hadn't read up on Village Burger, but I will!
