Trip Report - 16 Days in Hawaii - Maui, Oahu, and Aulani!

[MarbleBob]

Day 8 - Saturday, June 25 - Part 2: Diamond Head

Next up, we all decided to drive over to Diamond Head State Monument, which is just southeast of Waikiki.



It's essentially a giant volcanic crater. You drive into the center of it through a tunnel, and then you can hike up to the top of the rim from the inside. Cool!



I don't remember exactly how long the hike was, but it was pretty hot and steep. If you decide to do this, make sure you bring a water bottle!!!

Stephanie's parent's knew that they weren't up for the steep uphill hike, so they planned to stay back and relax under a shade tree. The younger two girls eventually decided to stay back with them. But for the rest of us, it was onward and upward.

And boy, it was actually a bit strenuous. I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit winded when we finally got to the top. LOL.

But oh man… the view was absolutely worth it!





I'd say we spent nearly two hours at the park in total. Maybe 30 minutes hiking up, 20 minutes up at the top, 20 minutes back down, and another 30 minutes goofing around in the visitors area. The kids had shave ice and we all relaxed a bit in the shade.



We eventually headed back towards the condo, leaving the crater around 4:15 PM. We had stopped at Safeway to get most of our groceries the day before, but we wanted to stop at Costco (in Kapolei) and pick up some additional food and snacks… So we did! We got a bunch of Hawaiian chocolate, a giant pack of Hi-Chews, fruit, fresh cookies, fresh muffins, and lots of stuff from their "ready to eat" section. Things like a shrimp tray, tortellini pasta salad, chicken wraps, fruit, etc. Good stuff and good prices all around.

(Oh, and I didn't mention it earlier, but throughout the trip we tried all sorts of fresh fruit. Papaya, a few of the most amazing pineapples that you ever tasted, watermelon, strawberries, mangos, etc. So good!)

Anyway, we loaded up with goodies and headed back to have dinner in the condo.

After dinner, I took the kids down to the pool for an hour or two. Such a lovely evening! (Pool pics are still to come.) And it was nice to soak your feet in the hot tub after so much walking earlier in the day!

 

[MarbleBob]

Sorry to hear about the rental car problems. We had a similar problem with Delta. My son and I have the same first and last names but different middle names. We went to checkin for a flight at the kiosk and were told we had to see an agent.

The agent told us that since there were two people booked on the same flight with the same name, they had canceled one.

I told them that there were two of us, we had paid for two seats, and wanted it fixed. It was at this point the gate agent told me I would need to pay a $100 name change fee for my son. I asked why, the ticket was booked in his name? I just got blank stares and more demands to pay a $100 name change fee.

Two supervisors later we were finally checked in but were told never to book the two of us on the same flight or it would just happen again. From that point forward I have always had to add his middle initial to the end of his first name. It causes issues with the TSA, but so far they have always understood after a short explanation.

Wow, that's a crazy story about Delta! Those employees should have been empowered to cut through the red tape and resolve that for you. I'm sure they felt bad that they were asking you to pay $100, but had to follow the rules. I guess, that's one of the reasons that Disney is so good with customer service. They empower (and trust) their cast members to take care of their guests with minimal fuss!

 

[melk]

Awesome trip report, as usual! You've packed so much into these two pages I can't remember all I wanted to comment on. But really, what beautiful pictures and what a great family experience.

As an aside I've been sitting here for an hour reading this so my husband asked about it and said to stop reading because he knows I'm going to want to start planning a trip to Hawaii!!!

 

[heaven2dc]

Amazing trip so far! Love the pics and your writing style - I agree with everyone that this is by far the best TR!

I enjoyed the perspective of the beginning part of your trip in Maui. Were most of the beaches in Maui mostly a brown colored sand vs white or lighter color? My son visited Maui about 4 years ago and was on the Eastward side so I can't recall what the beaches looked like.

Love your family collages - fantastic job!

 

[alohamom]

WOW-your report is awesome! I am loving all the details and the portraits of the whole family on Maui are amazing. I LOVE the one of the grandkids all holding hands looking out to the ocean. Man, if I were a grandparent I would go gaga over that one!!! I also really like how you guys coordinated the whites without it looking too matchy. I am also happy you provided a couple of shots of the inside of the Ko Olina Beach Club condo, I have walked past but never been inside so they were great. I also think the panoramic of the Iao needle area is fantastic, thanks for the details so far-cant wait for more!

 

[CateinPhoenix]

Wonderful trip report! Enjoying following along

 

[MarbleBob]

Awesome trip report, as usual! You've packed so much into these two pages I can't remember all I wanted to comment on. But really, what beautiful pictures and what a great family experience.

As an aside I've been sitting here for an hour reading this so my husband asked about it and said to stop reading because he knows I'm going to want to start planning a trip to Hawaii!!!

Thanks a bunch, and happy to have you back along for the ride! That's funny about your husband's comments. If we didn't already have our anniversary cruise and trip to Disneyland planned, I think I might be itching to plan a return trip to Hawaii right now too!!

Amazing trip so far! Love the pics and your writing style - I agree with everyone that this is by far the best TR!

I enjoyed the perspective of the beginning part of your trip in Maui. Were most of the beaches in Maui mostly a brown colored sand vs white or lighter color? My son visited Maui about 4 years ago and was on the Eastward side so I can't recall what the beaches looked like.

Love your family collages - fantastic job!

Thanks so much for the awesome feedback. Yeah, the beaches that we visited were pretty much that tan colored sand. I don't really remember any white sand beaches. And we did visit that one black sanded beach, but apparently that's an anomaly. I think there might be a red sand beach on the island too. But yeah, most of it was a typical tan color.

WOW-your report is awesome! I am loving all the details and the portraits of the whole family on Maui are amazing. I LOVE the one of the grandkids all holding hands looking out to the ocean. Man, if I were a grandparent I would go gaga over that one!!! I also really like how you guys coordinated the whites without it looking too matchy. I am also happy you provided a couple of shots of the inside of the Ko Olina Beach Club condo, I have walked past but never been inside so they were great. I also think the panoramic of the Iao needle area is fantastic, thanks for the details so far-cant wait for more!

And thanks for your comments too! Yeah, we really ended up with some fantastic photos from that family shoot. My favorite is the one of my family jumping in the air. We only jumped once, and it seems to have been dumb luck that it ended up so symmetrical. But yeah, that grandkids holding hands is fun too!

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 9 - Sunday, June 26 - Part 1: A day at Ko Olina

The plan for today to spend the entire day in Ko Olina. Enjoying the resort pool, the beaches/lagoons, etc. And also exploring around Aulani a bit.

So yeah, our resort was literally next door to Aulani… maybe a five minute walk at the most. This next photo shows the pin marker at our resort.



So, we had the lagoon directly in front of us, and also the adjacent lagoons at Aulani and the Marriott. Since they are all very similar, we only actually swam in ours… but they are all open to the public.

After so many early and busy mornings, the kids wanted to sleep in a bit later today. But Stephanie, her mom, and I were up and ready to explore! (Oh, and I forgot to mention… On this leg of the vacation, we split up into two groups. My family stayed with Stephanie's parents. And then her brother, sister, and their families all stayed in a separate unit a few floors down.)

So we left around 8:00 AM with the goal of walking along the beach, up past Aulani, and then over to Paradise Cove Beach (which is at the very top of the photo above.) I had read here on the DIS, that people frequently see sea turtles up in that lagoon, so we wanted to go check it out…

This next section of the report is going to be fairly photo heavy, mostly of pictures of our resort, as we headed out to the lagoons to walk along the beaches…

So from our room we take the elevator down, and upon exiting our building, you walk past a more traditional swimming pool.



And then heading towards the beach, they have a path that sort of winds its way through a water garden area and then into the larger pool.









And eventually, you make your way to the pools… (I say pools, but it was one giant pool consisting of a bunch of smaller pools that were all interconnected.)





I loved all these lounge chairs that were basically at water level. So cool!





Hot tub in the foreground…



And a pebble beach kids pool just behind it!



And all along the way, they had the most beautiful landscaping and flowers! Here are a few of those too…













And eventually… we made it to the lagoons. Here are a couple photos of the lagoon in front of our resort.

That's the Marriott off in the distance…

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 9 - Sunday, June 26 - Part 2: An Aulani Teaser

Once we made it to the lagoon, we took a right and started heading north towards Aulani. Lots of peole were out for their morning walks. It was quite pleasant!

So we came up to Aulani's lagoon and enjoyed walking around it…



We had decided to go check out the Paradise Cove Beach first, so the plan was to walk past Aulini, up through the front of the Four Seasons, and then over to the "secret entrance" to Paradise Cove through a parking lot…



And looking back towards our resort from the north side of Aulani's lagoon…





OK… This is cool! If it wasn't such a long walk from our room, it would have been fun to bring all our beach gear here and spend a few hours swimming.





You could walk out onto the barrier rocks and get right up to the open ocean… Although the water is pretty rough (and the rocks even more so), so you'd be smart to swim on the lagoon side…



This was indeed a special spot. Really nice and secluded... But we didn’t see any of those turtles that I had read about. Maybe we just had bad timing.

As cool as this place was, we were ready to go spend some time exploring Aulani… So we headed along the sidewalk, up to Aulani's front entrance. And.. OK.. We gotta stop for a photo!



So… I took quite a few photos, but I'll keep this to mostly a teaser. (And go crazy later.... saving the rest for our official arrival.) But walking in the main entrance was pretty epic!



And heading straight through the lobby looking out into the pool area..



Hey look, Mickey is down there!!!!!!!!!!



After exploring the lobby for a while, we decided to head downstairs so that we could go check out the pool areas.

On the way, we noticed several hiding menehune. How cool!



Oh man, and I thought the pools next door were awesome! These were off the charts!!!







After a half hour or so of exploring, we decided to head back and see if the kids were ready to head down to the beach. First impressions of Aulani? Uhmm... this is going to be great!!!

And oh yeah, between the resorts, there is a wedding chapel. A couple had obviously just gotten married and were getting photos made as we walked by. Congratulations!!!!

 

[MarbleBob]

Wonderful trip report! Enjoying following along

Thank you so much. Happy to have you following along!!!

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 9 - Sunday, June 26 - Part 3: Beach Time!

We arrived back at our room around 10am and the kids were just beginning to stir. We fed them a late breakfast, and everyone got ready to head down the to beach. We spent a couple hours in the lagoon, came back up to the condo for a late lunch, and then spent the better part of the afternoon swimming in the pools.













So yeah, a lot of fun in the sun today. These pictures can't even begin to do it justice. The air was so fresh and pure. Sun everywhere. Blue skies. A great breeze. Occasionally, you'd watch one of those pretty Hawaiian airlines planes approach from the west towards Honolulu. Just great!

For dinner, we decided to order carry out from the Pizza Corner, which is basically across the street from Aulani. I didn't get any photos of the pizza, but it was actually quite enjoyable. And it was reasonably priced. Not the best pizza ever, but definitely a big step up from a typical chain pizza place.



After dinner, we watched the sunset from the patio. And then then we all just relaxed inside. With Buddy and Pickle watching more silly Disney Channel shows!

 

[sbeets]

I want more!!!! I may follow your trip advice for our next family adventure

 

[alohamom]

The loungers are gorgeous! I have seen them in pools at a couple of Mexican resorts but they are usually made of concrete or something like that. They are so graceful...

 

[Amw1064]

Still loving your trip report. I think you missed the turtles at the Paradise Cove beach because you were there to early. We have never seen them out before 11-12:00 but we have been fortunate to see them every time we have walked over. I have to ask, what kind of camera are you using? I have a nice Nikon that I bring everywhere but I prefer not bringing it in the water.

 

[MarbleBob]

I want more!!!! I may follow your trip advice for our next family adventure

How cool! Stay tuned, I'll probably have a couple more updates today...

The loungers are gorgeous! I have seen them in pools at a couple of Mexican resorts but they are usually made of concrete or something like that. They are so graceful...

Yeah, they sort of look like leaves floating on the water. They were actually comfy too!

Still loving your trip report. I think you missed the turtles at the Paradise Cove beach because you were there to early. We have never seen them out before 11-12:00 but we have been fortunate to see them every time we have walked over. I have to ask, what kind of camera are you using? I have a nice Nikon that I bring everywhere but I prefer not bringing it in the water.

Thanks for the note on the turtles. If we ever go back, we'll have to try for later in the day

The photos from this trip report are coming from four different cameras, but mostly an Olympus Pen E-P3. It's a smallish (micro 4/3) interchangeable lens camera. I've had it for a little over five years now. Starting to show its age, but it still takes decent photos. And then there'll be a bunch of photos from our phones. I had an iPhone 6 at the time, and Stephanie took a bunch of photos on her 6 plus. Finally, most of the photos in the water were from a GoPro Session 4. (The little cube in the bottom right of the photo.) It's super small and convenient. I mostly used it for video, but I took a fair amount of still photos too...

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 10 - Monday, June 27 - Part 1: LeSportsac, Waikiki Beach, and the Disney Store

The plan for the day was to head to Waikiki Beach for the morning and then do some shopping in downtown Honolulu in the afternoon.

Not sure if any of you ladies are fans of LeSportsac bags or not… But ever since they did all those the Mary Blair It's a Small World bags a few years ago, Stephanie has become a HUGE LeSportsac fan!





So, when she learned that they had an outlet store not too far from Aulani, it was a no brainer that we make a stop there one of our excursions. The timing worked today, so we stopped at the Waikele Premium Outlets first…





And Stephanie was in heaven. Everything was at least 30% off. And they had some cool Hawaiian prints, and some of the shapes that were exclusive to Hawaii.







The lady in the shop was super friendly and helpful. Just like the Vera Bradley and Dooney Disney bags, the placement of the print varies from bag to bag... and people agonize on which one to pick out. The lady was super helpful as Stephanie tried to pick out her favorite.

And at that point, Pickle decided that she wanted to use some of her birthday money on her own bag too. How cute!

(And I love that Stephanie still uses this as her primary purse these days. Makes me happy every time I see it. Now that's a souvenir!)



So there was a Vans outlet store in the same mall, so we decided to visit that shop too.





If you know me, as a skateboarder, I have a soft spot for Vans shoes. Those are what I skate with, but I have a few pairs of the Disney and Star Wars collaborations too. So as much as Stephanie is into LeSportsac, I'm just as into Vans. LOL. They had some Hawiian exclusive t-shirts on sale… three for about $20. Crazy good deal. So we got a few shirts and I got a cool hat designed by Yusuke Hanai. I LOVE his artwork!



And being bald, you can never have too many hats!!!

By the time we made it to Waikiki, it was about 11:30 AM.



We actually stopped at the far south end of the beach, as we found a great parking spot!



We spent a couple hours swimming and enjoying the sun! Oh, and the condo had some boogie boards, so we brought them too. Probably spent most of the time riding the waves.









There was a nice green park area between the beach and the parking section. So pretty!



We brought a picnic lunch and ate right there on the beach. Lovely!

Our parking spot had a two hour max, around 1:30 PM, we had to decide whether to re-up it, or move on. My immediate family was ready to move on (we had more shopping to do), so we parted ways with everyone else...

The other thing we wanted to do was to visit the Disney Store in at the Ala Moana Center (giant shopping mall in Honolulu.) So we headed there next!



This place was HUGE!!! We passed another LeSportsac store (non-outlet) and we spent a fair amount of time in there too!



And eventually, we made it over to the Disney store. We are still suckers for Disney Stores, but even Pickle has essentially outgrown their primary target audience. Still fun to browse around though!







They had some cool Hawaiian exclusives, but ultimately, we didn't buy anything. (Saving our fun money for Aulani!)







Buddy and I finished browsing well before the girls, so we went and sat outside the store. I struck up a conversation with an older Asian gentleman, and he said that they had just come from the new Japanese food court. Hugh? Yeah, it's a giant food court filled with Japanese food…

Oh, we are so going to go check that out!

We had recently eaten lunch, so we just explored… This next video is unedited. I just had the camcorder on for a few minutes while we walked around. But it'll give you an idea of how special/unique this place is. Oh, it was called, Shirokiya Japan Village Walk. Very cool!!!!

We stopped a few random stores as we walked through the mall. A Swatch watch store, Louis Vuitton, etc. (Princess was in heaven at Louis Vuitton. Way too pricey for our budget, but fun to look anyway.)

The other goal for the mall, was to visit the Japanese grocery store, Nijiya, way down at the far corner of the property. Pretty much everyone in our family loves Japanese treats. We loaded up, I tell you. All kinds of chocolates and hard candies. And a few other snacks/goodies too. I bet we spent $75 on candy between the five of us. We brought most of it back home, in case you wondered if we gorged on candy. LOL. At this point, we were ready for snacks, so we all picked out something and enjoyed them in their little eating area.

I got this ice cream thingy.. Ice cream covered in chocolate, covered in a waffle.



Oh man, it was out of this world. Crazy good!



Princess had the same thing but in a green tea version… She LOVES matcha flavored things!



Other than ramune sodas, I don’t recall what everyone had. I was too absorbed in my own little piece of ice cream heaven…

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 10 - Monday, June 27 - Part 2: More Shopping

After we finished enjoying our snacks, we decided to make our way back to the car… with a couple more stops on the way.

First, we stopped at the Sanrio store.



They had some cool Hawaiian exclusives too!





Pickle ended up getting a couple small souvenirs to take back to her friends…



They had a Hawaiian exclusive pressed penny machine too!



We stopped at a couple toy stores. Pickle thought it was pretty funny that they had poop emoji pens for sale. LOL.



And finally, we spent a good amount of time at the Vans store. They had just released the Nintendo collaborations, so we had fun checking all that stuff out…



Eventually, we made it back to the car and started heading back home. But, we stopped at another small shopping center on the way out of Honolulu. There was a Japanese stationary store that Princess wanted to visit too…



This place was heaven for a teenage girl who is all into cute Japanese kawaii stuff.



She picked up a few small goodies, and we were finally on our way back to Ko Olina…

At this point it was dinner time, so we decided to stop to eat as we passed through Kapolei. After missing out on the Japanese food at the food court, we decided to have sushi for dinner… Except for when we arrived at our first choice, it was going to be over an hour before they could seat us. We didn't feel like waiting, so we Yelped again and found sushi place #2, just down the road. Foiled! They had an hour wait too. We decided that we'd just come back to the first place tomorrow as soon as they open for lunch, and cop out with Panda Express tonight. (Panda was in the same shopping center as the second sushi joint.)

Not much to say about Panda. It is what it is. Except for it was a beautiful evening and they had outside seating, so it was actually quite enjoyable.

After dinner, we headed back to the resort. I don't recall exactly what we did for the rest of the evening, but I'm pretty sure it involved watching Disney Channel and swimming at the pool!

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 11 - Tuesday, June 28 - Part 1: Sushi Bay

We had previously purchased tickets for the Kualoa Ranch Jungle Expedition, with our tour scheduled to start at 1pm. So we worked the day around that. The goal was to go back to Sushi Bay restaurant, and be there when they opened at 10:30 AM for an early lunch. And then drive over to the eastern shore for the expedition, and after that, spend the rest of the afternoon exploring that eastern area…

If you are familiar with Oahau, I'm sure that you are already familiar with Kualoa Ranch. But if not, it's this amazingly lush valley on the eastern shore. A ton of movies and TV shows were filmed here. The Jurrassic Park movies and the Lost TV show are probably the most famous. They have all sorts of activities at the ranch, but I think the tours are the most popular. They have two options. One that takes you more into the valley and focuses on the movie sites. And the other takes you along the outside of the valley and focuses more on the landscape and history (but you do get to see some movie stuff too.) So… My sister and her family visited Oahu the summer before, and they thought that this Jungle Expedition was one of their absolute highlights of the trip. Not wanting to miss out, we took her recommendation and and it didn't dissapoint.

But before we headed to the ranch, we stopped for an early lunch at Sushi Bay in Kapolei.





This place has great reviews on Yelp, and after eating here, I can see why. It was really good, but the price was outstanding. I guess conveyor belt sushi places can be hit or miss, but since we got there right when they opened everything was freshly made. (And good thing we got there early too. We snagged the last open table before the waiting game began.) Beside the conveyor belt, you can order anything they make off the menu (if you prefer to avoid the conveyor), and they have some things that you can only get on the menu. We did a bit of both.

Also, you pay by the plate. With each plate color having a different price.









Tempura mushrooms… amazing!





Buddy doesn't really enjoy sushi very much, but he loves udon noodles and beef don. He was stoked on this! I was too, because he couldn't eat it all… and I helped. LOL.





Everything was really good. Possibly not for serious sushi snobs, but certainly better than average sushi, and the value was unbelievable! Not counting the tip, it was like $45 for all five us to get stuffed. (Without knowing the prices before hand, I expected the meal to cost at least twice that.) This is probably why it's so busy/crowded. And totally full of locals. I would come back here again without hesitation! (Multiple times.) Oh, and friendly service too

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 11 - Tuesday, June 28 - Part 2: Kualoa Ranch

Next up was the drive to Kualoa Ranch… It's about an hour from Ko Olina, so probably 45 minutes from the sushi restaurant.



You have to drive through a mountain pass to there. It sure was beautiful!





We arrived about 30 or 40 minutes before our tour started, so we had plenty of time to explore the grounds.



This map gives you a good idea of the size of the place. The main valley stuff… there the big open fields for Lost and Jurrasic Park were filmed is off to the right. And our tour was going to be off to the left side of the main valley ridge.



They had stables and stuff for horse rides. Not sure what this statue was doing here, but Pickle sure got a kick out of it.



So yeah, the large valley was on the other side of this ridge, we'd be staying on its left side.



And they loaded our tour group into three of these truck thingies.





We lucked out and had the most adventurous of the three drivers. He was pretty wild. If you didn't know any better, you might of thought that Mr. Toad was driving!



It was probably a 45 minute to an hour tour. Winding through off road trails up in the hills. There were a couple of initial stops where they explained about some of the ancient Hawaiian culture.



And looking off to the left… Holy Cow!!!



Of everything we saw in all of Maui and Oahu, I think this eastern side of Oahu was the most impressive. Just wow!

I think they called that island, "China Man's Hat" or something like that.



Anyway, we snaked our way up the valley wall, stopping at a cultural site.





They shared some of the rituals that the natives would have done at a site like this. Really interesting!



We hopped back on our trucks and snaked further up the valley wall. Looking out to sea, they pointed out these old man made fishing lagoons. Apparently, these were made by hand… centuries ago.



Hmm… well this seems odd out in the middle of the jungle…



Turns out that we were driving into a set from Jurassic World. Cool!!!



Amazing what a bit of movie magic can do for something like this! Look at those claw marks!





A little further into the jungle, we passed another movie set. It was under wraps because the movie hadn't been released yet. But you could see a few things like this propeller... It looks like it was embedded into the tree, but it was actually cut to shape and attached with wires.



I'm pretty sure, this was a helicopter under the tarps…



They were technically forbidden from sharing the name of the movie, but apparently he could get away with telling us that it rhymed with "Ping Pong." I think Kong came out on DVD recently, I guess we need to see it, just to see if we can see this spot in the movie…

Moving on, futher up the valley wall…





This was pretty much as far up as we went. And now time for the roller coaster ride. I love thrill rides, but I have to admit that I was getting a little nervous with Mr. Toad up in the front. It felt borderline reckless at a few points. LOL.

Coming back towards the visitor center, we passed through a herd of cows. That was unexpected.



Back at the ranch, they had a petting zoo. There was not a chance that Pickle was going to let us just pass this by!













We checked out the animals for a while and decided to move on. So what did we think of the excursion? It was pretty awesome, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. Though, I wonder if we would have enjoyed the movie side better? Regardless, looking out to sea from this ridge was non-stop breathtaking all the way.

Like I said before, this was my favorite coast of all of Maui and Oahu. Sooooo beautiful!

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 11 - Tuesday, June 28 - Part 3: The Byodo-In Temple

After the jungle tour, we decided that we had plenty of time to go visit the Byodo-In Temple… and even enough time to spare for a stop at the beach.

We didn't get out and swim or anything, but we did explore along the beachfront for a little while…







And then we headed back south towards the temple…



Instead of trying to paraphrase what this place is, I'll just quote from Wikipedia:

The Byodo-In (平等院?) Temple is a non-denominational temple located on the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i at the Valley of the Temples. It was dedicated in August 1968 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. The temple is a replica of a 900-year-old Buddhist temple at Uji in Kyoto prefecture of Japan. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a functioning Buddhist temple in the proper sense as it does not host a resident monastic community nor an active congregation. Inside the Byodo-In Temple is a 18 ft (5.5 m) statue of the Lotus Buddha, a wooden image depicting Amitabha. It is covered in gold and lacquer. Outside is a three-ton, brass peace bell. Surrounding the temple are large koi ponds that cover a total of two acres (8,000 m²). Around those ponds are lush Japanese gardens set against a backdrop of towering cliffs of the Ko'olau mountains. The gardens are home to sparrows and peacocks. The temple covers 11,000 sq ft (1,000 m2).​

If you ever watched the Lost TV show, and you remember the scenes early on when Sun and Jin were back in Korea, at Sun's father's house. Those scenes were filmed here. Remembering how beautiful that was, we thought it would be fun to come here and see it first hand.

It's actually located in the back of a large cemetery. An amazingly beautiful cemetery! Here's a photo looking back towards the cemetery from the entrance to the temple.



They charge admission in that little hut, but it was just a couple bucks each. And totally worth it!



I'm not too familiar with Buddhist culture, so some of the rituals were lost on me. But it was amazingly beautiful, calm, and peaceful.



The peace bell was super cool. People would come up from time to time and ring it. A very deep and resonating sound would come out.



Lots and lots of water features in all the nooks and crannies. The sound of trickling water everywhere really adds to the ambiance.







Even the cats were peaceful!



I guess this giant statue (of the Lotus Buddha) inside the center of the temple is the main attraction. He had all sorts of incense sticks burning and offerings around him. Not wanting to disturb anyone or commit any faux pas, we took off our shoes, walked up to see up close for a second, and then we moved on…





They had a gift shop with a pressed penny machine, and the kids chose to do press a couple.



You could also purchase some fish food pellets inside the gift shop. Buddy and Pickle each purchased little baggies full of the food, and then had a lot of fun feeding the koi.



Hi turtle!





What an amazing place! And I'm so glad we hopped out of our comfort zone and decided to visit the temple! If you are ever on the eastern shore, I'd highly recommend checking this place out. I think we spent about 45 minutes total here, and that was plenty.

Around 4:30 PM, we decided to head back to Ko Olina. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, but the traffic through Honolulu to at least Kapolei is crazy busy during rush hour. So we decided to get a move on, knowing that it would probably take 50% longer to get back to the condo than it did to get here.

Funny, the rest of the evening is sort of a blur for us. Pickle was getting hangry on the way back, so we pulled off in Kapolei and got her a kids meal at KFC. Which is strange, because we pracitcally never eat there at home. What's even more strange, is that I don’t think Buddy or Princess got anything. I think we then went back to the condo and had left over pizza from the other night and some of the Costco food.

I do remember that we did come back to Wal-Mart in Kapolei later that evening. We heard that they had cheap souvenirs, so we decided to go check it out. I remember waiting in the check out line, but for the life of me, I can't remember what we purchased. LOL.