Day 14 - Friday, July 1 - Part 2: Afternoon and Evening Fun!
At this point, we were ready to take break from the pools, so we headed back up to the room to change into dry clothes. Princess and Buddy were content to keep lounging in the room, so Stephanie, Pickle, and I went off to explore some more.
We did Menehune Adventure Trail with Buddy the day before, but Pickle still wanted to give it a try… so off we went!
We stopped in the gift shop on the way down. We found that the inventory shifted around a bit throughout our visit. It seems like they'd bring out new clearance priced items once or twice a day. We found a few steals in here throughout the stay, so we ended up going back a couple times each day just to see if they had anything new.
Anyway… heading down to the Pau Hana community center to get the tablet for the adventure trail…
We explored all around the lobby and Pickle was really into it. This is a fantastic activity and I love how interactive it is. Highly recommended!
And I love how you find random menehune all around the resort. (Keep a lookout when you float through the lazy river. There are tons of them!!!)
When we were finished, Stephanie had to run back to the room for a few minutes, so Pickle and I went down to return the tablet. Cool, they were making leighs and we were welcome to join them! We made one for Pickle and then decided to surprise Stephanie with one too!
How fun!!!
We explored around a bit more and did some more browsing in the shop down in the pool area. Stephanie had previously spotted a bag (and/or beach towel) here, that they didn't have in the main gift shop. And then we just walked around soaking it all in even more.
And eventually, it was time to drop Pickle off at Aunty's Beach House. I think we dropped her off around 4:30 PM, she wanted to play for a while before they had dinner.
After leaving Pickle with Aunty, we headed back up to the room to fetch the older two for dinner. Stopping by a PhotoPass photographer on our way…
We decided to give Ulu Café another try.
I had the seafood and bacon chowder. It was good, but nothing special. For perspective, I had pretty much completely forgotten about it until I just reviewed this picture…
Stephanie had a grab n go salad. Also fine….
Princess was even less hungry, so she went with a fruit and yogurt parfait… Also fine.
Buddy got a pizza, thinking that the rest of us would share it with him.
This was sort of meh, at best. Maybe on par with Domino's pizza or something similar? On the one hand, we were trying to cut back on food expenses today (so we could splurge tomorrow), but on the other hand... this stuff isn't exactly cheap. Disney really could stand to provide better quality here.
After eating, we still had some time before the Luau started, so Princess went back to the room to chill for a while longer. (She had a cold earlier in the trip and was pretty tired at this point.) Buddy had enough fun doing the teen event the night before, that he wanted to do it again tonight. (Princess had no desire to go back.)
So Buddy's plan was to do the teen event instead of the Luau, so he headed off to hang out with his new friends…
This left Stephanie and I to explore a bit more on our own. We ended up walking around the beach for quite a while.
Oh, and I forgot to mention… apparently, there were a bunch of jellyfish in the lagoon and they discouraged people from swimming in it during our stay. No big deal for us, because we'd spent plenty of time swimming in the adjacent lagoon earlier in the week, and we had all that beach time in Maui too. But... that's why there weren't too many people out in the water for these photos…
We found a couple PhotoPass photographers, so we stopped a couple times for photos.
We ended up walking past the group of teens (with Buddy) on the beach, but being considerate parents of a young teenager, we went out of our way to ensure he didn't see us. (You know, embarrassing parents and all.
)
Oh, and there was a wedding reception going on at the time too. How cool would it be to have Mickey Mouse join your wedding party?!?!?!
Eventually, it was time for the Starlit Hui Luau, so we found Princess and headed down to the lawn area.
The lawn was about half full when we arrived. (Oh, and they give everyone a straw mat to sit on. How fun!)
We were happy with our spot despite not being up front...
They had some demonstrations/crafts for the kids, where they could do grass weaving, make leis, and stuff like that. Pickle wasn't with us, but I'm sure she would have loved these activities.
The Luau itself was fun, but if we hadn't just been to the Old Lahaina Luau in Maui, we would have enjoyed this even more. This was actually pretty lame in comparison. Which is surprising, I expected it to be "Disneyfied" and less authentic, but for some reason, but I think the overall production could have been a lot better. Apparently, they discontinued this and replaced it with a paid version. Maybe that one is better now.
Regardless, it was a beautiful evening, the energy and atmosphere of the crowd was great, and we did enjoy ourselves. It was also cool to get a good dose of Mickey and Friends here (since the whole Disney character thing is pretty subdued at Aulani in general.)
After the Luau, they had an open dance party. Princess was having fun doing the electric slide (or whatever it's called) with everyone. And a few minutes later, Aunty's called to have us come pick up Pickle. We were concerned that she wasn't having fun and that maybe she had asked them to have us pick her up, but it turns out that this is normal protocol for everyone. They're just trying to clear the place out asap.
So yeah, we fetched Pickle from Aunty's and it turns out that she had an amazing time. She wasn't even close to being ready to leave. LOL.
For dinner, they served the kids slices of pizza (cheese or pepperoni) and some fruit. She said that she had pineapple and strawberries. And they had kebabs for desert. She said that they were chocolate covered marshmallows (with sprinkles) alternating between pieces of pineapple on the skewers. She loved them!
She loved the Coconut Kings and Queens of Comedy too. Pickle has a goofy sense of humor, so this was right up her alley.
Oh yeah…. When we signed up for the PhotoPass, they encouraged us to stop by the station in the main gift shop at the end of each night to have open/group event photos assigned to our account. (They essentially said, don't wait until the next day.) We knew that they were taking photos at the pool party, and that they took photos at Aunty's, so we went there immediately after we picked up Pickle.
This is an area where we were disappointed with Aulani's customer service compared to experiences at other Disney resorts. We did exactly as we were instructed. Arriving about 20 minutes before they closed the PhotoPass area. (And we couldn't have arrived any sooner after picking up Pickle.) The line was long and the people who worked the area were sort of grumpy. And one of the ladies had an attitude. Which was frustrating. If you don't want too many people piling up in the gift shop at the end of the night, don't make a big deal about telling them to do so in the first place. And then, maybe staff the area more appropriately. We really would have preferred to just come back in the morning to select our photos, but we were just following instructions. Oh well… It's really not that big of a deal, but I expected the Aulani cast to be on point throughout our stay and this is one of a few examples where they just weren't up to Disney standards.
We did get some fun photos though. Here are a couple from the comedy event at Aunty's
It was probably 10pm at this point. All in all, it was a fantastic day and we were ready to call it a night.
Good night moon.
)
