West Coast DVC Owners: WDW or Aulani More?

[HIRyeDVC]

We live in SoCal and are very local to DLR. We own several contracts between VGC and WDW resorts, but our entire family prefers Aulani. Now that SWA has direct flights out of Long Beach, an Aulani trip is way cheaper/more convenient for us than WDW. Genie + and individual lightning lanes are a real turn off for us.

We are Magic Key holders currently and had APs at DLR for years before COVID. We’d go at least once a week and were avid Maxpass users. At this point no one in the fam even wants to go to DLR - they’ve certainly lost a ton of our money we used to spend weekly on top of our passes. Our WDW trips are way different as well thanks to the money grabbing at every opportunity that Disney has put in place.

Anyhow, back to Aulani! We’ll happily start using all our points there (and/or sell some) if we decide to completely give up on DLR/WDW. My in-laws own a condo on Maui so we’ve spent a lot of time there, but we overall prefer Oahu. We’re an active family and love the hiking, cliff jumping, shave ice, and diverse opportunities on Oahu. Truthfully though, I could literally spend all day in the lazy river with occasional trips down either of the two slides. I’m a total homebody, but for some reason Aulani is the only place I never am ready to leave.

This is a prime example of grass always being greener. We live on Oahu and all we ever think about is living close to DLR so we could go every week. We too are magic key holders and hate that we can only go 2-3x a year. We’ve been going to AUL for staycations ever since it opened and we still love it but nothing beats being in the parks for us.

 

[bwvBound]

This is a prime example of grass always being greener. We live on Oahu and all we ever think about is living close to DLR so we could go every week. We too are magic key holders and hate that we can only go 2-3x a year. We’ve been going to AUL for staycations ever since it opened and we still love it but nothing beats being in the parks for us.

We live in SoCal and are very local to DLR. We own several contracts between VGC and WDW resorts, but our entire family prefers Aulani. ... I’m a total homebody, but for some reason Aulani is the only place I never am ready to leave.

I see a (vacation) House Exchange opportunity???

 

[CaliforniaGirl09]

We live in Northern California and since RunDisney stopped racing in Anaheim, we have to go to WDW for races. I do 2-3 races a year. We visited Aulani, but it was a one and done for us since we go to Maui 3-4 times a year and much prefer it.

 

[HIRyeDVC]

I see a (vacation) House Exchange opportunity???

You some kinda disboards match maker? I’d be happy to swap houses or dvc points!

 

[GeneralLeia003]

Before the pandemic, we went to WDW twice a year. We love Hawaii, but prefer Maui over Oahu. Since the pandemic, we’ve been to Aulani 3 times and the kids love it. I foresee a 50/50 split in the near future.

 

[LilyJC]

This is a prime example of grass always being greener. We live on Oahu and all we ever think about is living close to DLR so we could go every week. We too are magic key holders and hate that we can only go 2-3x a year. We’ve been going to AUL for staycations ever since it opened and we still love it but nothing beats being in the parks for us.

Definitely to each his/her own! My question for you would be how much time have you spent at DLR since the implementation of Genie + this past December? Things are quite different now…

 

[HIRyeDVC]

Definitely to each his/her own! My question for you would be how much time have you spent at DLR since the implementation of Genie + this past December? Things are quite different now…

Haven been since October But we’ll be there next week for 10 days. Since we are key holders, we plan to hit up the parks almost everyday so going park commando with genie isn’t our cup of tea but definitely will try one or two days to experience the difference.

 

[DougEMG]

We're on the west coast and normally go to WDW annually, but have never been Aulani and have no real interest in ever going to Aulani.

 

[murphy7573]

No-Cal resident. Our contracts are at WDW. We go to WDW every time especially with a kid (we have stayed numerous times at VGC but this thread was about WDW vs Hawaii). This kid though is now a teenager who has been to WDW pretty much every year of her life. It's kinda' gettin' old for us. Same old rides and restaurants. We have a week booked at the end of October at SSR and we actually do not plan on going to a Disney Park. Maybe do a night for the Halloween party. We have military season passes for Universal Orlando and plan to do go there more that week and HHN for the first time and Kennedy Space Center to change things up. But our plan for our next DVC stay is Aulani to relax and not be on the go-go-go gettin' to rope drop and doing rides but actually sleeping in on a Va-cay. I've been to Hawaii many times, mainly due to the military, my wife once and my teenage daughter zero times. Daughter is looking forward to Aulani. Being retired from the military was looking to fly out of Travis AFB to Hickam Space A. Has anyone done that ? If so, any tips would be helpful ? Thanks !