Thanksgiving crowds at Aulani?

pamelaj

Mouseketeer
Joined
Sep 16, 2012
Last time we went to Aulani was in January 2015 and crowds weren't too bad. The bellman told us it was 80% full when we arrived and we never had trouble getting chairs at the pool or our kids into the kid's club. We are now debating a trip for the week leading up to Thanksgiving 2016. We are thinking we will leave Aulani on Thanksgiving or the following day, depending on plane tickets.

When you went near Thanksgiving, was it crowded? Was it hard to get into the kid's club? This will really affect if we go then or not.

Thank you!
 
We went over Thanksgiving in 13 and it didn't feel crowded at all. Still had to go early to sign up for the kids club, but nothing crazy and no problem getting in.
 
We were there over Thanksgiving this year and really it did not seem too bad to us for a peak week (we only travel during peak weeks so we have a high tolerance). Granted they were having very unusual (according to locals and our years of traveling to Hawaii) weather with quite a bit of rain every day. We felt that it was actually less crowded than our previous trip in 2013 when we went for the first week of August. We never had a problem finding chairs together at the pool except for Thanksgiving day itself. On that day we had a really lazy morning in our villa and did not go down to the pool until at least 10:30. No problem though, we just headed down to the beach where there were plenty of chaises open. Again, I don't know how much of the ease of getting chaises on the other days was due to the fact that some people might have stayed away from the pools due to the weather. My kids did not go to the clubs so I can't answer for that.
 
Thanks! Hopefully it won't be too wet if we go! Are they any good sources that track the average crowds or tell you the busiest dates for Aulani?
 


The rain was really unprecedented this November (maybe El Nino related?). I have been going to Hawaii every 2 to 3 years for 20 years and have never experienced that even the one year we picked up the remnants of a hurricane. Our local friends and all of the Aulani staff were really surprised. And it was still warm and beautiful, just not hot. It did not stop us from doing anything. We went to the beach, pool, Kualoa Ranch Hummer tour (highly recommend) and we just got a bit wet and muddy. I guess the only thing we couldn't do was sit at the pool with a magazine as it got wet :)

I don't know anyway of tracking crowds aside from looking at the availability. I think you need to expect it to be full and very busy at Thanksgiving, but to realize that at least for us it was not unmanageble in any way.
 
By the second week of December, it was mostly dry, so we had a good 10 days on Oahu. We found that Mon-Fri during that period was not crowded at all at the Aulani, and we didn't have to line up early for the events at Aunty's. I would go back at that time of year again since it was so pleasant.
 



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