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

So the Ka Wa'a Luau was definitely better than the Starlit Hui. I won't say it is a better value, as the Starlit Hui was free and the luau was expensive, but as far as a show goes, it was definitely better. It was a Disney version of a luau. And I will say it is far better than the Disney luau at the Polynesian (in Florida). They had a little bit of a story, and tried to make it authentic to the people that grew up in Ewa (the local area). They also worked in the story of Maui. I guess I felt like this was a Disneyfied version in that at one point, the narrator said that Maui was their superhero. And that did not feel real to me, I kept thinking the only reason they were talking about Maui was because of the movie Moana. And they had fire dancing, which wasn't really a Hawaiian thing, but it is a showy, exciting thing. And where the Old Lahaina Luau had some fake demonstrations of tattooing (tapping the needles with a hammer), this version had a rubber stamp tattoo that the kids can do. Again, I don't think it was bad, just a little more Broadway Show than authentic luau. And maybe it was more authentic than I am giving it credit for. It was fun and I am glad I did it.

Oh, and thanks for the tip on the Shirokiya Japan Village Walk. My family went there twice for dinner during our trip, though I had the same thing both times ("Aka Ramen") because I loved it so much the first time!

Wow, thanks for sharing your thougths on the Ka Wa'a Luau! Yeah, for me, I wouldn't be disappointed about it being a little less authentic and more "Disneyish.".. if the overall quality of the production is good. Sounds like that's the case here. Glad you had fun with it! Also, glad you had the opportunity to visit the Shirokiya Japan Village Walk. That place was super cool! :hippie:
 
Final thoughts

So yeah, I said that I'd come back and share a few closing thoughts on the trip. I'm sorry to leave you hanging for so long again :blush:

In addition to all the photos that I took throughout our adventure, I also captured several hours worth of video. Here are a few highlights...

Part 1 - Maui

Part 2 - Oahu

Part 2 - Aulani

All in all, it was a truly awesome, once in a lifetime experience. I had assumed that I would love Hawaii, but it was even better than I had hoped. I think I enjoyed the island of Maui itself a bit better than Oahu, but I liked that Oahu had a bigger variety of things to do. If I was to come back for a relaxing beach vacation, I'd come back to Maui without a doubt. The beaches around Kihei were easily the most beautiful beaches that I've ever visited.

And Aulani? It really was amazing. Truly amazing. But in some ways, I feel like it has a lot of room for improvement compared to similar priced resorts like the Polynesian, Grand Floridian, Disneyland Hotel, etc. It's quite expensive for a family of five. Again, if we were a family of four in a smaller room, I think the value would have been much more in line with our expectations. And I think they could do better with their food offerings. We had some great meals on our 16 day trip, and unfortunately the Aulani ones were somewhat forgettable. And finally, I feel like much of the cast was truly awesome, but we came across too many that were just OK. (This is compared to our experiences at Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney Cruise Line.)

It's worth noting that it's easy for me to separate my Aulani experience from my Oahu experience, because we did all of the Oahu sites before staying at Aulani. For those who spend their entire experience at Aulani and mix their vacation with Oahu day trips, I think their overall impression of Aulani might be a bit more positive than ours.

I don't regret visiting Aulani in the very least. Actually, we're super happy and stoked that we did. But, I don't think we feel drawn to ever visit again. If we come back to Hawaii, we'd probably put the Aulani money towards nicer accommodations, meals, and activities elsewhere. Additionally, for similar amounts of money, I think I'd rather try visiting Tokyo Disneyland or Disneyland Paris :goodvibes

I guess that's it. Thanks to everyone for following along and providing such awesome feedback.

What's next for us?

I'm attending a Disney Institute training course at the Grand Floridian in May. Stephanie will be tagging along with me, but our kids will be staying at home. (Luckily, their grandparents are coming over to watch them while we are away.) It'll be a quick four-day whirlwind, but we'll probably write up a TR for it. We spent a good part of this past Sunday locking in our plans.

I'll have two evenings in the parks (the rest in training) and we plan to try out the Skipper Canteen in MK for the first time on one of the nights, and then do the new version of Soarin' and ride Frozen the next night. Stephanie is still trying to decide how she wants to spend her time while I'm in class. She has a lot of great ideas, and some tough decisions to make!!! (Oh and we plan to hit Trader Sam's before leaving for the airport!!!!)

Then... we celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary at the end of this year. Beyond our honeymoon (at WDW of course), we've never done much more than going out to dinner on our anniversaries. So for this milestone, we decided to do something special.

We'll be doing a cruise from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas on the Disney Wonder in October. And we'll stop at Disneyland for a couple days before we had back home. We're super stoked on this one!!!

And lastly, we'll be back at WDW in January. I have a work-related business conference in Orlando to attend. I'm in charge of the conference programming and I've got a few things up my sleeve that I hope work out. And then we'll probably spend the rest of the week in the parks. This should make a very interesting TR!

I guess that's all for now. Thanks again to everyone for reading along. And thanks again to Stephanie's wonderful parents for including us in such an amazing 50th wedding anniversary celebration! :hippie:
 
I appreciate your honesty regarding Aulani. While I would love to visit Oahu, I'm not sure Aulani would be the right fit for us.

I understand completely booking a trip with a family of five. We also have three kids, who are all grown now with families of their own. When the values opened, we could not get a room there because it had the limit of four. A few times we were able to get two adjoining rooms, but booking rooms for vacations was a hassle. A friend once told me the world was designed for a family of four!
 


Great final thoughts, and I finally had time to watch the videos. Very cool, I feel like I know you all after watching them! I'm guessing you used a go pro to get the video footage. You did a great job!

Looking forward to reading about your next adventures :cool1:
 
Thank you so much for sharing your family trip to Hawaii. It looks like an incredible place. I don't think we'll ever make it there due to the distance and cost but I really enjoyed sharing your adventures. It does make me want to go on another family road trip. I'm looking forward to your next trip reports.
 
I appreciate your honesty regarding Aulani. While I would love to visit Oahu, I'm not sure Aulani would be the right fit for us.

I understand completely booking a trip with a family of five. We also have three kids, who are all grown now with families of their own. When the values opened, we could not get a room there because it had the limit of four. A few times we were able to get two adjoining rooms, but booking rooms for vacations was a hassle. A friend once told me the world was designed for a family of four!

You aren't kidding about the world being designed for a family of four. It is pretty cool that Disney does have some resorts with rooms that actually sleep 5... But it would be great if they had even more. :goodvibes

Amazing trip and amazing trip report! Thank you for sharing your experiences!

Thank you for reading along and sharing your feedback.

Great final thoughts, and I finally had time to watch the videos. Very cool, I feel like I know you all after watching them! I'm guessing you used a go pro to get the video footage. You did a great job!

Looking forward to reading about your next adventures :cool1:

Thanks for the feedback. I actually had three video sources. A lot from the GoPro, but most of it was from a traditional handheld camcorder, and some from our phones :hippie:

Thank you so much for sharing your family trip to Hawaii. It looks like an incredible place. I don't think we'll ever make it there due to the distance and cost but I really enjoyed sharing your adventures. It does make me want to go on another family road trip. I'm looking forward to your next trip reports.

Thanks for reading along, and I'm stoked that you enjoyed it. I agree, family road trips are so much fun!!! Our next family road trip is driving back to Florida in June to go on a Royal Caribbean cruise with my parents and my sisters family in June. I'll probably skip writing a TR on Disboards since it's non-Disney, but it should be quite the adventure anyway :hippie:
 


Hey Matt, I totally missed that you did a TR! Your Hawaiian adventure sounds incredible. How amazing that Stephanie's parents arranged that big family vacation. It sounds like it went really well. We recently did Maui & Oahu on our honeymoon (we stayed in Wailea & at Aulani), so our experiences seemed a bit similar.

Next step was the rental cars... Through Costco, we had four of them reserved, one for each family with Budget Rental Car. Unfortunately, they had a mix up... They saw that my father-in-law had reserved four of the same vehicle and thought it must have been a mistake. So they cancelled three of them without verifying it with him. In the meantime, they gave three of our cars away to someone else. Oops! That's bad enough, but their customer service was terrible. We ended up waiting over an hour to get things sorted out. Not cool after a LONG day of traveling! I have never personally used Budget before, but I certainly never will again!!! (Their service when we arrived in Oahu was even worse!)

OMG. We did Budget too in Maui. They gave us a minivan when we ordered a car, which was fine but we were honeymooning, LOL. The service was the same - took us 45 minutes to get everything ironed out, and the guy didn't seem to care. Never again. (We did Alamo on Oahu, so thankfully that was much better.)

Again, I don't remember what we had for lunch or most of the mid-day unpacking activities. But I do remember that white rum and POG juice are a match made in heaven!!!!


YES! I didn't even think of Rum. We did Vodka, but I think rum would've been even better!

We ended up Yelping around for dinner and decided on Coconut's Fish Café. This turned out to be a fantastic choice. While it wasn't anything fancy, it turned out to be one of the best meals on the trip!

Dang, I'm sad we missed that one! I had Yelped a bunch before the trip and wrote down some options. We ended up at Jawz Tacos in Kihei instead. We also did Kihei Caffe for breakfast which was amazing. I think Kihei had some of the best food options - local type stuff, and cheap!

On our way back, we passed a table with a WWII veteran who was willing to chat with you for a few minutes.


Sad to read that Herb passed away in December at the age of 99.

We met him too. I adored him, funny because I think he had the exact same outfit on when we met him, lol. So sad to hear he passed away.


So decision #1 was to rent a DVC points and get a one bedroom villa. Next decision was… who should we rent from? (We had never rented points before.) We looked closely at David's DVC and the DVC Rental Store. They both had good reputations and offered a point protection/insurance plan (in case you need to cancel.) The prices were similar, but the DVC Rental Store's point protection option was a little cheaper, so we decided to go through them. And it turned out to be super easy to rent from them. (I'm sure David's would have been equally as easy.) I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the DVC Rental Store, and I’m pretty sure we'll use them on our next big trip to WDW.

I love DVC Rental store. Glad you had such a good experience. We used them for a WDW trip once and it was great. I rarely think about the perspective of a family of five, since it's just me and my husband for now, but that is crazy that you'd have to do two rooms or a 1 BR. I'm glad the 1 BR worked out for you guys. Maybe they'd consider putting the pull downs in the studios or regular rooms in the future?!

I guess this was literally our first taste of one of the mediocre aspects of Aulani… The food here was just OK at best.

However, Princess and Buddy were stoked on their chicken fingers. LOL.

I totally agree. We did breakfast here once, the snack shop for lunch once, and the pool bar for lunch once. Those fish tacos were pretty darn good! But overall I felt as if the quick service type food at Aulani was subpar. We did a lot of lunching in the room like you guys did, which was worth it to have the money to spend elsewhere IMO.



And within minutes, all the chairs were claimed….

Perfect spot!

All in all, it was a truly awesome, once in a lifetime experience. I had assumed that I would love Hawaii, but it was even better than I had hoped. I think I enjoyed the island of Maui itself a bit better than Oahu, but I liked that Oahu had a bigger variety of things to do. If I was to come back for a relaxing beach vacation, I'd come back to Maui without a doubt. The beaches around Kihei were easily the most beautiful beaches that I've ever visited.

Yay! I am so glad you had such an amazing trip. My husband and I would agree - Maui was our favorite, although we loved Oahu and its activities. I am dying to go back, but I think we will take the route that you did, with a condo/villa and then maybe a night or two at Aulani just for fun!
 
Thanks for the awesome, comprehensive trip report. We often travel with extended family, and it does change the pace and dynamic of our vacations.
 
You mentioned that you got the parking fee waived since you were renting DVC points. We're renting DVC points for a trip this November and I'm curious- are there any other discounts/perks you were able to take advantage of because of the points?

Great TR- loved your photos and it's getting me so excited for our trip!
 
Hey Matt, I totally missed that you did a TR! Your Hawaiian adventure sounds incredible. How amazing that Stephanie's parents arranged that big family vacation. It sounds like it went really well. We recently did Maui & Oahu on our honeymoon (we stayed in Wailea & at Aulani), so our experiences seemed a bit similar.

OMG. We did Budget too in Maui. They gave us a minivan when we ordered a car, which was fine but we were honeymooning, LOL. The service was the same - took us 45 minutes to get everything ironed out, and the guy didn't seem to care. Never again. (We did Alamo on Oahu, so thankfully that was much better.)

YES! I didn't even think of Rum. We did Vodka, but I think rum would've been even better!

Dang, I'm sad we missed that one! I had Yelped a bunch before the trip and wrote down some options. We ended up at Jawz Tacos in Kihei instead. We also did Kihei Caffe for breakfast which was amazing. I think Kihei had some of the best food options - local type stuff, and cheap!


We met him too. I adored him, funny because I think he had the exact same outfit on when we met him, lol. So sad to hear he passed away.

I love DVC Rental store. Glad you had such a good experience. We used them for a WDW trip once and it was great. I rarely think about the perspective of a family of five, since it's just me and my husband for now, but that is crazy that you'd have to do two rooms or a 1 BR. I'm glad the 1 BR worked out for you guys. Maybe they'd consider putting the pull downs in the studios or regular rooms in the future?!

I totally agree. We did breakfast here once, the snack shop for lunch once, and the pool bar for lunch once. Those fish tacos were pretty darn good! But overall I felt as if the quick service type food at Aulani was subpar. We did a lot of lunching in the room like you guys did, which was worth it to have the money to spend elsewhere IMO.

Perfect spot!

Yay! I am so glad you had such an amazing trip. My husband and I would agree - Maui was our favorite, although we loved Oahu and its activities. I am dying to go back, but I think we will take the route that you did, with a condo/villa and then maybe a night or two at Aulani just for fun!

Thanks for reading along!!!

Interesting that you had similar experiences with Budget. That experience on Hawaii was enough that I'll never use them again!!!!!

Yeah, POG and Rum is a match made in heaven. I'm sure vodka would be good too, but I'm more of a rum fain :-) And yeah, there sure were some great restaurants in Kihei.

It's cool that you came to similar conclusions about Maui and Oahu. What an epic place!!!

Not sure how long ago your honeymoon was, but a belated congratulations!!!! What a way to start off a marriage!!!!!

Thanks for the awesome, comprehensive trip report. We often travel with extended family, and it does change the pace and dynamic of our vacations.

Thanks for reading along. Yeah, there are certainly some pro's and con's to traveling with extended family. In our case, I think the pro's usually outweigh the cons though :-)

You mentioned that you got the parking fee waived since you were renting DVC points. We're renting DVC points for a trip this November and I'm curious- are there any other discounts/perks you were able to take advantage of because of the points?

Great TR- loved your photos and it's getting me so excited for our trip!

Thanks for reading along! With respect to other perks... We reserved the cabana around 8 months early, and had to give them our reservation number. The DVC points were associated with the reservation, so we got a discount on that. But we didn't get any other discounts or similar perks. That being said, we didn't really ask about them either, so there may be some additional ones that we didn't know about. :hippie:
 
Finally found this. Was really looking forward to reading it when you had first posted but one thing about the Dis that irritates me is it doesn't seem to give you notifications most of the time so I missed this. LOVED it!! Your pictures and videos are awesome and hey Hawaii is gorgeous so you can never go wrong there!! I have only been to Hawaii once and it was MANY years ago. 1990 to be exact and went with a friend to Oahu. Did a tour there and did things like Dole factory and a luau but go figure I got strep throat and missed quite a bit and have never been back. It is def a bucket list item but it is SO expensive and we usually travel with my parents so that makes 5 as well. I think if we ever go we will do the same and get a timeshare or condo and then just do a day visit to Aulani vs staying there. It does look amazing though!!

As always I am anxious for your next report. I have never done a Disney cruise or any cruise for that matter so looking forward to that.

As for me since last time I read one of your reports we finally made it back to DW this past Dec. We ended up flying in on xmas eve which was an adventure and we spent a week at DW in a timeshare and then 3 days at Univ at the Cabana Bay. Going at that time of year is always nuts and it was SUPER crowded but we knew it would be. We still had an amazing time and can't wait to go back again hopefully during Food and Wine which is our FAVE. My oldest is a senior and my younger one a Junior so prob won't be till after they each graduate. My younger one wants to work for Disney and is hoping to do the College program so that is a hope as well.

We also took a short trip to DL this past April to celebrate my younger one's 16th birthday. We ordered a really cool haunted mansion themed birthday cake and had dinner at Carthay Circle which we love.

Our next trip was an impromptu that we just planned a few weeks ago and we are headed to DL in Nov on thanksgiving week. Again a super busy time and not usually what we would have chosen but with the girls being so high up in HS it is kind of a must. My mom had bought my dad a plane ticket for DW and then he decided not to go so we had credits that were expiring and thus the idea of the trip. We are super excited to get back and ride the train again and see the new star wars area since they took down the gates.

Anyway really appreciate your report and will be anxiously watching for your next one.

Have a GREAT time on your cruise and happy anniversary :)
 
What a fantastic report! I've taken quite a few notes for my "someday" trip. Thanks so much for sharing. I'm going to look up some of your other adventures as well!
 
Hi Christine and Kelly. I somehow missed your comments, but thanks again for reading and sharing the feedback.
 
I really enjoyed your trip report. We've done 2 trips to Hawaii, one where we spent a week on Oahu, then one where we were on Oahu for 4 days, then on the big island for a week. We've been getting the itch to go back and have considered Maui as our "next island", so the Maui portion of your report was especially interesting to me. It's actually a hard decision, as far as which island to visit goes. I absolutely loved the big island and could easily spend another week there, but Maui really does look appealing, so I'm fighting the urge to stick with what we know.

The Aulani information was also interesting. I know this may not be a popular opinion on a Disney board, but I've never gotten the draw to Aulani. There is so much to do on the islands, away from your room, I just can't see the point of the premium cost for their rooms. I have to be honest, your report helped solidify my opinion on that. Don't get me wrong, the place looks beautiful, but then everything is beautiful in Hawaii. We actually mentioned many times during our trips how nearly every place you go looks like your at the Polynesian resort, with the flowers and beautiful tended walkways. It's sad that they don't do a better job with the food. That would be a big sticking point for me. I make a point of eating local on trips and I found the local seafood and traditional Hawaiian food to be outstanding.

I'm looking forward to your new trip report. We've just started to research going on a cruise as well. I've been on one, but my wife hasn't. My experience on a cruise didn't sell me on the idea, but I owe my wife the chance to make up her own mind. :) Once again, I really enjoyed your perspective and the info you shared.

Take care.
 
I really enjoyed your trip report. We've done 2 trips to Hawaii, one where we spent a week on Oahu, then one where we were on Oahu for 4 days, then on the big island for a week. We've been getting the itch to go back and have considered Maui as our "next island", so the Maui portion of your report was especially interesting to me. It's actually a hard decision, as far as which island to visit goes. I absolutely loved the big island and could easily spend another week there, but Maui really does look appealing, so I'm fighting the urge to stick with what we know.

The Aulani information was also interesting. I know this may not be a popular opinion on a Disney board, but I've never gotten the draw to Aulani. There is so much to do on the islands, away from your room, I just can't see the point of the premium cost for their rooms. I have to be honest, your report helped solidify my opinion on that. Don't get me wrong, the place looks beautiful, but then everything is beautiful in Hawaii. We actually mentioned many times during our trips how nearly every place you go looks like your at the Polynesian resort, with the flowers and beautiful tended walkways. It's sad that they don't do a better job with the food. That would be a big sticking point for me. I make a point of eating local on trips and I found the local seafood and traditional Hawaiian food to be outstanding.

I'm looking forward to your new trip report. We've just started to research going on a cruise as well. I've been on one, but my wife hasn't. My experience on a cruise didn't sell me on the idea, but I owe my wife the chance to make up her own mind. :) Once again, I really enjoyed your perspective and the info you shared.

Take care.

Thanks Jeff! I'm glad that you found my TR helpful and our thoughts/experiences with Aulani helpful too. :-) With respect to cruising, we've only been on Disney three times and Royal Caribbean once. We liked the Royal Caribbean a lot, but the Disney cruises were superior in the most important ways. Was your mediocre cruise on a Disney ship, or something else? Id say if you haven't tried a Disney cruise yet, you owe it to both your wife and yourself to give them a chance to impress you! :hippie:
 
Thanks Jeff! I'm glad that you found my TR helpful and our thoughts/experiences with Aulani helpful too. :-) With respect to cruising, we've only been on Disney three times and Royal Caribbean once. We liked the Royal Caribbean a lot, but the Disney cruises were superior in the most important ways. Was your mediocre cruise on a Disney ship, or something else? Id say if you haven't tried a Disney cruise yet, you owe it to both your wife and yourself to give them a chance to impress you! :hippie:

Thanks again. We'll certainly check them out. My cruise experience was years ago, when our family went and I was a teenager. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just not what I tend to like in a vacation. I like to go new places and see new things. The cruise to me seemed like sitting at the same hotel and the same pools for days with a couple of stops in the ports. It does seem like cruises have changed quite a bit since then, so we'll see.
 
Thank you so much for sharing your trip! We are hoping to go to Aulani this summer and have been debating one other island to visit, and I think you've convinced me to do Maui!

That being said, would you be able to share exactly where you reserved your condo in Maui? And even the exact place you stayed at? I love the location right on the beach as well as the space of a condo. Thanks!

ETA: I found it on my own. My only concern with renting a condo this far in advance is we can't cancel without a penalty. I like the idea of a hotel because the ones I've found let you cancel up to a few days before with a full refund. But I think a condo would be nice to spread out. I think I'm going to wait to see how the booking of Aulani goes before I book the other part of our trip.
 
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Just wanted to say thank you for the beautiful report, Matt, as I’m not sure I got around to commenting much as it concluded. I’ve re-read it now and also sent my lurker husband here to enjoy your beautiful photos - we are heading to Maui and back to Aulani again for Christmas and both enjoyed reading about your family’s Hawaiian adventure. Thanks again for taking the time! It was so helpful.
 

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