Aulani -Airfare and length of stay question.

[joeabate]

I did panic after the previous poster mentioned Hawaiian Air as I did not think to check their fares/schedules. They do not fly non-stop out of Chicago, the fare was a little less but not enough to make up for the longer route time so I
feel better. How was the weather in January? I like it hot so I'm concerned it won't be warm enough for me to be comfortable hanging on the beach or some of the water activities I want to plan.

It was 80 during the day, hot in the sun and 70 at night but with a slight cool breeze. The water was cooler as well, took some getting use to.

 

[joeabate]

I reserved Aulani 10/22-29 today and booked Chicago to HNL non-stop both ways for $766 r/t. Glad that's over. I paid more than that for my DD flight to WDW last October for the F & W Fest and it wasn't non-stop. Kind of feel like I got a deal here.

Thanks everyone for the good info.

Alice Sr. If your renting a car, check out Hawaiian Discount Car Rentals. They book thru all major companies. We used them in January and booked again for October. Got a Corolla fro Alamo for 8 days for $224 total inc. taxes.

 

[Alice Sr.]

Alice Sr. If your renting a car, check out Hawaiian Discount Car Rentals. They book thru all major companies. We used them in January and booked again for October. Got a Corolla fro Alamo for 8 days for $224 total inc. taxes.

I will check them out - thank you!

 

[Anal Annie]

I did panic after the previous poster mentioned Hawaiian Air as I did not think to check their fares/schedules. They do not fly non-stop out of Chicago, the fare was a little less but not enough to make up for the longer route time so I
feel better. How was the weather in January? I like it hot so I'm concerned it won't be warm enough for me to be comfortable hanging on the beach or some of the water activities I want to plan.

The average high temp in Hawaii in October is 87!

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USHI0026

Is that hot enough??

 

[Alice Sr.]

The average high temp in Hawaii in October is 87!

http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/USHI0026

Is that hot enough??

Ah thank you, did not even think of looking that up. I believe that will work

 

[slowly]

Ah thank you, did not even think of looking that up. I believe that will work

There are only a few days in HI when you wouldn't be able to swim. The other 98% of the time you can swim! Even when it is raining it's still warmer than the Mainland. October is a good month, might be a little windy but still warm enough to enjoy the waters. Not known to be a rainy month. Our rainy months are our winter Dec-Mar. Normally March is not as rainy but this month it has been wet. When I say that maybe 7 days of rain for the month so far. Not bad.

 

[Mrs. Ciz]

Would have been a good deal snagging that $847 fare. Although we preferred to use either BWI or Dulles we ended up booking out of National which was our last choice - but over $300 cheaper to go out of there than the others. I booked soon after we booked VGC and Aulani. We are also spending 4 nights at DL first but as far as I could tell that is what caused our prices to go up so much more than just flying direct to HNL. I couldn't find any cheap one-ways between LAX and HNL so ended up paying $272 for that leg alone. A friend of mine in So. CA who goes to Hawaii every summer told me to book that leg first bcuz there are so many CA peeps who go to Hawaii every summer those flights tend to fill up. Her experience is that once the prices start going up they're up to stay. She said she piddled around on booking theirs last summer and ended up paying something like $950 rt from LAX!! We are doing the straight traditional 2 weeks Sat. to Sun. - but I DID check to see if there was much difference to fly mid-week & didn't see a whole lot of fluctuation on the prices. There's another website I used too that shows just about every combination you can put together (ITA Matrix - http://matrix.itasoftware.com). I checked daily, multiple times per day for several weeks before I booked. I also checked coming back home from Maui with different transfer cities (SF, Oakland, Phoenix, Salt Lake, SD, Vegas, you name it...Seattle was the cheapest for us to get back with only 1 stop). Every day it was going UP higher & higher. When I finally found this itinerary at $1,073 pp I booked it. Within a couple of days one of our flights (1st choice of time) went up by $208. That flight has since settled back down a bit to only being $59 higher but it only dropped back in the past week... I really didn't want to switch airports but I also didn't want to pay $1,430 (which is what Dulles was running for what we wanted). I did not want to play airline roulette with waiting to see what the prices were going to be in May for August. The way they were going up scared me. You have better nerves than me. I'm not a gambler but I couldn't find anything close to that $847.

I was starting to freak out a little that I didn't book those $847 flights in mid Feb, but then I looked back at my old credit card statements. The last two times we flew to Hawaii I booked flights in May for July trips (5/20/09 for travel 7/23/09 & 5/12/11 for travel 7/31/11). May was when the July prices dropped by several hundred dollars. Sooooooo fingers crossed that the pattern holds true this year!

Alice Sr. If your renting a car, check out Hawaiian Discount Car Rentals. They book thru all major companies. We used them in January and booked again for October. Got a Corolla fro Alamo for 8 days for $224 total inc. taxes.

I second using Hawaiian Discount Car Rentals!

 

[carissa1970]

We went at Thanskgiving 2012 for 7 nights. A couple more nights would have been nice, but 7 was great anyhow. Ordered the entertainment book for Hawaii online and saved a ton on the rental car plus some other activities we wanted to do. We flew Alaska Air around $325 person from San Diego. We actually only left the resort for about 1 1/2 days total. Pearl Harbor, Dole, North Shore, Waikiki, and the swap meet we were told not to miss. We are waiting for our 11 month window to return summer of 2014. If you can, book a pool view room, and be on your deck by 7am every morning with your coffee. The morning chant is awesome, and you get to watch the place wake up. Have fun! Super Target and Costco are just down the street, too.

 

[blondietink]

FYI - for those with the Entertainment Books. Saw on the news yesterday that the company went out of business earlier this month and all employees have lost their jobs. They say that merchants should honor the coupons in the book, but there is no guarantee.

 

[carissa1970]

FYI - for those with the Entertainment Books. Saw on the news yesterday that the company went out of business earlier this month and all employees have lost their jobs. They say that merchants should honor the coupons in the book, but there is no guarantee.

Seriously? I hadn't heard that. Too bad.

 

[epgirl]

Yes, they filed for bankruptcy about a week ago.

 

[blondietink]

Quick flight update: got a message from American Airlines to call them immediately with a flight change. UGH!!!!! I had visions of not getting there on Sept. 4th.

However, our flight is leaving Cleveland at 6:10 am instead of 7 am. , the flight out of Dallas is leaving at 10:15 am instead of 11:00 am, and the best part is we will get to Honolulu at 2 pm instead of 3 pm!!!!!

Not so bad after all, except needing to get up even earlier. Good thing we are staying near the airport overnight.

 

[carissa1970]

Yes, they filed for bankruptcy about a week ago.

I just ordered a book from them. Apparently not out of business yet.

 

[owensjro]

I just ordered a book from them. Apparently not out of business yet.

http://www.freep.com/article/201303...ment-publisher-files-for-Chapter-7-bankruptcy

Doesn't look promising.

Jim