I'm not going to take the time now to write a full trip report, but I thought I'd post a few tips from our Aulani trip from Oct. 13-18. We had a fabulous time!
-Lazy river and slides are generally open 8am-8pm. We found that from 8-10am and 6-8pm there were no lines for the slides and the lazy river was pretty empty.
-We found that it was definitely true that the water park area was way less crowded on weekdays than weekends. Since Mon 10/14 was Columbus Day, it was still pretty crowded, but by the next day there was a noticeable difference.
-Character greetings are a great mix of scheduled times and surprises. One night we were heading back to our room from the pool around 7:30pm and Goofy was in the community hall playing the Wii. We walked in and got photos with no line. We also came across Goofy at the entrance to the lazy river one morning. So make sure you always have your camera or your photopass card on hand! For the scheduled greetings, there was always a cm present to take photos with your own camera as well as the photopass photographer.
-Listen under the water at the new infinity pool. So cool!
-The Menehune Trail is actually 5 segments, each lasting 30-45 min. You can do them all at once or spread out throughout your trip. I was glad we did one early in our trip to find this out, so then we could do 1-2 per day. There are also trails inside, but we only did the outside ones.
-There's a special Aulani pin for DVC members that you can buy in the main gift shop when you show your DVC member card.
We thought Aulani was AMAZING! We very much enjoyed the Makahiki breakfast (we did it on a non-character Mon but those are going away), shave ice (get the sweetened condensed milk topping!), puka dogs and coconut shrimp at Mama's, and the food at the Ulu Cafe. Ama Ama was okay for lunch but we weren't overly impressed with the food. Pizza Corner and Monkeypod are easily walkable from the resort and are both yummy as well. We didn't find that the resort food was lacking at all. The refillable mug was great as well.
We spent 5 nights on Kauai after our time at Aulani and that was amazing as well, so if anyone wants any details on Kauai, let me know!
-Lazy river and slides are generally open 8am-8pm. We found that from 8-10am and 6-8pm there were no lines for the slides and the lazy river was pretty empty.
-We found that it was definitely true that the water park area was way less crowded on weekdays than weekends. Since Mon 10/14 was Columbus Day, it was still pretty crowded, but by the next day there was a noticeable difference.
-Character greetings are a great mix of scheduled times and surprises. One night we were heading back to our room from the pool around 7:30pm and Goofy was in the community hall playing the Wii. We walked in and got photos with no line. We also came across Goofy at the entrance to the lazy river one morning. So make sure you always have your camera or your photopass card on hand! For the scheduled greetings, there was always a cm present to take photos with your own camera as well as the photopass photographer.
-Listen under the water at the new infinity pool. So cool!
-The Menehune Trail is actually 5 segments, each lasting 30-45 min. You can do them all at once or spread out throughout your trip. I was glad we did one early in our trip to find this out, so then we could do 1-2 per day. There are also trails inside, but we only did the outside ones.
-There's a special Aulani pin for DVC members that you can buy in the main gift shop when you show your DVC member card.
We thought Aulani was AMAZING! We very much enjoyed the Makahiki breakfast (we did it on a non-character Mon but those are going away), shave ice (get the sweetened condensed milk topping!), puka dogs and coconut shrimp at Mama's, and the food at the Ulu Cafe. Ama Ama was okay for lunch but we weren't overly impressed with the food. Pizza Corner and Monkeypod are easily walkable from the resort and are both yummy as well. We didn't find that the resort food was lacking at all. The refillable mug was great as well.
We spent 5 nights on Kauai after our time at Aulani and that was amazing as well, so if anyone wants any details on Kauai, let me know!
