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

Sorry!!!! The whole family got sick for a while, and then things have been super crazy busy at work.... working late most days the last couple weeks. But... things are starting to settle down, and I should be able to get the TR moving again soon!

Thanks for the prod :hippie:

Hope everyone has recovered. The cold/flu going around this year is no joke. My 9 year old had the flu and her fever would not stay below 103* and lasted 5 days.
 
Totally feel your pain on that. Much easier to write voluminous updates when the work hours are shorter. Just wanted to let you know that your fans are still here! (And bump the thread to the front page again since it's so helpful)

Thanks!!!! So sorry to have left you hanging again :hippie: Next update is coming a few minutes!

Hello Matt. Well, it took me a little while but I finally came back and I've read your entire report over the last couple days. I enjoyed it a lot. Hawaii has always been on my bucket list, but being from northeast Canada it's quite a ways to travel (not to mention airfare!) so it has eluded me so far. Maybe one of these days. The scenery is fantastic and you've given me some great ideas if I ever make it that way. I think I would have to try including the Big Island in any plans though because I would love to see the active volcanoes.

Hi Jeff! Glad to see that you made it back, and that you enjoyed the TR so far. I know that Hawaii is a long way from northeast Canada, but in the spirit of Ferris Bueller, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend it!"



Hope everyone has recovered. The cold/flu going around this year is no joke. My 9 year old had the flu and her fever would not stay below 103* and lasted 5 days.

No joke indeed! I hope your family is over it and feeling well now too!
 
Day 14 - Friday, July 1: Morning fun at Aulani!

Hi everyone! I apologize for leaving you hanging for the last couple weeks. We ended up having a cycle of sickness run through our family through a lot of February and early March. No fun! And then, with me working in the gardening industry, our spring shipping and IT support needs have ramped up quite a bit the last couple weeks, which means I've been working a LOT more than usual. But things are getting back to normal, and I finally have some time to get back to the TR!

Here's the daily 'IWA for today….



And the back side...



Our general plan was to try and get Pickle registered for another activity at Aunty's Beach House, spend the day at the pool, and then do the Luau in the evening.

I think I mentioned this before, but we were only able to pre-register Pickle (online) for one activity at Aunty's Beach House during our stay (Coconut Kings and Queens of Comedy.) For any additional activities, you need to register the kids that morning. And you need to do it very early, or else they fill up. (Especially since we were there on the July 4 weekend.) Stephanie planned to be in line when they started taking reservations at 7am. The thing is…. Stephanie really never adjusted to Hawaii time and she was waking up early most mornings anyway, so she went down around 5:45 AM… That's a little over an hour early, and needless to say, she was first in line. She said that another lady showed up about 5 minutes later. And then it was just the two of them until about 6:30 and then the line filled out pretty quickly.

So yeah, Coconut Kings and Queens of Comedy was tonight… but Pickle wanted to eat dinner with the rest of the kids at Aunty's, so Stephanie signed her up for that. When she finished with Aunty's, it was just past 7am, so she went over to the pool area to see about staking a claim. She found a great spot just behind the large Waikolohe Pool. Score!!!!

She called me on the phone to touch base, and the kids and I came down around 8am to get settled in, and then Stephanie went back up to the room for a little while to get ready for the day.

Wow, that is indeed a great spot!!!



And then looking forward toward the pool…



And within minutes, all the chairs were claimed….

While Stephanie was up in the room, the kids and I started off with a few rounds in the lazy river.







And when I say, a few rounds… I mean like two hours' worth of rounds… off and on. It was so relaxing just to float along, chatting about random things, telling stories, goofing around, and simply getting lost in the flow of the moment. Good times!!!

Sometime during the "lazy river session", we took a break and had some breakfast food. Stephanie and Buddy went over to Ulu's and ordered a couple breakfast platters and some extra bacon too. (If you've read any my other TR's, you'll know how much my kids love Disney bacon!!) They brought the food back, and we enjoyed it all while sitting in our pool chairs. Basically, they brought back bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. This was on par with any other Disney restaurant (at WDW or DL) serving this type of food. It is what it is, and that's actually pretty good :-)

Eventually, the kids were ready to move on from the lazy river, and they wanted to sit in a hot tub for a while, so we found our way over to the Ka Maka Grotto pool area.



OK. This. Is. Nice!



We spent another hour or two, hopping between the hot tub and the infinity pool.





I have more photos in the next day's post, but boy… this was probably my favorite place in Aulani. The stuff that daydreams are made of!

Around Noon or so, we were all starving and ready to eat. We decided to hit Mama's Snack Stop and bring it back to our chairs.



I had the coconut-breaded shrimp. It was actually pretty good. Not amazing, but one of the better tasting things that I tried while at Aulani.



I normally like to grab a few photos of our meals on vacations, but I had my phone and regular camera up in the room. The GoPro is fine, but it's not the best for lots of snapshots, so I guess I didn't get any other photos of what the others had… Buddy and Princess had the chicken fingers and fries. I'm pretty sure that Stephanie had the shrimp too. And Pickle had a hot dog. All in all, not a bad meal at all, especially when considering it was poolside. Oh, and we still had cans of soda/juice from earlier in the week, and that soft sided cooler that I mentioned earlier in the TR was perfect for today. It allowed us to keep plenty of water and soft drinks cold and ready to go!

The kids had decided that they all wanted to just chill in their chairs for a while, so Stephanie and I took the opportunity to have some alone time at adults only hot tub. (Pretty much adjacent to where our chairs were.) It turns out that this is a double decker hot tub. One level up top with a waterfall, that spills into a lower level. The top level had a few people in it, but the bottom level was nearly empty, so we settled in down there.

So here's looking over the edge of the top level, out to sea…



And then looking back up…



Oh my, how relaxing!





The funny thing is… After 20 minutes or so, Pickle needed some help, and Princess came looking for us. She had no idea there was a lower level at first and it took a few minutes to find us. Oops!

A little while later, Pickle and Buddy had enough fun in the sun and wanted to go back up to the room to relax. You know iPhones, TV, and stuff…

Stephanie, Pickle, and I decided to look for some more PhotoPass photographers.





Around 2pm, it was time for the pool party with Mickey Mouse in the main pool! Interestingly, Pickle wasn't too excited about this, but we did it anyway.





It's hard to see from just a couple photos here (I have video though), but there were a ton of people in the water. And then Mickey and friends came out on the pool deck. They hyped up the crowd in the water… doing the wave with everyone, dancing, and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty high energy and turned out to be pretty cool.

And then we grabbed a couple more photos :-)



After the pool party, Pickle was ready to take a break from swimming too, so we decided to head up to the room and change out of our swimming gear. Stopping to see Stitch again!



It may be another day or two before I have the next installment, but stay tuned as I hope to finish of this TR within the next week or so.

Cheers!
 
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Day 14 - Friday, July 1 - Part 2: Afternoon and Evening Fun!

At this point, we were ready to take break from the pools, so we headed back up to the room to change into dry clothes. Princess and Buddy were content to keep lounging in the room, so Stephanie, Pickle, and I went off to explore some more.

We did Menehune Adventure Trail with Buddy the day before, but Pickle still wanted to give it a try… so off we went!

We stopped in the gift shop on the way down. We found that the inventory shifted around a bit throughout our visit. It seems like they'd bring out new clearance priced items once or twice a day. We found a few steals in here throughout the stay, so we ended up going back a couple times each day just to see if they had anything new.

Anyway… heading down to the Pau Hana community center to get the tablet for the adventure trail…



We explored all around the lobby and Pickle was really into it. This is a fantastic activity and I love how interactive it is. Highly recommended!





And I love how you find random menehune all around the resort. (Keep a lookout when you float through the lazy river. There are tons of them!!!)



When we were finished, Stephanie had to run back to the room for a few minutes, so Pickle and I went down to return the tablet. Cool, they were making leighs and we were welcome to join them! We made one for Pickle and then decided to surprise Stephanie with one too!



How fun!!!





We explored around a bit more and did some more browsing in the shop down in the pool area. Stephanie had previously spotted a bag (and/or beach towel) here, that they didn't have in the main gift shop. And then we just walked around soaking it all in even more.

And eventually, it was time to drop Pickle off at Aunty's Beach House. I think we dropped her off around 4:30 PM, she wanted to play for a while before they had dinner.

After leaving Pickle with Aunty, we headed back up to the room to fetch the older two for dinner. Stopping by a PhotoPass photographer on our way…




We decided to give Ulu Café another try.



I had the seafood and bacon chowder. It was good, but nothing special. For perspective, I had pretty much completely forgotten about it until I just reviewed this picture…





Stephanie had a grab n go salad. Also fine….



Princess was even less hungry, so she went with a fruit and yogurt parfait… Also fine.

Buddy got a pizza, thinking that the rest of us would share it with him.





This was sort of meh, at best. Maybe on par with Domino's pizza or something similar? On the one hand, we were trying to cut back on food expenses today (so we could splurge tomorrow), but on the other hand... this stuff isn't exactly cheap. Disney really could stand to provide better quality here.

After eating, we still had some time before the Luau started, so Princess went back to the room to chill for a while longer. (She had a cold earlier in the trip and was pretty tired at this point.) Buddy had enough fun doing the teen event the night before, that he wanted to do it again tonight. (Princess had no desire to go back.)

So Buddy's plan was to do the teen event instead of the Luau, so he headed off to hang out with his new friends…

This left Stephanie and I to explore a bit more on our own. We ended up walking around the beach for quite a while.



Oh, and I forgot to mention… apparently, there were a bunch of jellyfish in the lagoon and they discouraged people from swimming in it during our stay. No big deal for us, because we'd spent plenty of time swimming in the adjacent lagoon earlier in the week, and we had all that beach time in Maui too. But... that's why there weren't too many people out in the water for these photos…





We found a couple PhotoPass photographers, so we stopped a couple times for photos.









We ended up walking past the group of teens (with Buddy) on the beach, but being considerate parents of a young teenager, we went out of our way to ensure he didn't see us. (You know, embarrassing parents and all. :rotfl2:)

Oh, and there was a wedding reception going on at the time too. How cool would it be to have Mickey Mouse join your wedding party?!?!?!



Eventually, it was time for the Starlit Hui Luau, so we found Princess and headed down to the lawn area.

The lawn was about half full when we arrived. (Oh, and they give everyone a straw mat to sit on. How fun!)



We were happy with our spot despite not being up front...



They had some demonstrations/crafts for the kids, where they could do grass weaving, make leis, and stuff like that. Pickle wasn't with us, but I'm sure she would have loved these activities.

The Luau itself was fun, but if we hadn't just been to the Old Lahaina Luau in Maui, we would have enjoyed this even more. This was actually pretty lame in comparison. Which is surprising, I expected it to be "Disneyfied" and less authentic, but for some reason, but I think the overall production could have been a lot better. Apparently, they discontinued this and replaced it with a paid version. Maybe that one is better now.

Regardless, it was a beautiful evening, the energy and atmosphere of the crowd was great, and we did enjoy ourselves. It was also cool to get a good dose of Mickey and Friends here (since the whole Disney character thing is pretty subdued at Aulani in general.)





After the Luau, they had an open dance party. Princess was having fun doing the electric slide (or whatever it's called) with everyone. And a few minutes later, Aunty's called to have us come pick up Pickle. We were concerned that she wasn't having fun and that maybe she had asked them to have us pick her up, but it turns out that this is normal protocol for everyone. They're just trying to clear the place out asap.

So yeah, we fetched Pickle from Aunty's and it turns out that she had an amazing time. She wasn't even close to being ready to leave. LOL.

For dinner, they served the kids slices of pizza (cheese or pepperoni) and some fruit. She said that she had pineapple and strawberries. And they had kebabs for desert. She said that they were chocolate covered marshmallows (with sprinkles) alternating between pieces of pineapple on the skewers. She loved them!

She loved the Coconut Kings and Queens of Comedy too. Pickle has a goofy sense of humor, so this was right up her alley.

Oh yeah…. When we signed up for the PhotoPass, they encouraged us to stop by the station in the main gift shop at the end of each night to have open/group event photos assigned to our account. (They essentially said, don't wait until the next day.) We knew that they were taking photos at the pool party, and that they took photos at Aunty's, so we went there immediately after we picked up Pickle.

This is an area where we were disappointed with Aulani's customer service compared to experiences at other Disney resorts. We did exactly as we were instructed. Arriving about 20 minutes before they closed the PhotoPass area. (And we couldn't have arrived any sooner after picking up Pickle.) The line was long and the people who worked the area were sort of grumpy. And one of the ladies had an attitude. Which was frustrating. If you don't want too many people piling up in the gift shop at the end of the night, don't make a big deal about telling them to do so in the first place. And then, maybe staff the area more appropriately. We really would have preferred to just come back in the morning to select our photos, but we were just following instructions. Oh well… It's really not that big of a deal, but I expected the Aulani cast to be on point throughout our stay and this is one of a few examples where they just weren't up to Disney standards.

We did get some fun photos though. Here are a couple from the comedy event at Aunty's :-)







It was probably 10pm at this point. All in all, it was a fantastic day and we were ready to call it a night.

Good night moon.
 
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I felt the same way about the Starlit Hui when we went in October '15. I definitely preferred the Old Lahaina Luau (which I've been to twice). We are going to Oahu next week and we have tickets to Ka Wa'a (the new luau at Aulani). I am not expecting it to be as good as the Old Lahaina Luau, but I hope it is better than the Starlit Hui.
 
i don't want your trip to end! I am enjoying it so much. I love TR's from my fellow Dis'ers who are not technology challenged and post many pics.
So photogenic and u can see love in the photos...... priceless.:-)
 
Fantastic update - loving it!

Thanks!!! :thumbsup2

I felt the same way about the Starlit Hui when we went in October '15. I definitely preferred the Old Lahaina Luau (which I've been to twice). We are going to Oahu next week and we have tickets to Ka Wa'a (the new luau at Aulani). I am not expecting it to be as good as the Old Lahaina Luau, but I hope it is better than the Starlit Hui.

Cool! Would you be willing to come back after your trip and let us know what you thought of the new luau? In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing trip!!!!!

i don't want your trip to end! I am enjoying it so much. I love TR's from my fellow Dis'ers who are not technology challenged and post many pics.
So photogenic and u can see love in the photos...... priceless.:-)

Thanks a bunch, what a compliment! Although this TR is winding down, the good news is... we have three more Disney trips planned over the next year, and I'll be writing TR's for them. Just this morning, my company registered me to attend the "Disney's Approach to Employee Engagement" course at the Disney Institute. I attended the Leadership Excellence course last year and it was amazing! This will be held at the Grand Floridian in May. I'll totally write a TR for it. And then Stephanie and I are going a 4 night cruise on the Disney Wonder in October (San Diego to Cabo San Lucas) with a short visit to Disneyland afterward in October. And then in January, I'm attending a business conference at the Wyndham Lake Buenavista (across the street from Disney Springs.) I'm in charge of arranging the speaker presentations for the conference, and so far, I've got Lee Cockerel coming to give a presentation on leadership and customer service. (As the former Executive VP of Operations of all of WDW, he's one of my business heroes. I'm super stoked about this!) That'll make for an interesting TR too :cool1:
 
Day 15 - Saturday, July 2 - Part 1: Cabana Time!

When we first booked Aulani, we were worried about the crowds… especially since we'd be there on 4th of July weekend. We had read horror stories of people not finding enough chairs for their families, and that was a real concern for us… So we decided that it might be worthwhile to rent a cabana for at least one of our full days. However, based on our first day's experience, this turned out to not be as big of a problem as we had suspected. (As long as you were willing to go down to the pool area as soon as it opened, you could find spots. You didn't really need to get down there at the break of dawn. This might be different at other times of the year, though.) Anyway, we could have saved ourselves a bunch of money and cancelled the cabana reservation after all, but we had all been looking forward to it for months, so we kept the reservation anyway :-)

The plan for the day was do head down to the cabana around 8:30am and spend the entire day in the pool area. (The reservation lasted until 5pm.) And then after the cabana, we planned to freshen up in our room for a little while before having dinner at the Makahiki buffet.

Here's the daily 'IWA for Saturday…





So yeah, we headed down to the cabana around 8:30 AM.



We were in "Cabana 4", which is over by the Ka Maka Grotto infinity pool. Stephanie had done her research, and this was really the only location for us. You could get a cabana over by the kiddie pool area, but it felt really isolated over there. And then they had a couple more in the secluded adults only pool area too. But for us, this turned out to be perfect, since we preferred that infinity pool and hot tub over all the other pools. So stoked that we reserved early enough to get our first choice in locations! :-)

We were the first group to arrive, so we had fun checking it out pretty thouroughly…

A couple of these photos are using a fisheye lens, sorry for the funky distortions….





Here's the view looking straight out the front of the cabana…



And the older two already getting settled in…



So yeah, this turned out to be amazing for several reasons…
  • It had a mini fridge, and we still had a fair amount of beverages from earlier in the week (essentially leftovers from Stephanie's family who left a couple days earlier.) So that was nice!
  • And then there was a little safe, so I was able to bring my nicer camera and camcorder down and leave them there when we got in the pool. Nice!
  • And then for Princess, she was content to kick back in her chair most of the day, being connected to her friends back home with her phone (and keep it charging the whole time.) This was nice because she didn't feel the need to ditch us and head back up to the room to get "connected".
  • And of course, Buddy and Pickle loved having the TV as an option. (Which we didn't use too much, but it was nice anyway.
  • Oh, and the ceiling fan to keep the breeze going.
  • And then a couple reserved lounge chairs up front in the sun.
Buddy was amped to get some breakfast and asked if he could go pick some stuff up for us. Stephanie was like "sure" assuming he'd just get whatever people directly asked of him. Somehow, he interpreted that as get an order or two of bacon for each of us. LOL. He spent like $25 on bacon. "You did what?!?!?" Oops! At least we had the mini fridge to save it for later. LOL.

This is what was left after we couldn't eat anymore:



We all had a good chuckle, and teased him, "No more room charging privileges for you!!!"

But yeah…. Mmmm… Disney bacon!

I had some potatoes too. Besides that and the bacon, I don’t recall what else he brought back.



We spent the first half of the morning lounging, swimming, "lazy rivering", and stuff. Just soaking it all in and enjoying every minute of it!













I guess it's worth noting, that part of your experience is dependent upon how cool your neighbors are. On the side facing the wall, those folks were cool. Pretty low key and chill.

On the other side, they were pretty wild and loud. They took their iHome thing and played music as loud as it could go. It wouldn't have been that bad, except for they totally ruined the Hawaiian vibe by playing lots of Jimmy Buffet and 70's southern rock. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it just distracted from the mood.) Total tangent, but a couple months ago, we found that someone compiled a Trader Sam's playlist on Spotify. (With the actual songs used in the background of Trader Sam's.) Now, if they had been blasting this, I'd be giving them major kudos!

Here's the Spotify link to the Trader Sam's playlist. It's so good!: https://open.spotify.com/user/sfgnumber1/playlist/2FuztLcz1yHDvyZkXBDFl7

Back to regular programming... Around 11am, the attendant brought out some snacks. A fruit tray, chips, and dried fruit.







Oh man, that fruit tray was heavenly!!!

Except for about 10 minutes later, they came back to ask if we wanted anything else. Since we had just fished eating the fruit, we said, no thanks. We didn't realize at the time, that they must have mean that they were ready to take our lunch order. Because they never came back. After an hour or so, we tried to wave them down a few times, but it didn't work out. Thinking, surely, they'll be back soon we didn't make a deal out of it.

Around 12:30 PM, we were feeling pretty hungry and annoyed, so I went off to find the attendant. Strange that they forgot about us, because they had checked up on our neighbors a couple times. Truly not a big deal, I could have sought her out any time, but it was just weird that they advertise that they'll provide you service throughout the day, and they ignored us for that long.

Anyway, she came over and took our orders for lunch.

I had the fish tacos and onion rings. This was definitely a step up from the food that we had at Ulu's. It was actually really good.



Stephanie had the same thing, but with fruit.



Buddy had another burger… which he enjoyed quite a bit.



Pickle had another hot dog, which she also enjoyed.



For some reason, I didn't grab a photo of what Princess had. I think she had the same thing that I did, and it was redundant to take a photo of hers…

Stephanie and I ended up having a couple frozen cocktails too. YUMMY!!!



And then we relaxed for another hour or so. Spending some time in the hot tub and whatnot.

Sometime around 2:30, they brought out a dessert tray.



Good stuff!!!!
 
Day 15 - Saturday, July 2 - Part 2: Our Final Afternoon and Evening

Around 2:45 PM, it was time to take Pickle over to Aunty's for Stitch's Space Goo. (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Stephanie woke up at the crack of dawn and headed down to Aunty's to register Pickle for this.)

Pickle had a BLAST doing this and making her slime/goo! Here are some of the PhotoPass photos…









Around 3:30 PM, Buddy and I decided that we wanted to try out snorkeling at Rainbow Reef. Being fairly blind (without my glasses) and living in the Midwest, snorkeling isn't really my thing. I tried it once with Princess at Disney's Castaway Cay (and it was fun enough), but we've never done real snorkeling in the wild. Someday, I'll have to rent some prescription goggles and give it a real go. I'm saying all that to give you perspective on our experiences here. It was actually a lot of fun. But for someone who has real snorkeling experience, they might have thought it was lame? The one negative thing… the water was pretty darn cold!!!!!!!!!











I love how you find hidden Menehune all around the resort, even under water!!!!



After a half hour or so, Buddy decided the water was just too cold. But I was still having fun. Interestingly, despite being fairly blind, whenever I'd pull the mask off and let a thin wall of water coat the goggles, I could actually see decently for a couple minutes. Not great, but good enough. (If buddy got more than five feet or so away from me, I had a hard time telling him from other people. I even confused him for another kid once, and ended up taking a selfie with a stranger. The kid was a good sport about it though. LOL. :rotfl2:)

Anyway, Buddy headed over to the viewing area. That was sort of fun to see him from the other side of the glass!





A little while later, I had enough and was ready to head out… and then around 4pm, we went to pick up Pickle from Aunty's…







She was pretty excited to show us her space goo!



We still had another hour with the cabana, so we went back and hung out there for a while…

Here's the other example of less than stellar service we received at Aulani. The other families left their cabanas closer to 3:30 PM. Several cast members came up to clean up their spaces around that time. It was sort of weird. Because instead of doing a little straightening up, they were doing full teardown cleaning of the areas while we were still in ours. It felt very intrusive, sort of like as if you were in your room while Mouse Keeping was trying to clean it. And then they kept coming back to see if we had left yet, making it clear that they wanted us gone without actually saying so. Frustrating, because we paid to have the cabana until 5pm. Similar to the previous night at the photopass station, it seemed like the cast members were more interested in getting a head start to end their shift as soon as possible, instead of making sure that their guests were still enjoying themselves. I'm sorry, Aulani cast members... to be such an inconvenience to you. LOL. :crazy2:

Again, I hate to be so picky and even bring this up. In the grand scheme of things we had a TRULY AMAZING day. It's just that for the price of staying at the resort, we expected at least very good service. We've never felt like we were inconveniencing Disney staff before. (And we've stayed at various WDW and DLR resorts a lot through the years.) But there were actually quite a few occasions were the service just wasn't up to mainland Disney standards. OK. Rant over. (And it's worth noting, that on the other hand, we also had a few encounters with truly amazing cast members too. We're just not used to that being such an exception.)

At around 5pm, we headed back up to the room to change out of our swimming clothes and chill out a little while before dinner. The dinner reservation was for around 6:45 PM. We decided to take advantage of the PhotoPass and get a few last family photos…





And then we headed back to Makahiki for dinner!





Dinner was sort of a mixed bag. We had read mediocre reviews of the place on Yelp beforehand, but we wanted to have at least one nice meal as a family at Aulani… so we decided to chance it. The pro's were that the place is beautiful and we were seated in a great location outside. Much of the food was pretty good, but the majority of it was just fine. Maybe a C+/B- overall rating. (For perspective, I'd rate something like the Boma buffet at Animal Kingdom Lodge more of an A. This was easily a step or two below that.)







Here are a few snap shots of the buffet. I took these pretty quickly with my phone, so they aren't great.

The sushi was fairly disappointing. :(



Crab legs were easily my favorite thing on the menu. I ate my fair share of these!



Pasta - meh...











Desserts…







So yeah, some of the food was quite good, but most of it was just fine (at best.) We did have a nice and attentive person taking care of us at our table. That was cool!





After eating dinner, we wandered around the lobby for a bit longer, checking out the gift shop some more, soaking more of the atmosphere in, etc. That lobby area is so nice! Especially the evening.

I know that I shared a few relatively minor annoyances that we experienced throughout the day, but all in all it was pretty epic. I wouldn't hesitate to do the whole thing all over again!
 
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Thanks!!! :thumbsup2



Cool! Would you be willing to come back after your trip and let us know what you thought of the new luau? In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing trip!!!!!



Thanks a bunch, what a compliment! Although this TR is winding down, the good news is... we have three more Disney trips planned over the next year, and I'll be writing TR's for them. Just this morning, my company registered me to attend the "Disney's Approach to Employee Engagement" course at the Disney Institute. I attended the Leadership Excellence course last year and it was amazing! This will be held at the Grand Floridian in May. I'll totally write a TR for it. And then Stephanie and I are going a 4 night cruise on the Disney Wonder in October (San Diego to Cabo San Lucas) with a short visit to Disneyland afterward in October. And then in January, I'm attending a business conference at the Wyndham Lake Buenavista (across the street from Disney Springs.) I'm in charge of arranging the speaker presentations for the conference, and so far, I've got Lee Cockerel coming to give a presentation on leadership and customer service. (As the former Executive VP of Operations of all of WDW, he's one of my business heroes. I'm super stoked about this!) That'll make for an interesting TR too :cool1:


Wow that sounds so amazing. I am in the Dental field and I wish I could have a reason to take a Disney course:-)
I will be on the lookout for future reports:-)....
Now off to read the next installment:-)
Kerri
 
Day 16 - Sunday, July 3: Going Home

Oh no, it's time to go home!

On the one hand, we were very sad to see our amazing Hawaiian vacation come to an end, but on the other hand, it was a crammed packed two weeks and the idea of getting back to our normal routine (and sleeping in our own beds) was starting to sound good...

Our return flight was scheduled for 12:50 PM. So we figured that Leaving Aulani around 10am would give us enough time to return the rental car, get through security, have lunch, and then board the plane. (And it did.)

I didn’t really get many photos on the return home… but, here we are getting ready to leave. (Stephanie went to check out and follow up on a couple outstanding items, while the rest of us chilled in the main lobby.)



The drive to the airport and dropping off the car was pretty smooth and uneventful… and the line for security was actually pretty short. No issues at all.



After we made it through security, we had about an hour before boarding started, so we went ahead and looked for a place to have lunch. I don’t remember the name of the terminal we were departing from, but there weren't' a lot of eating options. They did have a small food court with a couple restaurants. It was literally packed. The easiest option turned out to be Burger King. Oh well, what are you going to do? (And funny that our first meal on Hawaii was McDonald's and our last was Burger King. Hahahahah! :blush:)

We were flying on American Airlines again, but passed a few Hawaiian Airlines planes. They are just too pretty!



The departure was also smooth and uneventful.

Here's a time lapse video that I made (put the GoPro in time lapse photo mode and stuck it against the window.)


And eventually, the sun set… Just beautiful!



Not much else to say about the majority of the flight… until we came to coast west of LA. It was around 9:30 or so. Being July 3, there were actually a LOT of fireworks going off. We got our first taste of them as we few over Catalina Island. That was pretty awesome!

And I was on the wrong side of the plane, but as we made our way over LA, the plane flew a bit inland and then banked left to head up north, and then curve a little west for the final approach. So looking out the right side of the plane, we actually flew over Disneyland. And Stephanie and Pickle were able to see a few bursts from their fireworks show. They actually saw one of those Mickey Mouse head bursts. How cool!!!!!!

Here's another time lapse video of our approach into LA.


We had about an hour layover in LAX before our final leg back to St. Louis. We had dinner at that same taco food truck again. Eventually, we made it to St. Louis. Stephanie's parents picked us up at the airport and drove us home! Wow, the trip was finally over and we made it home safe and sound!!!

Stay tuned for a wrap up. I'll share a few closing thoughts of our overall experience and I'll have a couple highlights videos too!
 


I love both of these pictures...they are just so inviting!

Happy to read in a previous post you have three trips planned as I love your trip reports, they are great reading! When is your January trip? We are considering a WDW trip the first week of 2018.
 
A really enjoyable trip report, Matt! Reading through it entirely was a great way to spend a dreary Sunday afternoon.

How generous of your in-laws! Hawaii has been on my bucket list for a long time. One of these days.....

I'm envious of your photography skills. The photos you captured are just amazing!

I don't think you were being picky at all regarding Aulani. When you pay that kind of price, you expect good service.

Lastly, would your in-laws consider adopting me?!?!
 
I love both of these pictures...they are just so inviting!

Happy to read in a previous post you have three trips planned as I love your trip reports, they are great reading! When is your January trip? We are considering a WDW trip the first week of 2018.

Our January trip will be the week of Jan 22. Looks like we'll probably miss you. Would have been nice to finally say hello in person :hippie:

A really enjoyable trip report, Matt! Reading through it entirely was a great way to spend a dreary Sunday afternoon.

How generous of your in-laws! Hawaii has been on my bucket list for a long time. One of these days.....

I'm envious of your photography skills. The photos you captured are just amazing!

I don't think you were being picky at all regarding Aulani. When you pay that kind of price, you expect good service.

Lastly, would your in-laws consider adopting me?!?!

Glad you found it and that helped get you through a dreary afternoon. (It was 70 and sunny here in St. Louis today. We've dreary wether the last week or so, and was a nice change!!!)

Hahaha about the adoption. You aren't the first to ask that question :rotfl2:
 
Cool! Would you be willing to come back after your trip and let us know what you thought of the new luau? In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing trip!!!!!

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!
 
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