Oahu trip report- April 2018

[futuremrsrowell]

Hello everyone! I don't post a ton, but I sure love reading everyone's trip reports and the information they provide so I figured I would make one to return the favor. I doubt they will be very photo intensive, but I will do my best to answer questions if anybody has them!

This will be my pre-trip post, so that anybody with specific questions can ask me before I get there and I can hopefully get an answer for you! I will try and update every few days while we are there and then add more detail once we return.

We are leaving on April 3rd and staying until April 10th (well- our return flight is overnight, so we won't be back until the 11th). Our traveling party consists of:

1. Me
2. Steven (my husband)
3. Reagan (our 5 year old daughter)
4. Mitch (my father)
5. April (my mother)
6. Dawn (a family friend who is meeting us there)
7. Colin (Dawn's son who lives in Hawaii and will be joining us occasionally)

Since this is a first visit for a few of us, we wanted to split the island up and stay a few places. So we are going to stay at the Ilikai hotel the night we land, then three nights at the Ocean Villas at Turtle Bay, and three nights in a 2 bedroom ocean view villa at Aulani (our first trip using our DVC points) before flying home.

My dad has been to Hawaii more times than is fair for any human, so he helped make the plan. The general plan is as follows:
Day 1: Travel and get adjusted to the time change
Day 2: Bishop Museum, Makani Catamaran afternoon sail, drive to Turtle Bay
Day 3: Sea Life Park Dolphin Encounter, Dole Plantation
Day 4: Kualoa Ranch, Polynesian Cultural Center, and dinner at Pa'akai
Day 5: Move from Turtle Bay to Aulani, Kakamora Chaos for Reagan, and the Ka-waa Luau
Day 6: Cabana Rental and Pool day at Aulani, Stitch's Space Goo and Surf's Up Dance Party for Reagan
Day 7: Breakfast at Makahiki, explore the resort, and then Dinner at Ama Ama
Day 8: Pearl Harbor and start the flight home
Day 9: Back to reality

We left a lot of flex in our plans, so I will try and update this short list as the plans develop.

 

[Disneybridewifemama]

Looking forward to your reviews of the kids club activities (my daughter is signed up for those as well) and Pearl Harbor. We’ll be there just a week after you leave.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day one- Travel day

Our travel day had a few hiccups, but turned out pretty well for most of us. We got up and headed to the airport bright and early in the morning. Our flight to Dallas was held on the tarmac for about an hour by air traffic control, so we spent a little time nervous about missing our flight to HNL. Due to weather, Dawn did actually miss the connecting flight and end up having her one stop itinerary turn into a three stop itinerary in order to make it the same day.

Those of us who made the flight in Dallas flew on American Airlines really nice lay flat seats on the 777. I can not recommend them enough for most people. The only exception is young children. It was difficult with Reagan because the seats are so private that we couldn’t really assist her with things without it turning in to a bit of a production.

We got to Honolulu at about 3 pm, grabbed our rental car, and headed to the Ilikai hotel to check in. We got up to our 2 bedroom ocean view suite and were very impressed with the room quality. The hotel does charge a resort fee and a fee for valet parking- so anybody planning a stay here should be prepared for that cost.
After checking in, we headed down the the lagoon to let Reagan splash around and then let her play in the sand on Waikiki beach for a few minutes. Then we set out walking and looking for a place to eat. We settled on Hard Rock. I split the Honey mustard chicken sandwich with April. It was good. Reagan got macaroni and cheese that came on a cute little guitar plate, and the boys got Hamburgers. There weren’t really any surprises- it was just like other Hard Rocks.

We headed back to the room and crashed because none of us slept on the airplane and we wanted to be well rested for the next day.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day Two- moving to the north shore

Sweet Reagan woke up at two thirty ready to start her day. After trying to keep her quiet for a while- Steven and I decided to sneak our amd get some breakfast. We walked to a Dennys about a mile away from our hotel. Just like Hard Rock- it was basically just like every other Denny’s on the planet.
After we got back to the room and brought everyone else breakfast, we packed up and headed out to the Bishop Museum. We really enjoyed this- there was a little of something for everyone. Reagan loved the interactive building and the grown ups loved the historical exhibits. I’m not sure we would pay the additional $5 each for the Dinosaur exhibit unless Reagan really wanted to do it again. It was pretty small- and not as good as some of the traveling Dinosaur exhibits that have come through closer to home.

While we were at the museum, we got the call that our afternoon sail on the Makani Catamaran was cancelled because of an upcoming storm, so instead of heading to the marina, we headed to lunch and the grocery store. Next we headed up to unload at our Ocean Villla at Turtle Bay Resort on the north shore.

We stayed in a 3 bedroom villa and it was BEAUTIFUL. We had a direct ocean view, access to the grounds, and a ton of space. I cannot recommend these enough.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day three- Dolphins and Dole

We got up early on Day 3 and made the long drive down to the Sea Life Park, where we enjoyed a lot of animal interaction. This was also on our Go Oahu card- we redeemed our Premium experience for the Dolphin encounter. We spent some time in the water with the Dolphins and then each got a photo kissing and dancing with the Dolphins. This was the perfect amount of interaction for Reagan. I feel like a full swim would have been too much for her. She also got to feed the sea lions and sea turtles.

One thing that I found interesting was that they release a lot of sea turtles into the wild once they have hatched and are ready to be released. I also found in interesting that they had to administer eye drops to the sea lions during feeding time to help with cataract prevention. One of the sea lions was over 30 years old, which is a LOT older than the natural life span- and she had pretty severe cataracts- but the eye drops allowed her to keep some of her sight.

After our Dolphin Encounter we drove to the Dole Plantation for a quick look around and a Dole Whip before heading back to have dinner in the room.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day four- Kualoa Ranch and PCC

On day four we got up and headed to Kualoa Ranch for the 9:15 movie sites tour, which was fantastic. It was almost like a backlot tour mixed with the living with the land ride at Epcot. There are a lot of scenes from movies, props, WWII sites, and agricultural touring. I am really glad we did this.

After the tour, we headed to the Polynesian Cultural Center and had lunch at Pounders while we waited for the themed island areas to open at noon. Pounders was good and very reasonably priced. Everybody enjoyed their meal and we were able to get some pastries from the bakery to go. The Polynesian cultural center was cool and very interactive. We didn’t stay as long as we wanted, because Reagan was getting a bit over stimulated and we wanted to make it to Waimea Falls before we needed to head back to get ready for dinner.

Waimea Falls was a fun stop- although I wouldn’t plan a whole day around it. The waterfall itself wasn’t as impressive as some I have seen in the Pacific Northwest, but the surrounding scenery was really nice. We spent about two hours there, which felt about right. Somebody who really appreciates different varieties of plants would want to spend more time. There were a lot of paths that we didn’t take because you can’t convince a five year old to be interested in plants for that long.

We went back to the resort and got ready for dinner at Pa-akai, which was great. Steven had the surf and turf. He said the scallops were a little over cooked, but otherwise things were good. I loved the truffle crusted pork loin and the coconut creme brûlée.

 

[aprincessatlast]

Nice report so far. We were looking at the go Oahu card so interested to see how you find its value. I think we might do the 4 day from costco.

 

[Captain Canada]

We have a trip planned with a split stay between Turtle Bay Resort and Aulani. We have a seven year old boy and purchased the Go card from Costco. I’m wondering how much time you gave yourself to drive from Turtle Bay Resort to the ranch? The ranch wants us there to check in one hour before the tour. I’m wondering how check in went and what you did for the hour? Did you eat there? Thanks

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Nice report so far. We were looking at the go Oahu card so interested to see how you find its value. I think we might do the 4 day from costco.

We have gotten really great value from the three day pass- I’ll total everything in a later post. But it has way more than paid for itself.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

We have a trip planned with a split stay between Turtle Bay Resort and Aulani. We have a seven year old boy and purchased the Go card from Costco. I’m wondering how much time you gave yourself to drive from Turtle Bay Resort to the ranch? The ranch wants us there to check in one hour before the tour. I’m wondering how check in went and what you did for the hour? Did you eat there? Thanks

We gave ourselves 90 minutes but it only took about 75 minutes leaving turtle bay at around 7 am. There is a little shop that we looked around at and then we let our daughter run around in a field and look at the horses that were being saddled up for the horseback tour. We didn’t eat a meal- but everything looked really good.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day five- our first day at Aulani

We planned on leaving turtle bay at 9:30 in order to make it to Aulani in time to get Reagan’s registration for Aunty’s finalized in time for her to make her 12:30 Kalamora Chaos reservation. We were ready much earlier than we thought we would be so we headed that way and arrived at Aulani after about a 45 minute drive. I was overwhelmed by how beautiful the resort is.
We did online check in, which I highly recommend- so they just took our bags and told us they would let us know when your room was ready. We dropped Reagan off at Aunty’s and explored the resort until it was time for us to get her out to feed her lunch.

She rushed to eat lunch at Off the Hook (which was pretty good for pool side food) and then we took her back to Aunty’s for Kakamora Chaos, which she loved! They decorated paddles, then learned some games. Then Moana came and played with then For about half an hour.

While she was at Aunty’s, the adults went and toured a Grand Villa. It made me wish I had just spent the extra points on it! The views were to die for. Unfortunately, we got a sad call that our luau had been cancelled for weather right after we toured- so we got into swimsuits and headed down for some pool time.

It started to rain right when we got our room assignment. We ended up on the 8th floor, but our ocean view was really nice and we could see all the pools as well- which I really liked.

We settled into our room for the evening and Reagan crashed at 8:00. A glass of wine later and I was right behind her.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

Day six- Resort day at Aulani

We started the day by trying to walk down to the spot at Paradise cove where the sea turtles nest. Let me tell you- listen when people say to use the street . Those rocks are no joke. Steven and I both ended up with battle wounds! Thankfully Reagan managed to not get hurt.

After a little meltdown because we didn’t see any turtles, we took Reagan back to Aunty’s for Stitch’s Space Goo. She came back out for lunch in a great mood and carrying a bag of slime.

Lunch today was at Cabana #2- off the same menu as Off the Hook yesterday. Having a cabana for a home base was nice- and I can see how it would be even nicer during the summer or periods of heavier crowds. Our cabana hosr was great and brought fresh towels through the day and brought a snack bowl pretty early. Our server also delivered a fruit tray and dessert tray, which were both yummy.

Reagan also did Surf’s Up at Aunty’s. She had a great time and the pictures turned out really cute. She left with a decorated surf board and a souvenir bag. The group picture for this activity was with Goofy- which I found a little strange.

Since our Luau the night before was cancelled for weather, we got last minute reservations for the Paradise Cove Luau. It was cute and retro, but I probably wouldn’t do it again. The lines for activities were long and the food was pretty mediocre. Our server was very nice and the performers were great though.

 

[frank808]

Day Two- moving to the north shore

Sweet Reagan woke up at two thirty ready to start her day. After trying to keep her quiet for a while- Steven and I decided to sneak our amd get some breakfast. We walked to a Dennys about a mile away from our hotel. Just like Hard Rock- it was basically just like every other Denny’s on the planet.
After we got back to the room and brought everyone else breakfast, we packed up and headed out to the Bishop Museum. We really enjoyed this- there was a little of something for everyone. Reagan loved the interactive building and the grown ups loved the historical exhibits. I’m not sure we would pay the additional $5 each for the Dinosaur exhibit unless Reagan really wanted to do it again. It was pretty small- and not as good as some of the traveling Dinosaur exhibits that have come through closer to home.

While we were at the museum, we got the call that our afternoon sail on the Makani Catamaran was cancelled because of an upcoming storm, so instead of heading to the marina, we headed to lunch and the grocery store. Next we headed up to unload at our Ocean Villla at Turtle Bay Resort on the north shore.

We stayed in a 3 bedroom villa and it was BEAUTIFUL. We had a direct ocean view, access to the grounds, and a ton of space. I cannot recommend these enough.

For future reference there is an IHOP across the street from The Ilikai and Hilton Hawaiian Village. If you want to try some local flavor, it is located about 4 buildings from IHOP. It is a local 24hr coffee shop called Wailana Coffee House. Thought i would throw these 2 locations out if you didn't want to walk a mile for some breakfast food.

 

[futuremrsrowell]

For future refernece there is an IHOP across the street from The Ilikai and Hilton Hawaiian Village. If you want to tey some local flavor about 4 buildings from IHOP there is a local 24hr coffee shop called Wailana Coffee House. Thoguht i would through these locatuons out if you didnt want to walk a mile for soem breakfast food.

We tried to go to IHOP, but it didn’t open for a few more hours. Our little one was hit pretty hard by the time difference.

 

[Mistizoom]

Thanks for the trip report, enjoying it!

 

[luvmychaos]

Day five- our first day at Aulani

It started to rain right when we got our room assignment. We ended up on the 8th floor, but our ocean view was really nice and we could see all the pools as well- which I really liked.

Which tower were you in? We’re going in Sept and are doing a 2 bd OV as well so I’m trying to memorize the good room numbers so when I get the text, I know where it is
This is our 1st trip using our new DVC points, too!!

 

[futuremrsrowell]

We were in Ewa Tower- room 874. We really liked it.