Disney's Aulani Resort. Anyone been?

I was there in May! Anything you want to know in particular? I’ll post again with my review and answers to what you posted here in a bit.

The pool chairs used to be a really big issue, but now they have instituted a one hour policy - if you’re not using your chair for an hour, your belongings will be moved and a folded towel will be placed on the back of the chair. Folded towel = available chair. They have dedicated staff who watch chairs and enforce this policy (which tells you how bad the problem was in the past). You should be able to get a pool chair until 10AM-ish with ease, and if all the pool chairs are occupied, the beach usually has available chairs.

Parking fees are crazy expensive, but there’s an Alamo car rental location on site. So it’s a good option to only rent a car for the day you’re planning to drive around the island. Good day trip(s) are driving the North Shore loop and the Polynesian Cultural Center. Otherwise, spend as much time as you can chilling at the resort!

Aunty’s Beach House is the kids’ club, and it’s free. It does fill up during the busy season, and I think you have to check the kids in daily (basically making a daily reservation for their time there). You can pre-register online before your trip to save filling out paperwork while you’re in Hawaii.

Thoughts on Au’Lani

TLDR, I’ve been Au’Lani, AMA. It was amazing and I would go back tomorrow.

We were in Hawaii for 10 days, and we spent the first 3 at Au’Lani. From check-in to check-out the experience was really great. We had an amazing time. It actually made us question the rest of our trip.

I think the key thing to remember is that it isn’t a Disney theme park, so if you are expecting that experience, you are probably going to be surprised. Also don’t forget to make reservations way in advance for breakfast, luau if you are going to do them.

Property felt incredibly safe, felt like the older kids could be out on their own with no real issue.

Take some time to explore your first day and find the things that you like the most. My kiddo is young, so we got up and claimed chairs at the splash pad everyday and called that home base. Everyone sort of found a particular pool that they loved and ended up gravitating towards it.

We did the Luau and we really enjoyed it. Food was above average, experience was really great. Kids loved it. I can go farther here. Have you been a luau before? PRO TIP: When you go the luau, don’t eat 3 whole pineapples. You’ll wreck your mouth and not be able to enjoy food for the rest of the trip.

We did the character breakfast one morning. Food was incredible. We were a little underwhelmed with the “character” portion of it, but I think that’s because we were expecting Disney World level and that’s just not how it rolls.

We got the refillable cups. We started with 1, ended up with like 6. They’re pricey, but you’ll use the hell out of them.

We got most of our meals from the Ulu Cafe (they had surprisingly good pizza). Great to grab cans of beer or sandwiches and snacks. Dole whip is super good. Obviously.

Loved Mama’s Snack Stop.

Shave Ice was great.

We spent each day outside all day. From pool to pool. Swam out into the ocean a few times. Great to grab boogie boards and cruise out into the water.

Head out from the front and check out the golf course and the area.

Head out from the beach and walk the whole shore there. Really cool to see the public areas mixed in with the private beaches. They just announced they’re building an Atlantis resort over there, so it’s going to be even crazier in a few years.

Infinity pool was my spot of choice.

Generally I was wandering from the bar to the Ulu Cafe, grabbing beers from both and just enjoying the atmosphere. We went to bed early and got up early.

If you have any specific questions, or want other recommendations for the island, let me know!

@_ @ChadP Thanks for all the information on the Aulani Resort. Our family had a blast, we arrived a little early so our room wasn’t ready yet but they activated our room keys for the Luana Lounge so we could shower and change into swim clothes to enjoy the pool. The pools were all great, we tried them all as well as all of the hot tubs, lazy river, bridges play area, and the slides. Like @ChadP our pool of choice was the Infinity Grotto pool but most time was probably spent on the inner tub slide and lazy river. We paid for the Rainbow Reef snorkeling for our stay so we did that a few times too. That was a nice way for the kid to try snorkeling without having to worry about waves or any of the scarier critters of the open ocean, but for adults it is a bit limited and not being able to dive under was a bit of a bummer.

Thank you @_ for the info on the pool chairs and what the folded towel on the back means, we mostly picked chairs away from any of the pools (Facing the ocean right next to Little ‘Opihi’s Snack Shack) so they didn’t really time those as much but the couple of times we setup near a pool we knew to remove the towel from the back anytime we saw it.

We skipped the Luau but did a character breakfast and dinner, we enjoyed the food at both and were kinda happy with the limited characters since it gave us more time to actually eat. We used the chair side service at the pool and went to Ulu Cafe for most meals/snacks and didn’t have a bad meal the entire stay.

Our son went to Aunty’s Beach House for one afternoon/evening and he had a ton of fun. We signed him up for an activity with Goofy, Chip, and Dale so he got to play with them and make a craft to take home. The thing he probably enjoyed more than anything though was the Menehune scavenger hunt and just searching for Menehune hidden all around the resort.

Overall was a great resort and had everything we needed on property and we’d go back without a second thought.

If you and your family of 3 with an 8 year old boy had never been to any Disney property; could go to any one, one time, all expenses paid, which one would you choose?