Day 13 - Thursday, June 30: Arrival at Aulani!
OK! We finally made it to the Aulani section of the trip report. Yahoo!!! The general plan for the day… was to wish the rest of the family well on their trip back home, and then head over to Aulani around 9:30 AM.
Before we move on to the actual Aulani arrival... a little background on our plans for this part of the trip:
When we first explored the idea of staying at Aulani, we looked at the general hotel room options. Being a family of five, we were going to need two rooms since their standard rooms only accommodate four people. And there didn't seem to be a guarantee that we'd have them adjacent to each other. Well, that would stink if we had to split up. And even worse, getting two rooms was going to be super expensive.
We decided to explore the idea of renting DVC points as an alternative. It turns out that you could rent a Standard View One Bedroom Villa (that sleeps 5) for significantly less than two regular hotel rooms directly through Disney. For three nights, this came out to be 138 points… or about $2,000. So yeah, that's about $666 per night. We felt like this was a bit crazy for our normal budget, but we also figured that we'd probably never have the chance to stay at Aulani again as a family, so we threw caution to the wind and went for it! (This also meant that we had to be somewhat frugal throughout the rest of the trip, which played a role in a lot of our meal choices. The trade off was totally worth it!)
Additionally, we would still have our rental car. Parking was going to cost between $30 and $40 per day as a regular hotel guest. But DVC members get free parking, and this benefit is passed on to whoever is using the points. So that was another plus for renting points!
In some ways, I'd prefer not to share what it cost us to stay here, but I think it's relevant because this is significantly more expensive than the Ko Olina Villas next door. And for our family of five, it was probably about 50% more than it would cost us to stay at the
Disneyland Hotel or the WDW Grand Floridian (which can sleep five in a regular room.) And to be honest, relative to our previous experiences at the Disneyland Hotel, Grand Floridian, Polynesian Resort, etc., the service and value just wasn't quite up to those standards.
When the time comes, I'll share some examples where we felt like Aulani fell short of our expectations. And this is coming from the perspective of a family of five… If we had only required a single hotel room, we could have saved a huge chunk of change, and then the value may have been better for the money. (In other words… a family of four staying in a regular room would probably have a different perspective on the perceived value.) All that being said, we LOVED Aulani and don’t regret the investment one bit. It was still awesome! (It just could have been, well, "awesomer".)
So decision #1 was to rent a DVC points and get a one bedroom villa. Next decision was… who should we rent from? (We had never rented points before.) We looked closely at David's DVC and the DVC Rental Store. They both had good reputations and offered a point protection/insurance plan (in case you need to cancel.) The prices were similar, but the DVC Rental Store's point protection option was a little cheaper, so we decided to go through them. And it turned out to be super easy to rent from them. (I'm sure David's would have been equally as easy.) I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the DVC Rental Store, and I’m pretty sure we'll use them on our next big trip to WDW.
Next question… Do we get a standard view room, or a cool view that looks out into the ocean and/or swimming pools? We knew that we'd have great ocean views at our first two condos on Maui and Oahu, so a view at Aulani wasn't as important to us. Also, we figured that we wouldn't be spending too much time in the room over our three nights, so we figured that having an amazing view wasn't as important here. So yeah, decision #3 was to get a standard view.
Other considerations…. We knew that we'd be there over 4th of July weekend and that it would be super busy. And we had read the horror stories of finding pool chairs during busy times. (Potentially needing to get up at the break of dawn and camp out for hours before the pool opened, loosing your "claim" if you stay away too long, and stuff like that.) We decided that it might be a good idea to rent a cabana for Saturday, ensuring that we'd have at least one day to enjoy the pools without any hassles. Hmm… pay extra for a better view for our room, or get a cabana for at least one of the days? That sealed the deal to go with a standard view room and to rent a cabana instead. Stephanie did the research on which one to pick, and we put in a reservation on the first day that we were able to. (Something like nine months out.) Oh, and since we were staying with DVC points, they gave us the member discount for renting the cabana too! Also, this turned out to be a good decision to reserve early, because not too long after, the price went up by at least $100… and since we reserved before the rate hike, we were locked with the old price.
And with respect to kids activities for Auntie's Beach House on this busy weekend, we knew that we'd need to reserve them early for Pickle, so we did that on the first day that we could. It was pretty easy… you went to the website and gave them your choices. Then they assign you activities based on the number of days that you are staying. So for three nights, they gave us one activity and assigned a time to us. They did give us Pickle's first choice, Coconut Kings and Queens of Comedy… but it was for Friday night at 7:30 PM. Right at the only time when the Luau was scheduled during our visit. Bummer! Nothing we could do about it at the time, so we just figured that we'd play it by ear and let Pickle decided which was more important when the time came.
I guess that's about it for planning purposes….back to the trip report!
So yeah, at about 9:30 AM, we all headed down to the parking lot to say goodbye to the rest of the family and get our cars loaded up. And since we'd have a kitchen in our villa, we took everyone's extra groceries. (Score!!!)
And thinking about it again… What a generous blessing that Stephanie's parents gave to all of us. I mean… it's one thing to stay married for 50 years, but it's another thing to consistently demonstrate what a God-centered and a loving relationship can look like. What a great example they set for us too, and it was really cool to celebrate it with them in one of their favorite places!!! Thanks again Dennis and Shirley!
After saying goodbye, we made the five minute trip (because, well you know, stop lights) over to Aulani.
We pulled up and let the bellmen take everything except for our backpacks with the swimming gear.
(Oh, and noting that before the trip, Stephanie purchased this awesome "AO Coolers Canvas Soft Cooler". It folds pretty flat to fit inside our airplane luggage, but it expands big enough for at least a 24 pack of cans. Or a few cans/bottles and enough fruit/lunch meat for our family. We took it to the beaches a lot, on our drives, etc. And it keeps the ice preserved amazingly well. So yeah, we were able to keep a few perishables in it until our room was ready. That cooler was totally worth it for this trip alone!)
When we walked up to the lobby doors, a couple of nice ladies greeted us. They offered us some fruity water and gave us some goodies. Stephanie received a flower lei and I received a kukui nut lei. (you'll see them in some of the photos below.) The kids each received one of these cool Menehune necklaces.
Here's the back side of Buddy's… (he tore it to get the necklace off the card.)
So yeah, they walked us through the lobby and up to the front desk…
Obviously, the room wasn't ready, but the check-in process was super easy. Noting that in the photo above… all those photos on the wall were taken by local kids. Apparently, before the resort opened, they gave a bunch of school kids cameras and asked them to take photos of their surroundings. And then they built this giant collage with them. If I recall, the color changes even more to the left. Maybe some blues and other colors too…
Next, we all decided to walk back out to the car and drive it over to the self-serve area of the parking garage. And then we walked back into the lobby. This only took a couple minutes. The garage is only a short walk.
Also worth noting, that we've purchased the PhotoPass CD's a few times at WDW and DLR. We decided that it might be worth it to do the same here. (And I'm glad we did.) So while we were exploring the lobby area, we decided to get a few photopass shots!
This one is a bit cheesy, but it shows the leis pretty well…
I guess that's enough for one post. I have enough photos and interesting stuff to share, that it'll take a few posts to get through each day. So yeah, much more to come!