Last year, we had the privilege of staying in two different hotel rooms at Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, and I blogged about it in various places that I would encourage you to read:
Aulani: A Disney Resort & Spa – All You Need to Know! (Part 1)
Aulani A Disney Resort & Spa: All You Need to Know (Part 2)!
Aulani A Disney Resort & Spa: All You Need to Know (Part 3 – The Finale)
This year’s visit to Aulani truly felt like coming home! I love seeing the Christmas decor and the kids were so excited!
We had a great experience at Aunty’s Beach House, the Laniwai Spa, the hosted luau, and the Resort as a whole. This fall, we were blessed to be able to return, this time with family to stay in a 2 Bedroom Villa. In spite of a lot of construction closures at the Resort, it was still a wonderful experience and we got to try some different things I wanted to share with you. First and foremost, the villas are absolutely incredible. While the hotel rooms are amazing as well and have some nice amenities not included in the villa, the villa was spacious and had ample space for the 4 adults and 2 kids in our party (a larger family could still be happy here). It had a huge master bath with rainforest shower and jacuzzi tub, king in the master bedroom, two queens in the second bedroom and a full bath, plus a full pull out sofa and sleeper chair in the living area. The best parts? The full kitchen with fridge, dishwasher, microwave and stove, plus a third half bath and washer/dryer in the unit! It saves a lot of money on food, drinks, and even luggage as you don’t need to pack much with laundry at your fingertips. Having TWO balconies with beautiful views was fantastic as well! It was also awesome to have daily housekeeping and help with the breakfast dishes! Disney service at it’s finest!
Such a gorgeous and spacious villa with so many little Disney touches – the kids loved the jacuzzi tub.
And check out that amazing Ocean and Resort view from the Ewa tower!
While we experienced the lovely character breakfast at Mahahiki last year, this year we got to try the Menehune Character Dinner! It was a great buffet spread for dinner as well, with lots of local cuisine, lots of fresh vegetables and sides, a full separate buffet for the kids and best of all – fun characters! Stitch, Chip, Dale and Donald were all part of the photo festivities, and spent lots of time at each table. We also appreciated that they made sure each table was visited by the characters and asked us at the end of our time before doing a shift change (our daughter was in the bathroom when Dale had visited, so he came back just to see her). While Aunty leads the kids activities in the morning, Uncle is in charge at the dinner, and he did some fun songs and dances with all the kids around the restaurant. It was overall a great experience and I’d recommend either the breakfast or the dinner depending on your dining preferences/needs!
We had a great character dining experience at the Menehune Mischief Dinner!
We spent most of our visit this year at the Lazy River and on the Inner Tube slide (Volcano Vertical was closed) – our kids did not end up hanging at Aunty’s this year because their grandparents were along, but they both said they’d be willing to go back and loved it from last year’s visit. They also loved seeing Mickey, Goofy and Moana all poolside and around the Resort. We had two great dinners again at Monkeypod across the street, and took advantage of the market there as well for supplementary groceries. We got most of our groceries from Instacart, who met me down outside the lobby the evening we arrived. Aulani Bell Services was awesome and carried everything up to our villa for us! It was super convenient! We also really enjoyed the dining and local music sititng outside in the evening at Olelo Room.
The Olelo Room, Monkeypod Kitchen, poolside characters and the Resort amenities were all popular this trip!
Overall, this continues to be a magical destination for our family to visit and we cannot wait to return.
We Cain Travel 