Aulani Trip Report – Part 7 and Conclusion

BY MARY WARING – JANUARY 2012

Aulani Trip Report: Day 7 (Monday)

Last Day; Olelo Room Breakfast; More Pool Food; Laniwai Spa Again; Ko Olina Hawaiian Bar-B-Que; Conclusions

I met our last day at Aulani with mixed feelings. Visiting Hawaii is always lovely, especially when you’re getting a break from the freezing weather of the Colorado mountains. And Aulani itself is a beautiful resort. But at this point we were frankly getting a little tired of cooking on our vacation, plus we were mostly out of groceries.

We decided to get breakfast at the resort’s Olelo Room, which is a bar/lounge in the afternoons and evenings, but offers continental breakfast in the mornings. The staff were extremely friendly and explained how everything worked. The menu is minimal: various pastries, coffee, juice, cold cereal and yogurt, plus two hot breakfast sandwiches. Everything is a la carte. You serve yourself if you want cold items like yogurt or muffins, and then pay at the cash register. If you want a hot breakfast sandwich, you simply order it at the cash register and they bring it out to you. There is self-service coffee, which you buy at the register.

My hot English muffin sandwich (basically a variation on an Egg McMuffin) was quite tasty and came out quickly. It had scrambled eggs, cheese and good-quality bacon on it and was piping hot. There was a crunchy edge on the muffin, so I don’t think it had been microwaved. Was it worth $7? Well, no, but we were in the land of Hawaiian resort prices. Mike said his Danish ($4) was pretty good. He also got a piece of fresh fruit ($3). $14.65 with tax for a pastry, an orange and an “Egg McMuffin” is kind of crazy, but it seemed downright cheap compared with the other options at the resort.

We spent some time at the pool again on our last day. This time we both ordered lunch poolside. I ordered the grilled veggie wrap with taro chips ($12), which was just okay. It was a bit soggy and not very flavorful. The only thing that really saved it was the basil aioli, which came in a small separate container. Mike had the “Crispy Marinated Chicken Lettuce Wraps” ($13). He said the chicken didn’t taste marinated at all and had little flavor. The “wraps” didn’t come wrapped – you got a pile of lettuce leaves, onion slices, etc. and you were supposed to make your own, which was awkward when you were sitting by the pool and had the food on your lap. His fries were good, but Mike said he wouldn’t order the “wraps” again. We really didn’t feel our meals were very good or worth the price.

After lunch I did another treatment in the Aulani Spa, while Mike worked out and then bought a spa day pass so he could use the sauna and steam rooms and the Kula Wai spa garden water features. After I checked into the spa, I waited briefly for an attendant to come walk me back to the locker room. While I was waiting, a group of four adults walked in. They said they had just checked into the resort, and wondered if they could tour the spa briefly. They were given the same “no spa tours except at our designated hours” speech I had received a week prior. Okay, that’s fine. But not ten minutes later, as I was soaking in one of the hot tubs, a male attendant brought SIX locals, including two energetic, very young children (who are not even supposed to be allowed in the spa) through the Kula Wai spa garden on an extensive tour. Clearly “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” when it comes to spa tours.

Fortunately, once the kids were gone, Kula Wai was once again peaceful and relaxing. I tried all the hot tubs: this time the two hot soaking tubs did have colored water, and one smelled like eucalyptus. I even jumped into the cold plunge — icy but refreshing! My treatment, the Nature’s Magical Niu, was wonderful. It included a gentle body scrub using coconut shreds (from the meat, not the shell), followed by a moisturizing coconut “mud” and cold Ti leaf wrap (which felt heavenly on my slightly sunburned shoulders) and a coconut oil scalp massage, then a quick shower right there in the treatment room and finally a massage using coconut-based lotion. Yes, it’s expensive ($210 plus tax and automatic 20% gratuity) but it’s a wonderful 80 minutes of pampering. If it’s in your budget, I highly recommend it!

For dinner we decided to try one of the two local restaurants that are in Ko Olina Center, the small shopping center across the street from Aulani. It’s a short, pleasant walk over to the center, though you have to use a crosswalk where the cars do not have a stop sign or stop light. You can push a pedestrian crossing button that lights up a warning sign for the drivers, which is better than nothing, but it’s a tiny bit worrisome in the dark.

The two restaurants in Ko Olina Center are Just Tacos and Ko Olina Hawaiian Bar-B-Que. We decided on the Hawaiian barbecue place, mainly because, well, it was Hawaiian and we like to try local food when we can. We ordered two different mixed plates so we could try as many items as possible. It was less expensive than Aulani by quite a bit — our plates were right around $10 each — but it wasn’t very good. Like most Hawaiian “plate lunch” places, there was a lot of starch (two big scoops of rice and a scoop of macaroni salad) plus a rather bland, usually fried, meat/fish item or mixture of items. Of the things we tried, I would say the fried shrimp and the barbecue ribs (which are done in a Hawaiian style: cut differently from mainland ribs, slightly sweet and heavy on the soy sauce) were the best of a not-so-great lot. If the soggy fried “Mahi” I was served was actually Mahi, I’ll eat my hat. I think it was tilapia. The slushy “strawberry” drink I got ($4.35) was nasty and fake tasting. In short, if you go, split something (the portions are huge), don’t order anything fancy and don’t expect a lot beyond a big, greasy/starchy meal at relatively low prices.

After dinner I stopped at one of the only other open storefronts in Ko Olina Center, Two Scoops, and got a couple of scoops of ice cream for $6.54. It wasn’t particularly good, unfortunately. I would have been better off with a pint of Haagen Dazs from the Aulani store.

So, in the end, would I recommend Aulani? Yes, with reservations. Something must be done about the food and beverage department at this resort, which seems to be completely out of its depth. Other than that, we experienced only minor issues and annoyances, all of which I’ve reported here. In general I think Aulani is a lovely resort and well worth a visit.

A few final thoughts:

If you are staying at Aulani for more than one or two days, you NEED a rental car. The food at Aulani varies between terrible and okay, and it’s wildly expensive. Even if the food was actually good, it would cost a fortune to eat three meals a day there. With a rental car, you can drive 10 minutes and have a lot of less-expensive, better tasting dining choices.
Aulani is great for active families. There is a lot of fun stuff to do, and the pool area alone is astoundingly great. But if you prefer peace and quiet, be aware that the pool area is noisy, especially during its opening hours (generally 8:00 am to 8:00 pm). It’s not just the kids splashing and yelling and having a great time — the water itself makes quite a lot of noise, due to all the waterfalls, rushing currents, etc. It’s hard to get away from the high noise level, especially if your room opens onto it.
While the Ocean View rooms offer a nice, if distant, view of the lagoon and the ocean, a Pool View is basically the same thing, just lower down. Ocean View rooms are just higher floor rooms, right above the Pool View rooms. They are not “ocean front” rooms. Unless you have a Grand Villa, your balcony will not be directly facing the water, and you won’t be able to hear the ocean.
Unless you really won’t be spending any time in your room and/or you don’t care about your view at all, I don’t recommend the Standard View rooms. Some of them look right into the parking garage. In addition to this being an ugly view, I suspect there could be noise/light issues related to the cars coming and going. The Island Garden View rooms are right above the Standard View rooms, so you’re looking at the top of the parking garage or down into the spa’s Kula Wai garden, and across at the JW Marriott Ihilani. One advantage of the Standard View and Island Garden View rooms is that they should be quieter than the Ocean View or Pool View rooms.
I really hated reporting that the food/beverage service and quality were so bad at Aulani. I was actually starting to question myself, in fact. But right after we left Aulani, we went to Disneyland (California) and in the course of three nights, had two wonderful dinners, one quite good dinner, and several excellent cocktails — all accompanied by the kind of outstanding service that you expect from Disney. So it’s not Disney in general — it’s Aulani.
Go to Leonard’s Malasadas. Trust me.