Ka Wa'a Luau at Aulani
The Ka Wa'a Luau at Aulani is not to be missed. We were lucky enough to have a view of it from our balcony nightly and couldn't wait to get down there ourselves. When you enter there are several activities for the kids to participate in from tattoos to lei making, and Gabriel took a brief ukulele lesson. Greetings and a bit of a dance followed, then dinner during which our host walked around and met the kids (she loved Lorelai's name). After dinner they kids are invited up to learn a hula, and the host saw Lorelai and mentioned her by name from the stage. After the kids hula the show begins and during the middle there was a bit where children were invited up to help play instruments. Lorelai was invited to, but declined, but Gabriel was on board with it and went up on a little stage to play! It was a lovely and fun filled evening full of great entertainment and yummy food.
Aulani
After a couple of days in Maui we flew to Oahu to stay at Disney's Aulani Resort. This resort was at the top of my must do list. It was the only way I was going to pack everyone up for a long haul to Hawaii and it did not disappoint! The hotel is stunning...beautiful inside and out...just as you would expect of a Disney Resort. We stayed in a Vacation Club suite...so we had access to laundry AND a kitchen! (Angels sang I think when we gained access to those amenities.) We were upgraded, free of charge, to an ocean view room. This wasn't quite as exciting of a view as the Hyatt in Maui, but yes, we could see the ocean some but we got to watch the Luau every night (and if we were in the room during the afternoon we could hear them warm up too)! We attended the character breakfast, met characters around the hotel, attended the fire pit story telling (don't miss out on this!), and did a fancy shmancy telescope star gazing "class." (They even have photography classes which I would have LOVED to have taken but I didn't have time for.) The lagoon was fantastic...NO rocks!!! NO sea urchins!!! You could rent the beach/water toys rather than buy! The pool, lazy river, slides...stupendous! We didn't even venture into the Rainbow Reef...ran out of time for it unfortunately. But, you could seriously spend your entire trip just at Aulani, never leave, and have an amazing time.
iPhone Maui
So...dumb me...while on a different part of our vacation I accidentally deleted a days worth of pictures from the beginning of our vacation. WHOOPS!!!! I keep telling myself it happens to the best of us. And mostly it's fine...because the big "family" photo loss was of our time on the submarine which Lorelai and I mostly captured with my iPhone. But...I took an epic picture of this fancy tree in Lahaina and it's gone for.ev.er!!!! Seriously...no tourists around...epic tree...beautiful giant starburst from the sun backlighting sad tree...dangling root systems glowing with the warm sunlight. Epic. tree. picture. Gone! I'll just go cry in a corner. But, it could have been worse and I'm mostly over it now. Sort of. Kind of. (Not really.) So...here are some crummy iPhone shots to make up for it. Oh, and the video down below I took with my Fuji...I really need to read up more on doing video with it...there's real potential there.
Hyatt - Maui
Maui Beach
