This summer, we are reintroducing our listeners to the BEST OF SCFADP by playing our 10 most popular episodes. In this episode, we review Disney’s Aulani Resort & Spa on Oahu.
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All music for this episode is available through a creative commons license. The background music for the News segment was created by Kevin Macleod: Fuzzball Parade by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5044-fuzzball-parade
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Show Notes:
Kelli and Chris share their experiences and opinions on Disney’s Ilani Resort and Spa, Alani SPA, and Aulani Resort in Hawaii. They emphasize the convenience of having groceries delivered, the peace of mind it provides, and the overall quality of the resorts. They also highlight the cultural center, yoga classes, and daily activities at Aulani, and praise the spa’s tranquility and the catamaran cruise’s dolphin-watching experience. Additionally, they share their insights on discovering the lesser-known aspects of Hawaii, including secluded beaches, hidden coves, and unique cultural experiences.
Outline
Aulani Resort in Hawaii, including pros and cons of staying there.
- Kelli and Chris discuss their experience at Disney’s Ilani resort in Hawaii, including their stay in a DVC villa and the convenience of grocery delivery.
- They praise the resort’s location, amenities, and peace of mind provided by the grocery delivery service.
- Kelli and Chris stayed at a resort with multiple pools, hot tubs, and an adult-only area with a bar.
- Crowds were loud and active near the pools and ocean view rooms, but they were able to find peaceful moments on their balcony.
Aulani Luau at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, including spa experience.
- Chris and Kelli describe their experience at a Hawaiian resort, including a beautiful beach with tiki torches and a water playground area, as well as morning activities such as yoga and cultural events.
- The resort offers a variety of activities, including board games and DVDs, in its cultural center, and has a wonderful uncle and auntie who share stories and teach about Hawaiian culture.
- Kelli raves about the Alani spa at Disney World, praising its silence and relaxation pools.
- Chris and Kelli enjoy the spa’s massage experience, with personalized music and ambiance.
Disney vacation experiences, including spa treatments, catamaran cruise, Jeep rental, luau, and childcare.
- Chris: Favorite spa experience was indoor steam room, sang Disney songs.
- Kelli: Catamaran cruise with guides was amazing, saw dolphins in Hawaii.
- Kelli and Chris enjoyed the luau at Alana, with activities like tattoos, Ukulele lessons, and a blue drink called Hawaiian sunset.
- As a vegetarian, Kelli found it challenging to find plant-based options at the luau, but was still able to find plenty of food to eat.
Hawaii vacation at Aulani Resort, including snorkeling tips and recommendations.
- Kelli and Chris found a hidden beach with great snorkeling after walking across lava rocks (0:16:28-0:17:23)
- Wearing daily bracelets at the resort provides pride but no tangible benefits (0:17:23-0:18:00)
- Kelli and Chris enjoyed their stay at Aulani, a Disney Resort in Hawaii, with its beautiful pool, beach, and spa.
- They would definitely give it 5 stars and go back, with Kelli preferring the Mountain View room and Chris the pool view room.
Episode Transcript:
NOTE: This transcript was produced using AI. Please excuse any errors.
Hello out there Disney fam. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris and I’m Kelly. We are going to continue our summer messed up some SF summer series with our number nine all time most popular recording. Recorded originally on July the second 2020. We are going to be talking about a
Kelli 0:52
Lani resort and the spa just was about ticketless I guess about a year or so after we went. Yeah, that’s about 18 months after we had been
Chris 1:02
still very fresh and the SPA was absolutely our best, our most favorite part of the resort. Yes, yes. So we hope you enjoy this best of episode as much as we enjoyed this spy. If you do, then you’re gonna sleep for days. Absolutely enjoy it. Hey, everybody, this is the Supercalifragilistic awesome Disney podcast. This is Chris. And I’m Kelly. And today we’re doing a bonus pod talking about our review of ilani. So ilani is Disney’s resort out in on Oahu in Hawaii. It’s in the it’s in Catalina area of the Oahu. It opened on August 29 2011. It’s got 21 oceanfront acres 359 hotel rooms, 16 suites 481 DVC villas. So when did we go? We went for five nights. It was July was it? It was late July, late July last year, year before last 2018 Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it’s been two years almost. Well, we stayed in a DVC villa, and we had groceries delivered, which was a godsend.
Kelli 2:22
Yeah, that’s a Disney Vacation Club thing, you can fill out a grocery delivery form. And we will do a bonus pod specifically on Disney Vacation Club. But you can fill out a grocery delivery form and the food is literally waiting for you when you check into your room. And it is I gotta say it’s lovely to check in and already have bottles of water in the fridge that or cold.
Chris 2:43
It’s great. Pain tree,
Kelli 2:45
it is a stock. I mean, it is more expensive than if you went and get the groceries yourself. But I can’t say enough about peace of mind for that. So it was good.
Chris 2:53
Especially when you’ve traveled a long time to get there. Yes,
Kelli 2:57
yes. And we’re from we’re coming from South Carolina. So we had, you know, a pretty long travel eight hours total flight probably. It was it was nice to have that waiting for us.
Chris 3:09
So as you can imagine allottees crowded but it wasn’t so crowded that you can’t do what you want to do there. They have plenty of activities for the for the amount of people staying at the resort. It’s right on a beautiful again, you do share a lagoon with at least one other resort. But the lagoon is beautiful there. The if you’ve ever been snorkeling in Hawaii, or Maui or anywhere like that, you’re not going to get that experience from their lagoon,
Kelli 3:44
right? It’s manmade looking, and the waters a little bit cloudy. You’re not gonna see a lot of fish and reefs.
Chris 3:50
It’s not as cloudy as say the Atlantic Ocean, right. But there’s just a lot of people that use the login and they stir up a lot of sand and stuff
Kelli 3:56
and right but the polls are fantastic. There are multiple pool pool some large some small, hot tubs are great again, multiple hot tubs, there is an adult only area which has a bar right there at it. Lovely adult only hot tubs. So there’s plenty of things. Plenty of space on the beach, plenty of space near the pools, you’re not going to have to hunt for a seat. We never hunted for seats to be in. And that includes tables too. We ate a lot of counter service meals near the pool. We had no problems finding tables around lunchtime or dinner time to sit and eat at. And so again, this is late July. And we had no issues with any of that it was I don’t want to say it wasn’t crowded, it was crowded. But we were able to do what we wanted. Yeah,
Chris 4:41
I’d say that the only issue with the crowds was if you have a a pool side or an over Ocean View room. It’s loud no matter where you’re staying in
Kelli 4:52
the resort. Well yeah, so your only options are Mountain View, or pool slash ocean view. And so now actually mean you pay more for pools slash Ocean View, which is the view was great, right? No question about it. The view was fantastic. But it’s loud. It’s loud. Because when people go down the slides at the pool and the slides are great. They’re great. But lazy river is fun. It there’s so much fun happening down there. But literally from 7am People are just screaming their heads off going down this slide. And so one of my favorite things to do is just to drink coffee on our balcony. And if you’re imagining coffee on a balcony overlooking the ocean, in a you know, peaceful serene moment at 730 ish. That’s not what you’re getting. Right. So I think I probably would have been more at peace with a Mountain View, right? Yeah. But you know, for those with kids, the kids could sit on the balcony and look down at the lazy river. Look down at the slides. I mean, it’s it’s amazing to look down on this property is man
Chris 6:00
it’s a nighttime the way they got lit up with the tiki torches. It’s just it’s gorgeous, beautiful. They have a they have a water playground area that’s just massive for the kids to play on. For cut all about. Yeah. And then they also have like a, a snow a manmade snorkel, like reef deal. Right? So so that, you know, if you’re, you’re not into swimming in the ocean, which some people are not. This is a very controlled environment with lots of colorful fish.
Kelli 6:32
And they teach you how to use the gear. I mean, we did we did it. It was great. But there were people standing in line for it. And I will say you can get that experience on any beach in Hawaii. Really? Except for the beach. That’s true. Yeah, if you’re willing to leave the resort, you can be unencumbered and not on a time limit. And you can literally have that same experience almost at any other beach. But it was it was gorgeous. I mean, they had some beautiful fish and beautiful reef in there. Yeah,
Chris 7:05
it’s it’s great. A Lani does a wonderful job to have offering other activities every morning. Every morning. There’s there’s multiple like workouts so they’ve got like trainers that are that are offering threat you went to went to it almost died. But that’s just how wonderful it is. I literally almost died within the first five or six minutes. But yeah, it was still a wonderful experience because you’re on the beach in Hawaii. And it was great. And they offered on various days they offered yoga every day. They offered yoga on floating mats in the lagoon. It was just crazy good. Yeah. They have an uncle and auntie that are sort of like the the mom and dad of the allottee experience. And Uncle gives a he sits out by the fire they learned they light a fire and a fire pit every night is this big, beautiful fire bit. And Uncle sits out there with a ukulele and tells stories of Hawaii. And then Auntie offers activities and teaching people things about Hawaiian culture in their little Cultural Center. They have their wonderful job of keeping everybody engaged and busy doing things
Kelli 8:23
in the cultural center we went into for one of those little activities, but also they had board games, they had DVDs. So just like a lot of the other Disney resorts. You can go to this area and get a board game to take back to your room. You can get books, DVDs and things of that nature. Take that to room two. We didn’t take advantage of that because we were just there for five days but it is available and well stocked.
Chris 8:47
Let’s talk about the spa.
Kelli 8:49
Let’s talk about the spa. Oh,
Chris 8:52
you go to 10 minutes on the spot. If
Kelli 8:54
you go to Alani and you don’t book a day at the spa, you are screwing up. You are making a massive mistake. Bottom
Chris 9:03
line. Don’t not do this by it.
Kelli 9:07
I’ve been to a lot of spas. I’m a spa goer. I love it. I’ve never been to a spa like this. I’ve never had an experience like this. And it set the bar so high not just for spas, but for Disney spas. You know, frankly, I think Disney has a lack of spas. You’ve got Saratoga Springs and you got the grand flub not a lot of other spa while Disney World at Walt Disney World. Yes. But once you’ve been to the Alani spa, you’re like, This is a Disney spa. This is what a spa supposed to be. So I don’t actually remember the inside of the spa. which I know sounds ridiculous because that’s where the treatment rooms are right? But on the outside of the spa, there are three relaxation pools with different water temperatures and you’re supposed to move from one pool to the next and then there is a reflexology water feature that You walk through and the rocks are tilted in different ways to hit different points on your feet. And the water comes out in different ways. I mean, it’s just, it’s the most amazing thing. But the most just mind blowing part of the spa, when you’re outside is that you can’t hear anybody else.
Chris 10:22
That is mind blowing. I hadn’t really thought about that. But you are absolutely right. You’re
Kelli 10:26
sitting in those polls, and you think, how is this possible that I can’t hear the kid screaming on those slides, right? Because you can’t be that far away from them. You can’t hear a thing. We were actually trying to figure out what plants they used to give that level of silence because I want them or
Chris 10:44
what teleporter they used on us to send us somewhere totally different. It
Kelli 10:48
was fascinating. The spa, the outdoor spa area was fascinating. There was a really cold pool, and right across from that was a really hot pool. And so you did that? Well,
Chris 10:58
I got in the cold pool up to my thighs. And then I was like, Well,
Kelli 11:03
I’m not going any further doing that. But that’s legit cold, but then you ran back over to the hot hot pool was nice. I sat in the hot pool and watched all the crazy people running from the cold. I was like y’all are crazy. This is where it’s at right here. But no the spa is phenomenal. If you go and you don’t do the spa, then you need to you need to rethink your priorities. Because that is absolutely where it’s at.
Chris 11:27
And I do remember the inside of the spa, it was a wonderful massage experience where you we get to choose from like four different types of relaxing music that you might listen to during your experience and and what what sense would you like in the room and then the locker room wet area. They had an amazing sauna. They had an amazing steam room. They had an amazing hot chair, heat chair. And Whirlpool.
Kelli 11:59
Really remember none of us clearly you don’t. Zero of this.
Chris 12:03
My favorite thing was that I experience not in this was not my favorite thing about the spa. But the indoor area of the SPA was the the steam room. I had it all to myself and the acoustics in that room where you were singing I was singing if anybody walked past that room while I was in there. They were I don’t know that they were treated but they definitely heard some Disney songs. So there was one other thing there was like a salt scrub thing.
Kelli 12:37
Oh, I remember that. Like before you got that done. And then you got to take some some bath salts back with you. Yeah, so I used our our hot tub back at the villa and use their bath salts. It was lovely. It was absolutely lovely. But this actually isn’t review of the spa. It’s a review of all of all it so we should move on. So another great Disney Experience is they also do offer off site experiences. We did their catamaran cruise, because we love catamaran cruises, and it was phenomenal. It was a great experience. The captain had heard about a school of dolphins that was not in the area that we were gonna go to and so he took the cruise to where he had heard the dolphins were just so we could see them. I’d never seen dolphins in Hawaii, we’ve been plenty of times. And it was fairly an amazing experience.
Chris 13:30
I was blown away at how he was just able to hear on the radio. Hey, there’s some dolphins at this place. And then we found it we literally just we were all over those dolphins
Kelli 13:40
and there were guides that got into the water with us on the snorkel. Once we got off the catamaran to sort of show us hey, go look at this reef. Hey here, go look at this fish. I mean he would, you know show things and she would show things it was they were they were awesome. We love that catamaran cruise. We also rented a Jeep one day and went off property to Holly Eva and down to Waikiki Beach. It was well worth the day off of property. But I’ll tell you, if you’ve got kids, they’re not going to get tired of property. No, they will play on that property all the time. But if you do need some adult time antes beach house is a godsend. Yeah, aunty’s beach house is where you can check your kids in for childcare. They also have special tween and teen events there. You do need to get there early. If you’re if you want your kids to get a snack in a meal because they only accept a certain number of kids for lunch. But other kids can come and go throughout the day. But if your kid’s gonna be there for lunch, you got to get there pretty early and get that reservation. We also did the luau day for
Chris 14:46
those. Yeah, that was an amazing experience. You know, I’m not gonna go as far as to say we’re luau snobs. We really have enough luaus to be snobbish about it. But there is a particular luau in Maui that Love old behind a little behind the luau in Maui. That is just wonderful. But I would put the luau at Alana right up there. They did an amazing job.
Kelli 15:10
He had a lot of activities. Yeah. You could get tattoos, ink tattoos, a lot of fun learn lay making. They were teaching people how to play the Uke. And they had this little blue drink beverage. You remember what it was called? Actually is a blue was like a Hawaiian sunset or a blue ocean. It’s like, blue is the ocean. It was lovely with a mare Sheena maraschino cherry. That was a great beverage. I don’t remember the name of it. But that’s something you would want to look up when you went because it was fantastic.
Chris 15:47
Food was great. Yeah, the show was really much better than I expected, actually. I
Kelli 15:53
mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, the show was fantastic. As a vegetarian This may sound odd, but I actually struggled to find food at luaus because it’s typically a lot of pork. I mean, a lot of pork. Hawaii has left the port and they love the pork. But this I mean, being Disney luau. It was very family friendly. I had no issues finding tons of different foods to eat, didn’t see a lot of plant based options for vegans, but as a vegetarian, I left with very, very full. What about some things that nobody tells you things that we found out while we were there.
Chris 16:27
So the lagoon is wonderful. It’s it’s pretty, it’s nice. It’s a great place just to go lay on the beach in Hawaii. But if you want to actually do some really good snorkeling without renting a car that by the way, the car places right there on site allottee. But if you want to do some good snorkeling without renting a car and going to a beach off site, you can actually walk to a beach nearby. You can walk along the coastline, which I wouldn’t recommend do not recommend it. My toe is still healing do not recommend it. You can walk to the it’s a public park is just you know, probably a quarter of a mile not even not even down the down the sidewalk from Alana Yes. And they’ve got to beach, their public beach public beach and it really has some pretty wonderful snorkeling.
Kelli 17:23
It was great. It was it’s unnatural Cove. And it was just lovely. We found it online. You were Googling something. What it was and somebody said hey, climb over the shrubs that Alani and walk 50 yards across some lava rocks and you’re going to stumble across the most beautiful beach ever stumbled being the stumble being the key word and so we did exactly that. And it was hard I’m not gonna lie. It was hard. It was work, work work to get there and then we saw once we got there people were coming in from streets were Are they coming from so we went out the gate that everybody else was coming in and Alana was right to our right right there. Yeah. And I could have cost whoever it was that posted that online telling us to walk across 50 yards a lava rock, but that is some great snorkeling just literally right down the road. The wearing the daily bracelets, you get a new bracelet, snap bracelet on your wrist every day that lets you get towels and ride the slides and stuff. Wearing those daily bracelets is a thing. People are like proud at the number of bracelets they have on their wrist. I’ll be honest, it gets pretty annoying. If you are a don’t pressured, don’t feel pressured to do it. You get zero things by wearing literally gives you nothing but pride. But if you are a Disney Vacation Club member, your bracelets are a little bit bigger, and they’re sparkly. That so that’s fun. Yep.
Chris 18:56
So if you’ve got the kiddos though, they’ll really enjoy doing the whole bracelet thing every day and stacking them up
Kelli 19:00
on their wrist. Yeah, you didn’t like it. It really
Chris 19:04
annoyed me. All the bracelets having to do all the bracelets annoyed me. I would have been happier just
Kelli 19:09
just for the photo. Yeah, man at the end of the week. It was it was a lot, a lot. I think probably one of the best days we did was the last day. Our flight leaving Hawaii wasn’t until the evening. And so we went ahead and checked our bags and all that checked out of the room and then spent the last day on the water and normally I wouldn’t do that because then you think you’re on an eight hour flight in a bathing suit. But they actually have showers downstairs for people in this exact situation and you have to ask for a key from the front desk to use those showers. But inside those showers that are completely stocked with towels and shampoo, conditioner, body wash and things of that nature. And so it’s a one time use. But once you’re finished in the water, you can check into that shower I’m shower, and you’re ready to go hit the flight. Yeah, fresh and clean. And that was a great,
Chris 20:06
it really was a nice service to hold your bags. You get yourself refreshed after a day on the beach. You’re ready to fall asleep really on the flight on
Kelli 20:13
the flight. Yeah, well and you’re also not losing any Hawaii time. Right. One other last just tip is the resort music is all with a Hawaiian vibe. So it’s all of your favorite Disney songs with you know, use and things of that nature. We loved it in the elevators and things and things like that. So you can buy that CDs at the gift shop.
Chris 20:39
Yep, the gift shop also is very, very awesome. Lots of great gifts there and they take DVC discounts and all that kind of stuff. Gift
Kelli 20:47
Shop was really great. So overall with Alazani I mean, I would definitely give it five stars. If I went back I would stay Mountain View room. Yep. As opposed to pull the room but again, if you have kiddos pool view room might be the way to go. You could sit on your balcony and make sure they don’t drown from there. But it was it was a lot of fun. It was definitely Disney in Hawaii, which is what we
Chris 21:07
that’s exactly what you want. Right? Yeah.
Kelli 21:09
What would you give it?
Chris 21:10
Oh, I’d definitely give it five stars. I’d totally go back if I go back to Oahu. That’s
Kelli 21:13
where I’d stay. Yeah, absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 21:15
I completely agree. Awesome. Well, this
Kelli 21:17
was fun was fun, go to Alani. Go to the spa.