TripAdvisor Traveler Rating

WARNING...if you have a trip planned during the week of January 25th to the 31st of 2026, American Idol will be taping during that entire week. DVC members received an email notification confirming these dates. If you have a trip planned during this time, you can expect a HUGE stage on the beach, blocking your views and taking up guest beach space. You can expect loud rehearsals and sound checks from early morning until after dark. You can expect crews blocking pathways around the pool area. You can expect the parking garage to be full. Don't expect nightly storytelling or pool entertainment, that will all get cancelled. Don't expect Aulani staff to care about your discomfort or complaints, there is nothing they can do. Don't expect any compensation or consideration for the inconvenience! Idol week at Aulani is not ideal!

This is the greatest place on planet earth!! It truly is the perfect place!! Beaches, pools, lazy river, constant cool breeze, amazing staff——it’s just perfect!!

I have mixed feelings about Disney Aulani. On the positive side, the staff is excellent. Everyone—from valet and front desk to the bellhops and grounds crew—was consistently helpful and warm. Where things broke down for us was the pool area. It’s extremely overcrowded. Guests reserve lounge chairs with towels and, in many cases, never return, making it tough to find a spot. I know chair-saving happens at many resorts, but it was surprisingly frustrating here. If you want a seat, you basically need to claim it around 8:00 a.m. After that, the lines start forming for the two tube-channel slides. Also check ahead to see if all pools are open. During our stay, the main pool with the ocean view, hot tub, and waterfall was closed for repairs, which added to the congestion. Overall, Aulani can be a great experience, but the pool area gets intensely crowded. If you’re comfortable navigating that, you’ll likely enjoy your stay.

Aulani as any Disney resort is spectaculor. The outside area is so nice. A lazy river, slides, kid pools, adult pools and jot tubs. Snack shacks and restaurants. I only went on lazy river once because there were so many kids in to without a tub. The beach area had plenty of seats and servers for food and drink. There is 3 sit down resturants. 2 very expensive. There a take and go or order food cafe and a lounge that offers food too. The rooms are great. Service was excellent.

The Aulani resort is great in many ways. It has one substantial drawback that may or may not be important to each visitor: It is quite crowded. Too many guest rooms and facilities are crowded onto a small piece of land. The positives include a multi-faceted water park that will keep kids engaged for hours. There are also a wide range of other kids' activities, some for an extra charge. The rooms are large and handsome, done in the style of old Hawaii (except for the statue of Mickey holding a lamp). The beach is great, assuming you are OK with VERY calm water; again, it's great for kids. Beach chairs are numerous and close together. It's usually possible to find empty chairs here, unlike around the pool where most everything is claimed early in the morning. The overall setting is beautifully landscaped, between a Marriott Vacation Club and a Four Seasons hotel, in a rather quiet part of Oahu. We enjoyed this location, but it's a bit of a drive (with heavy traffic at rush hours) to get to Honolulu and Waikiki. Except from the ocean-view guest rooms and the gourmet restaurant, it can be hard to find a spot with a view of the ocean. Both of the upper-scale restaurants have only Prix fixe meals, at $85 and $135 before drinks etc. We enjoyed "Off the Hook'" which had a substantial variety at reasonable (for Hawaii) prices and good table service. If you were lucky you could even get a table with a partial view of the ocean. The fast food restaurant Ulu was very disappointing. It's back in a corner with just picnic tables, rather claustrophobic, and no view whatsoever. The menu is quite limited, but the pizza was good. We suggest trying either the informal beach restaurant or the more formal Italian restaurant at the Marriott. In summary, we had a great time and will happily return. We just wanted to point out some aspects that might or might not bother another person at all.