A., E, and I were all enjoying our beautiful ocean view when we had a knock at our door, the bellman with our luggage (not even ten minutes later – service in Aulani was top-notch!) He was kind and courteous and gave us several pointers for our stay. After he dropped off our luggage we started to get settled in. Our room was a Deluxe Ocean View Studio and worked great for our party of three:
Kitchenette
Bathroom Vanity (to the left is the commode and to the right is the shower/tub combo).
The main living space.
From the couch looking towards the door.
The bed (which had great storage space underneath for luggage)
The only thing I could even imagine changing in our room would be a pull down Murphy bed in the entertainment center as some vacation club villas and studios do. This would have enabled us to leave the couch as is the entire trip instead of having to fold it out each night and back in each day (a minor inconvenience).
Once we got settled, I went to see about making reservations for the evening member mingle. A lot of members prefer this member event because alcohol is served. I wanted this event solely for the DVC lanyards given as party gifts. I have a collection of DVC lanyards and wanted to add this one. When I went to sign us up, we found out the evening member mingle was on Friday’s (we arrived on Thursday) and was booked up. I was disappointed, but signed us up for the morning member mingle the following Monday. The cast member asked if there was anything they could do to make up for not being able to accommodate us in the evening mingle (I’m telling you, they were SO kind), and I expressed my (selfish, silly) desire for the lanyard. Well, guess what she had delivered to our room:
I’m telling you, the experience at Aulani was TOP notch! I then remembered that I needed to move the car from the “holding” area to the self-parking area. We parked in the same area our entire trip (it just made it easier to remember where the car was and it seemed not many people opted to park there which made it easier for us to park as the car was large and the spaces were small!)
While I was off tending to technicalities, A. and E obviously did some exploring of their own.
Once we were all back in the room, we decided to make some dinner, shower to get the nastiness of the airplane off, and call it a night. With the 3 hour time difference and long travel day, we were tired! Dinner our first night consisted of our Costco selections and was very tasty.
Thank you Costco!
Eating dinner on the balcony.
I think we were in bed before 7:30 our first night (10:30 our time) which was good. We had tickets for Pearl Harbor the following day for a 9:00 tour and had to be there by 8:00 to collect our tickets and if you know the T Family, you know being on time especially early in the morning is not our forte’!
Up Next: Pearl Harbor
Life, Laughter, and Happily Ever After 