curl

For bottled water, you can always pop down the street to Foodland Farms and get it for a better price. I always do this because the waste from the small bottles just gets me. And I like to hydrate well while I'm there.

Arthurrs

My wife and I are planning on staying at this hotel for March 12-18 to celebrate our 25 year wedding anniversary. We plan to be there either for 5 or 6 nights (depending on whether we stay one night in Hilo/VNP).

What is the best strategy to use my President's Club Certificates (Premier member) with some of the discounted room rates? I have a room upgrade, suite upgrade, and 3rd night free certificate available. Hoping for a room with a decent view of the ocean. Pity they can't overlap this year's certificates with next year's!

LarkSFO

I have had expiring certificates extended, and the next years certificates given to me early. YMMV.

Regarding your stay, I would call this one in. At least in my experience, the Fairmont phone reps will be diligent in helping you construct the best itinerary using your certs, along with helping to identify the best rate possible.

Just recognize going in that your dates are spring break for many, and will likely be in high demand.

pickles1107

I agree with Lark's writing, and would reiterate to book something sooner rather than later due to SpringBreak demand.

Call and speak to in-house reservations. They were able to extend some certs into late April for me and were extremely helpful in finding the best combination of certs to get what I wanted - an OceanView Suite. On a previous stay back in 2012 as well as a stay upcoming in April, I was able to use both room and suite upgrades. If they are able to see you have requalified and thus will get new certs in March, they should be able to proactively apply those as well.

Recommend the suites here as they are double the size of normal rooms and have 1.5 baths, 2 lanais, and are very well done.

Arthurrs

Called the hotel directly, and managed to apply both my room and suite upgrade certs to end up with an oceanfront suite for the six days, and took advantage of the fifth night free with breakfast promotion as well! Looking forward to it! Many thanks for your advice and happy new year!

waterandwoods

What category room will you be paying for with this? I would love to book something similar.

Arthurrs

I booked with a deluxe oceanview room. Call the hotel's reservation department directly, they can see what certs you have available and come up with the best use of them.

LarkSFO

"Please note the pool at the Fairmont Orchid, Hawaii is anticipated to be closed and under renovation from August 7-September 10, 2016. Between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. daily noise is to be expected from the renovation and there will be some reduced Food & Beverage offerings; our beach facility and services will be fully operational."

LAXGUY

Note that the FHR 4th night free rate is no longer showing up on the Amex website.

kokinos

I hope it's a major overhaul. With just over a month of time this can't be too minor.

This is one of the two major areas the hotel is lacking imho, along with the majority of the rooms having an angled ocean view.

Ultimately it would be ideal to have 2-3 pools on property. (They have enough space for this)

Looking forward to the see the results.

LarkSFO

My partner and I had a wonderful two night stay here in January.

We booked through FHR, and FHR coordinated with the hotel to use one of my Fairmont room upgrade certificates to move from a deluxe ocean view room to an ocean front room.

We were pleasantly surprised upon our (early, 2:00) arrival to learn that our room was ready, and that they had further upgraded us to an ocean front suite, in the Kona (south) tower just above the beach / lagoon. Not sure if this was due to FHR.

FHR also included breakfast daily and a $100 spa credit.

Fairmont Fit gear waiting in the room for both my partner and I.

The suite was very large, and very nice. Comfortable large living room which also had a 4 seat dining table and a spacious desk. Half bath in the entry area, and then a very large full bath off the bedroom. Separate shower and tub, two sinks. Between the bedroom and the bathroom was a large area for getting dressed / ready, with two large closets. Comfortable king sized bed.
There are two lanais – one larger one off the living room with lounge chairs, and another one off the bedroom with a table and two chairs. Both very pleasant to sit on looking out over the Pacific and listen to the waves...

Breakfast was substantial and tasty – either the buffet or the menu was covered by FHR.

We did a couples ocean side massage – received the 10% discount (President’s Club) and then the $100 FHR discount at check out. The setting was spectacular! Listening to the waves / ocean while your body is relaxing… Good (not great) masseuses in our case. The spa had a nice steam room but the sauna was not turned on. I turned it on, but it did not heat up enough while I was there.

We had dinner both nights at Norio’s. One night at a table, the other night at the sushi bar. The first night we ordered miso soup, the Sashimi Set, and a couple of rolls. The sashimi was excellent – all fresh / local fish. Spider roll was good, we did not like the spicy tuna roll quite as much. A lot of food for two of us!

The second night, at the sushi bar, we asked the Sushi Chef, Fumio, for the Nigiri Set, whatever he suggested. Again, an excellent selection of tasty, fresh fish! We really enjoyed it, and interacting with Fumio and Alvin (he did the rolls) was fun.

One great bonus: at dinner, we heard somebody from the convention that was at the hotel saying there was a performance by a Hawaiian Ukulele player that night for their group. We asked him who was playing, and he said Jake something-or-other. We decided to investigate, and the group kindly let us in to watch an amazing Jake Shimabukuro concert! Wow, what a highlight for us! Thanks to the group for letting us in for the show! If you ever get the chance, check him out. He does not play traditional Hawaiian style. Google shimabukuro while my guitar gently weeps, or bohemian rhapsody if you are interested in checking him out on youtube.

We both like to walk, so one day we left the hotel towards the ocean, and turned left. This took us along the beach, through a couple of other resorts, past the fish ponds until we reached Mauna Lani. Then we got on the road and did a big loop back past the hotel to the petroglyphs and then along the beach back to the hotel.

The second day, we had the hotel van drop us off at the Queens Marketplace, and then we walked back to the hotel via Kiholo-Puako Trail/Kings Hwy Foot Trail. This trail is rugged with a lot of uneven lava / lava pieces! Make sure you have appropriate footwear. This brought us back through the historic preserve where there are more petroglyphs and some large (walkable) lava tubes. Not a short hike, but it was neat to walk along this historic trail.

We spent the rest of our time at the beach – did not even go in the pool. The cove / beach is pleasant, good food and drink service, but not a great swimming area. The swimming area is fairly small, and really shallow at low tide. Fun to swim with turtles there though!

yhm71

Nice detailed review, thanks for posting. That's a great upgrade.

nmenaker

The sushi is very good, but sadly my GF doesn't like raw fish, so it's a one and done visit there for us,

but, not having dinner at Browns at least once, i think you missed out (unless you're full veggie/vegan/pesca or the like. the food and all is really one of the best on the island.

A great hike to do (although a TAD challenging and rugged) is from the Orchid all the way down to the giant Hilton Waikoloa complex.. then walk back through the fields and lava along the highway..

it's an all morning or afternoon commitment, but great views of the ocean, and houses and landscape along the way

LarkSFO

I referenced the convention that happened to coincide with our visit... Brown's had no tables one night, and 5:30 or 9:00 PM the second night. We were happy with Norio's though, the sushi was really top notch. Will try Brown's next time.

We did some incredible lava hiking the next two days of our visit to the big island, when we stayed at Volcano House. Yes, it is rugged and make sure you have solid, comfortable shoes!

Were you able to walk all the way to the Hilton along the water?

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Hilt...d19.950804!3e2

Almost 8 miles R/T is an adventurous hike for most, with this terrain!

nmenaker

yes, the outbound route is all along the water and really a great hike.. not too difficult at all, not scary but over smoothed out lava rocks and some sandy beaches for most of it. the only possibly dangerous part would be walking along the sea side edge of a couple fairways when you have to walk on the inside wall of the Fishermans Trail. It's really just the old fishermans trail the whole way down.

And then you arrive at the chaos that is the Hilton Waikoloa and you realize even more the beauty and serenity of the Fairmont Orchid. !!

The return can either be on the ocean trail or it's a bit faster going through the fields on a more developed path. Always fairly well marked though but it's more exposed to take a hat and sun screen.. and WATER and/or some $$$ to buy something at the Waikoloa.

It's certainly worthy of a 2-3 hours morning jaunt on a longer than 2 day stay.

here's the route details

http://gps.motionx.com/maps/bd2779c6...396901c991b440