I just wanted to say thanks to you guys here on FT! I just came back from one week Waikiki and Ka'anapali and I must say the quality of information I got from you guys exceeded by far any travel guide or other website I found. Thanks to you guys I was able to go in the first place, due to the UA fare of $290 (and could even upgrade ).
Then I scored seats 1HJ and we had a perfect view of Ohahu when descending. Although on the way back I wish we would have sat further back because the galley noise was pretty loud and fairly light. We still had our Mai Tai's on the way over, on the way back the FA said they stopped it as of that flight, but she didn't sound too sure.

In Waikiki we stayed at the Hyatt and I was able to save alot on parking by using the pacific monarch parking garage for $12/day instead of the $26(?) at the Hyatt. Thanks to Priceline we got the Hyatt for $120 and a Chrysler Sebring convertible for $26/day.

We aren't usually into too fine dining, so we skipped the usual Roy's etc recommendation, but went for The House with no Key on Friday night and they had the best drinks I had during the stay. Great sunset view, the only caveat was that I tried to time it with the fireworks from the Hilton at 8pm, but you couldn't see it from their outside seating area, because some buildings were in the way.

Thanks to your recommendations we also went to Pearl Harbor as early as possible and although some tour busses dumped quite a few loads of tourists right before us, we didn't have to wait long at all.

We also did the walk up to Diamond Head and the view was great! Fortunately we did it early in the day and were back down again before it got really hot.

North Shore was a bit disappointing because we came the wrong time of the year and the waves were nothing like what you see in movies and documentaries. I guess we need to come back in the winter time.

On our way back from the North Shore we found the valley of the temples on Kahekili Hwy and were really amazed by the japanese temple. Small, but very pretty, I am glad we stopped there.

We used 5,000 United miles to fly Islandair over to Maui and did the Westin Villas stay 5 nights, pay 4 nights for 48,000 points. Great property and we got upgraded to ocean view, although none of us has status with SPG, but after labor day it was really empty there. I loved the property, only their service was a bit slow (waiters at the restaurants, bars) and they messed up our invoice which caused some phone calls/dicsussions on our last day.

We only needed a rental car for 2 days on Maui and thanks to FT and my National Executive Emerald status, we got a brand new Jeep Wrangler for the price of a standard car.

We did the road to Hana, which was one of the highlights of the trip, especially with hardly any traffic at all at that time. Unfortunately the water falls were really low on water and not as spectacular as they usually are. My other personal highlight of the trip was the Old Lahaina luau. Great location, perfect setting and they tell the story of the hula through the times from first settlers to today. I really loved the show.

We also went up to Haleakala, which was ok. I don't know if it had made a difference, but we chose to not get up at 2am to see the sunrise, instead we were up there at 10am, right in time to have a perfect view, before clouds came in. Stopped on the way back at the Kona lodge and had some nice lunch with great view over the island.

So, I hope you can tell that we had a great time and you guys helped a lot with my preparations and made things even better. Mahalo!