Stayed over Thanksgiving, and would echo the generally positive comments, with some caveats.

On the plus side, first and foremost, at the current pay-2 get-4 promo rate, this place is an amazing deal for Diamonds – certainly by Hawaii standards, and indeed you’d be hard pressed to find a high category Hyatt anywhere that gives you comparable value.

Staff are friendly and eager to please. This is remarkable in Hawaii, where somewhat grouchy and indifferent service is not completely unheard of (although more at the mass market places like Grand Wailea, HR, Westin, etc). The property is brand new and in great shape, the pools and landscaping are nice, the beach is wonderful, and public areas are appealing.

For the negatives, I’m going to come out as perhaps the first person on this thread to be critical of the breakfast. Yes, getting a $45 breakfast for free (for up to four people in your room! Click here and apply for a Hyatt credit card and follow these easy steps to get free Diamond!) is nice, but quite frankly, I didn’t feel the food was spectacular, and the experience was chaotic. It may be due to my failing eyesight, but it took me a few days to figure out who the staff are. What about giving them some uniforms or some identifying feature that keeps me from hitting up other guests for orange juice? How about letting me pour my own juice, or at least telling me which side of the counter I’m supposed to stand on? Considering the hype the breakfast has been getting on this thread, I found it to be a letdown. There was very limited variation; the hot dishes were the same every day, fried rice, pork puff pastry, doughnuts, Hawaiian toast, sausage, bacon, potatoes, poached eggs. Of course there’s the egg station, but in spite of what some others reported, these guys don’t work miracles. I freely admit that I’m not an American breakfast person, so maybe I just don’t get it … sure, it’s better than what most club lounges offer, but it’s nowhere near the top-10, must experience breakfasts it’s been hyped up to be.

On the topic of food, we found the entire selection a bit strange, not just breakfast. If you spend a lot of time away from the hotel it’ll be fine, but if you have daily lunches at the pool, it gets tiring quickly. I’ll do the artsy, organic and local stuff for a few days, but there comes a point when I want a simple burger or piece of fish, not a couple of tiny buns with tempura prawns or meat layered with a generous serving of kimchee. Dammit, I’ve been home for three days, and I still burp kimchee!

We were given an x40 suite (using a Diamond upgrade cert), which is at the end of the building, closest to the water. The check-in person made a point of saying that they were able to further upgrade us to a view suite. The suite does have a nice view if you’re on one of the higher floors, but would likely be obstructed for anything lower than, say, the 3rd floor. I don’t have a good sense of the location of all the suites discussed in this thread; maybe someone could come up with a summary of where the best suites are. I would say, x40 (and according to our floorplan, x39) is closest to the water, and has a great view.

There were some issues with our suite. I agree with others that the couch and lanai furniture are spectacularly uncomfortable (as is the bathtub). Did they not sit on these before they bought them, or did they simply not want people hanging out in their rooms? Our mattress was hard as a rock (think Japan or Korea), and when we asked for a mattress topper we were told that they didn’t have one, and that the mattresses were so hard because they’re new. The most annoying of the numerous poor design features in the room is that the bathroom door can’t be locked and latches so poorly that it keeps popping open. Our suite also had an issue with hot water; the faucet never warmed up, and in the shower, you had to turn the knob all the way (past the red dot) and run the water for 10 minutes, and even then was it lukewarm at best. We had engineering come out with a thermometer, and after running the water for 10+ minutes, it was at 101-104 degrees. Clearly, they had no idea how to fix it (their suggestion -keeping with the low impact, sustainable theme?- was to keep running it longer), so we just took tepid showers.

Other than that, lots of minor issues (as described by others): no water delivered to the room, spotty housekeeping (not completed by 4pm on two days), no welcome amenity delivered, etc. All pretty minor teething problems, though, made up for by amazing staff, delicious drinks, and an excellent deal -- about $200 all-in per night for suite and breakfast is really hard to argue with. It's a place with a lot of potential, and if the pay-2 get-4 deal continued, we'd be back next month.