Originally Posted by
Seph87
I know this is from a few weeks back so you might have had your trip already, but I found the breakfast buffet to be extremely lacking. The price was extortionate ($55/person) but that's to be expected and not the reason why I found it disappointing.
My main disappointment was from the lack of creative and/or local options. I'd say about 95% of the food was bog standard breakfast buffet options (pancakes, eggs, bacon, etc.). Even the fresh fruit, which should have been a slam dunk in Hawaii, was very basic with things like strawberries, blueberries and melon. Very little tropical fruit - I think they just had mango when I was there.
The one creative dish they had was kalua pork eggs benedict, but unfortunately the pork was dry and chewy.
Even if the price was $20/person I'm not sure I'd recommend going there to be honest.
Thanks, and yes we had our trip. Sadly, I think I pretty much agree with this. The kicker was that we ended up with one of those 15% off HGV cards for talking with the rep for ~5 minutes. They wouldn't accept it for breakfast, which felt deliberately...I don't know, captive? Almost all the other food places we tried honored the 15% off. Service was good, but $80 for two after credits was just too much.
Speaking of HGV -- I really want to rail against the fact that having reps /next/ to the concierge desk intercept and upsell you is the EXACT opposite of luxury. At the same time, the 15% off card is a useful discount and meant the F&B credits did go a bit further (about $60/day), which was nice. And we did take them up on a 100K pts offer for a sales presentation in Kihei. Ultimately, we got lucky: Spent 30 minutes waiting, they were overbooked, then released us and deposited 100K points in my account within hours. So, part of me finds this all very annoying, and would have had a perfectly enjoyable trip regardless. But, given that I also redeemed 21 nights of points stays this year...I also enjoy being able to play the game.
