Follow-up...

They changed my routing from DTW-DFW-SJC-HNL-OGG to DTW-DFW-LAX-OGG. I was still scheduled to depart at 8:19AM, but now I was arriving about 40-minutes earlier at 9:40PM. It took three calls to AA before I found sombody who was willing to attempt to put me on DTW-ORD-OGG (they claimed the computer kept rejecting the routing due to the holiday time frame, but finally somebody was able to do it -- it took about 30-minutes, though).

And yes, I’m aware that these types of schedule changes are routine (they’ve happened to me more times than I care to count) but I decided to share my experience because it may help out somebody reading this thread.

So I got the exact flights (both outbound and inbound) on the exact dates I wanted (during the holiday period). I'm happy . Although since AA.com wouldn't book a DTW-DFW-SJC-HNL-OGG routing, I don't think I should have to pay the ticketing fees...