Consolidated "Honeymoon in Hawaii" thread
Oct 10, 2010, 11:19 am
#181
Join Date: Jul 2007
Programs: Delta Skymiles
Posts: 98
When it's just the two of us.....I prefer a nice hotel.
Oct 10, 2010, 3:39 pm
#182
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Programs: Starwood Gold, HiltonHHonors Silver, Marriott Silver, Delta SkyMiles
Posts: 1,775
I usually stay in a hotel when it's just the couples as well, though I prefer a hotel that has a mini-fridge and microwave. You usually end up with tons of leftovers when you eat out every meal, and I like to pack them up and reheat them.
My first choice is Maui. Second choice would be Big Island. Third choice would be Oahu. Haven't been to Kauai yet.
My first choice is Maui. Second choice would be Big Island. Third choice would be Oahu. Haven't been to Kauai yet.
Oct 12, 2010, 10:08 am
#183
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Chicago
Programs: United 1K, American EXP & 3 Million Miler, Hyatt Globalist & Marriott Ambassador Elite
Posts: 2,362
Four Seasons Hualalai
Welcome to FT! 
First thing I'd do is buy a guidebook for the island you plan on visiting. If it's the Big Island you should buy Hawaii The Big Island Revealed by Wizard Publishing. Great book.
You won't need a jacket unless you visit the volcanoes at night. But I'd bring a sweater or light jacket for sure. The low temps in Feb. are usually in the mid-to-high 60s (feels cold if you have stormy weather) and the highs are 80-84.
I don't like all-inclusives because you are stuck eating a one place. Check places like hotels.com, kayak.com and vrbo.com for accommodations. Enjoy!!
First thing I'd do is buy a guidebook for the island you plan on visiting. If it's the Big Island you should buy Hawaii The Big Island Revealed by Wizard Publishing. Great book.
You won't need a jacket unless you visit the volcanoes at night. But I'd bring a sweater or light jacket for sure. The low temps in Feb. are usually in the mid-to-high 60s (feels cold if you have stormy weather) and the highs are 80-84.
I don't like all-inclusives because you are stuck eating a one place. Check places like hotels.com, kayak.com and vrbo.com for accommodations. Enjoy!!
Oct 13, 2010, 11:52 am
#184
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: PHX
Programs: AA Peon Gold
Posts: 2,915
Well the OP might be gone, but I'll revive the thread since I'm in the same exact boat (though this is our first marriage). My fiance and I are planning to go in Dec. '11 or Jan. '12 for 5-9 days, depending on what the budget allows (around $4k for everything except flights). We're looking for relaxation and romance, as opposed to adventure.
Right now we're thinking Waikiki, though we're open to other options as long as it's not isolated. Condo rentals seemed like an option at first, but from what I've seen on review sites most of them are dated and run down. Not exactly something I'm willing to put up with on a honeymoon.
Right now we're thinking Waikiki, though we're open to other options as long as it's not isolated. Condo rentals seemed like an option at first, but from what I've seen on review sites most of them are dated and run down. Not exactly something I'm willing to put up with on a honeymoon.
I'd recommend Kauai or Maui - although, admittedly, I've never been to Maui.
Oct 14, 2010, 2:49 pm
#185
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: NYC
Posts: 294
Honestly, I would do 2 islands. I been to Hawaii twice and Ive gone to 2 islands both times and it wasnt bad. Since HNL gets the bulk of flights from the US you should consider spending at least 1 or 2 nights there. I feel that you need to experience a little of Waikiki to really have gone to Hawaii. There is a lot of history and culture there.
If you guys are planning to stay in HNL you should try 5* Hualalai Hotel on Waikiki. Their outside bar area House Without a Key was a very memorable experience for me.
I stayed in the Kaanapali area near the Black Rock in Maui and it quite relaxing. There are an number of reasonable priced resorts there. I chose to stay there because it was closer to Lahaina and all the activities and restaurants there.
If you guys are planning to stay in HNL you should try 5* Hualalai Hotel on Waikiki. Their outside bar area House Without a Key was a very memorable experience for me.
I stayed in the Kaanapali area near the Black Rock in Maui and it quite relaxing. There are an number of reasonable priced resorts there. I chose to stay there because it was closer to Lahaina and all the activities and restaurants there.
Oct 16, 2010, 2:17 pm
#186
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: LFT
Programs: AA Plat, lots of AA, AS, DL, UA miles, former top level CO Elite (sigh...)
Posts: 10,804
Princeville on Kauai. Two weeks ago, we rented a condo at Pali Ke Kua overlooking the Pacific for $185 a night and it was just unbelievably superb with an excellent view of Hanalei Bay and Bali Hai. There was even a paved path very close by through a rain forest down to the beach where we barbecued steaks one night and then dined by candlelight (the barbecue pit was already there).
This vacation could not have been better: I even proposed marriage to my ladyfriend during our visit to Kauai and she accepted!^
If anyone would like the contact info concerning the rental agency for our specific condo at Pali Ke Kua, please feel free to PM me (and no, we do not own it but we wish we did!).
This vacation could not have been better: I even proposed marriage to my ladyfriend during our visit to Kauai and she accepted!
^If anyone would like the contact info concerning the rental agency for our specific condo at Pali Ke Kua, please feel free to PM me (and no, we do not own it but we wish we did!).
Oct 18, 2010, 12:12 pm
#187
Join Date: Mar 2010
Programs: CO, UA, F9
Posts: 39
Lots of folks suggest Maui, and I've heard the same from friends and family. One of the things that really matters to my fiance is that the beach be a nice, fine, white sand beach. This is one big reason why we had settled on Waikiki, because I read in a travel book that it was like this. If anyone knows of a beach like that in Maui with a resort that overlooks it (prefer right on it, but across the street might be ok) then I would strongly consider that an option. Any suggestions? Otherwise, what hotels in Waikiki do you prefer?
Congrats on the engagement. Get used to this question, what's the date?
Congrats on the engagement. Get used to this question, what's the date?
Oct 18, 2010, 5:45 pm
#188
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: LFT
Programs: AA Plat, lots of AA, AS, DL, UA miles, former top level CO Elite (sigh...)
Posts: 10,804
Lots of folks suggest Maui, and I've heard the same from friends and family. One of the things that really matters to my fiance is that the beach be a nice, fine, white sand beach. This is one big reason why we had settled on Waikiki, because I read in a travel book that it was like this. If anyone knows of a beach like that in Maui with a resort that overlooks it (prefer right on it, but across the street might be ok) then I would strongly consider that an option. Any suggestions? Otherwise, what hotels in Waikiki do you prefer?
Congrats on the engagement. Get used to this question, what's the date?
Congrats on the engagement. Get used to this question, what's the date?
Oct 25, 2010, 12:18 pm
#189
Join Date: Feb 2010
Posts: 45
Maui and Kauai
We are frequent travelers to the islands. Our favorite is Maui, if going to one island. Family favorite is to take the public ferry boat from Lahaina to the island of Lanai for a day trip. It is easy to walk from the landing to the public park/beach at Manele Bay. We swam with a pod of dolphins, in the wild, last time. Take a picnic and enjoy. It is also possible to rent a jeep and tour Lanai for the day. We tend to stay in the Kaanapali area, though we've had some great places south of Lahaina, especially in the Wailea area.
On Kauai, there are 2 great tropical botanic gardens. An evening tour of the Alleton gardens includes "pupus" (appetizers) served on the lanai at sunset. The local newspaper tipped us off to local festivals and performances, including a local hula school's amazing recital with 2010 Hawaiian champion dancer. The Napali cliffs are nice to see. Sorkeling was best in front of the Lawai Beach Resort (2 huge sea turtles and lots of big fish). A very popular and excellent restaurant was the Beach House. Be cautious about renting a condo from a private party. We rented on Poipu Beach and forfeited the rental costs to escape an unpleasant place with a management team that welcomes large, noisy groups (think college dorm). The Brennecke Beach area has some nice options and hotels are good choices. Screen places by if they offer air conditioning. When they don't, you must rely on open windows for ventilation. Open windows equate to hearing everything from crying babies and sex sounds at night to construction, roosters, and highway noise trhoughout the day. ENJOY!!
On Kauai, there are 2 great tropical botanic gardens. An evening tour of the Alleton gardens includes "pupus" (appetizers) served on the lanai at sunset. The local newspaper tipped us off to local festivals and performances, including a local hula school's amazing recital with 2010 Hawaiian champion dancer. The Napali cliffs are nice to see. Sorkeling was best in front of the Lawai Beach Resort (2 huge sea turtles and lots of big fish). A very popular and excellent restaurant was the Beach House. Be cautious about renting a condo from a private party. We rented on Poipu Beach and forfeited the rental costs to escape an unpleasant place with a management team that welcomes large, noisy groups (think college dorm). The Brennecke Beach area has some nice options and hotels are good choices. Screen places by if they offer air conditioning. When they don't, you must rely on open windows for ventilation. Open windows equate to hearing everything from crying babies and sex sounds at night to construction, roosters, and highway noise trhoughout the day. ENJOY!!
Nov 5, 2010, 2:32 pm
#190
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: IAD 19L
Programs: IHG; DL, JB, SW, UA, US, Ch, Crl, HzG, EmC, AmtGR regular; TSA Disp Tinfoil
Posts: 292
My turn for honeymoon planning help
My lady and I are planning a June wedding, and we want to go to Hawai`i for our honeymoon.
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
Nov 5, 2010, 2:53 pm
#191
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: LFT
Programs: AA Plat, lots of AA, AS, DL, UA miles, former top level CO Elite (sigh...)
Posts: 10,804
My lady and I are planning a June wedding, and we want to go to Hawai`i for our honeymoon.
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
As for air travel, how many miles do you have? I recommend the nonstops to HNL on CO from either EWR or IAH. Aircraft are B767-400ERs with BusinessFirst sleeper seats (but not lie flat) and modified BusinessFirst meal service. We recently flew CO roundtrip in BF IAH-HNL with connections to/from LIH via HA. I was able to use miles for the entire trip. CO's 764 (actually 76H) flights are one of the best domestic services you'll find to the islands these days as it appears that most of the other carriers only offer a standard domestic F product as far as the seats are concerned, although it also appears that DL sometimes operates flights nonstop from ATL and/or MSP with A330 or 747-400 aircraft that feature their international business class seats.
Nov 8, 2010, 1:48 am
#192
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Honolulu, Hawaiʻi [+MKK4 EBBER R577 EDSEL R577 ELKEY EXERT]
Posts: 15,832
Wirelessly posted (iPhone-ETOPS: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)
I have a guidebook from 2002 in my library from Frommer's entitled "Hawaii from 80 Dollars A Day". It's the 33rd edition of this guidebook so I pretty sure there's a current version out there.
As for air travel, how many miles do you have? I recommend the nonstops to HNL on CO from either EWR or IAH. Aircraft are B767-400ERs with BusinessFirst sleeper seats (but not lie flat) and modified BusinessFirst meal service. We recently flew CO roundtrip in BF IAH-HNL with connections to/from LIH via HA. I was able to use miles for the entire trip. CO's 764 (actually 76H) flights are one of the best domestic services you'll find to the islands these days as it appears that most of the other carriers only offer a standard domestic F product as far as the seats are concerned, although it also appears that DL sometimes operates flights nonstop from ATL and/or MSP with A330 or 747-400 aircraft that feature their international business class seats.
Don't forget AA as well on their long hauls to HNL (DFW/ORD) for the biz class seats.
Originally Posted by jlemon
My lady and I are planning a June wedding, and we want to go to Hawai`i for our honeymoon.
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
We will be flying out of WAS. Currently we can fly in F for about $5k. We want to fly fancy class, and I don't have the miles to swing an upgrade on any airline. (Unless the 50k UAMP Visa promotion is still going on.)
We are tentatively looking at island-hopping from Hawai`i (Big Island) to Kona to Maui.
We are disinclined to do our own cooking on this trip.
Suggestions for how to get the seats in F at a reasonable price? Where to stay? How to control costs? Questions I don't know to ask?
As for air travel, how many miles do you have? I recommend the nonstops to HNL on CO from either EWR or IAH. Aircraft are B767-400ERs with BusinessFirst sleeper seats (but not lie flat) and modified BusinessFirst meal service. We recently flew CO roundtrip in BF IAH-HNL with connections to/from LIH via HA. I was able to use miles for the entire trip. CO's 764 (actually 76H) flights are one of the best domestic services you'll find to the islands these days as it appears that most of the other carriers only offer a standard domestic F product as far as the seats are concerned, although it also appears that DL sometimes operates flights nonstop from ATL and/or MSP with A330 or 747-400 aircraft that feature their international business class seats.
Nov 8, 2010, 7:03 am
#193
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: IAD 19L
Programs: IHG; DL, JB, SW, UA, US, Ch, Crl, HzG, EmC, AmtGR regular; TSA Disp Tinfoil
Posts: 292
As for air travel, how many miles do you have?
Nov 8, 2010, 7:48 am
#194
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: LFT
Programs: AA Plat, lots of AA, AS, DL, UA miles, former top level CO Elite (sigh...)
Posts: 10,804
Question: Given the choice of biz class seats on AA, CO or DL to the islands, which airline do you think offers the best meal service (including choice of wine, of course) in the front cabin?
Nov 10, 2010, 2:42 pm
#195
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: lax
Programs: DL DM, SPG Plat
Posts: 781
Lots of folks suggest Maui, and I've heard the same from friends and family. One of the things that really matters to my fiance is that the beach be a nice, fine, white sand beach. This is one big reason why we had settled on Waikiki, because I read in a travel book that it was like this. If anyone knows of a beach like that in Maui with a resort that overlooks it (prefer right on it, but across the street might be ok) then I would strongly consider that an option.
I stayed at thr 4 Seasons Wailea for my honeymoon, and it was pretty awesome. In addition to the daily breakfast / one lunch mentioned for booking through a FSPP (we used DavidO from here), you also get a daily resort credit and an upgrade if available. We got upgraded 4 categories to a nice ocean front room. ^
Also worth mentioning is that the 4Seasons has a lot included for the price compared to other resorts- free snorkeling gear, outrigger lesson, no charge for cabanas, etc.
A cheaper alternative on Maui that we also like is the Sheraton up by Black Rock. But it's your honeymoon, and the 4 Seasons is within your budget, so go for it. ;D