BlueZebra

Remind me to never come during "Spring Break/Easter". It's a zoo, even with somewhat limited capacity due to Covid. I sense the staffing is still recovering...huge, long, exceptionally slow lines at watersports desks today just to get towels and wristbands. Really, really bad.

araknis

The guy checking in next to me tried the $20 trick and was unsuccessful. Agent kept the $20. Pretty funny conversation.

Guest - here is a $20 for you
Agent - what's this for
Guest - for you doing a great job of helping me check in
Agent - oh no problem. here to help
Guest - are there any room upgrades available since I have Gold status
Agent - it is based on availability and it doesn't look like it.
Guest - ok, thanks. (stated in a very depressed way)

BlueZebra

Looking back through my many comments here, one might get the idea that I am a GW fan. We have stayed here about 20 times, going back over 20 years. Always in the Napua Tower. Early on we came about once every 3 years...but for the last couple of years, it has been at least once per year, and commonly twice. In fact, between March 2020 and October 2021, we have been or have booked 4 total visits, each a week in length.

We have always enjoyed it here, and have come to know several staff on a first name basis. We like the facilities, the vibe, the location. Has it been perfect? No, but only a couple minor problems.

Unfortunately, GW is really struggling with Covid restrictions and trying to have the biggest allowable crowds for Easter. The two have come together poorly. The average employee is happy to see everyone, and trying very hard to provide good service. However...

The pool/recreation/lounge chair situation is a total, horrible disaster. They have socially distanced the Lounge chairs, and had a system of reservations (chairs have to be booked...can't just go grab one that is available) on line at 4pm the day prior. Suddenly, pretty quietly, the reservation time moved to 7am the morning of use on April 1. We used the system on April 2, it worked pretty well, some lines as people tried to figure it out. We attempted to use the system again on Easter, and it totally failed. We had a cabana booked (at double the normal price, because its Spring Break...no added benefits, and far from sold out) and needed to check in, get our wristbands and towels. It took 85 minutes in line, just to do a 2 minute interaction . 85 minutes we didn't get to use our expensive cabana. 85 minutes totally wasted. I golfed today, but DW scouted things out...it looked pretty much the same to her.

I started reaching out to the Concierge and Recreation text line trying to get someone to understand what was going on. Got a couple of standard, non committal responses. Then they stopped communicating. We got up this morning to a note slid under our door that the reservation system has now be cancelled...you can only get a Lounge chair by standing in line, in person.

The experience of Easter Sunday was, and is, widespread. The story has popped up on several social media and travel sites. I did a Google search, and quickly found a luxury travel website that had 5 totally negative reviews written on GW in the last 24 hours. This was a massive failure.

Really, really bad scene here in paradise. I have to say the Napua Tower is full, and the service is is, as usual, very good. Easter evening food was really good, whereas the food the previous days had been, well, bland. But Easter Sunday proved they can do very good food within Covid restrictions. Hope they learned from it.

araknis

The online reservation system was a complete disaster. I heard so many people complain about it, especially the older non techy folks. The service provider they used for chair reservations simply could not handle the load at 4PM. The website constantly crashed, timed-out, or just did glitchy things preventing a proper check-out. Luckily I came prepared with multiple devices so I had no issues securing one daily.

To give some numbers, pre-covid, there were about 1200 chairs. Now they have 250 chairs available with close to 50-70% occupancy (I could never get a straight answer).

BlueZebra

All due respect, a 10% chair capacity doesn't even come close to our experience and knowledge of the system. I would say 30 to 40 percent of normal on chairs, and 70 percent hotel occupancy would violate state rules. But, in any case, the current situation sucks big time, and their WiFi is not helping me communicate the situation. One more beach/pool day, so don't think they can make it right at this point. But I also don't sense they care at this point. They are swimming in deep water, and it isn't pretty.

ChurnieEls

Perhaps its just as well standard award availability is nonexistent for my May trip on reading the above!

jayb5

Reading the latest posts is making me worried about our end of May trip. Hopefully they have the pool chair reservation system figured out by then. As far as the breakfast voucher is concerned, just want to double check, for a party of four, would it be $20 per person for all four per day? Also, do Gold's get the same benefit (I'm assuming yes, but want to make sure). Thanks.

ChurnieEls

Hilton breakfast benefit is almost always just you + guest in my experience. Some properties give it to the room, but that's the exception.

araknis

I'm just going by what the wrist band representative told me. Even I questioned the 250 / 1200 number, but he mentioned that there used to be chairs everywhere around the resort with very minimal gaps of space.

nobody2

In Feb it was just $20 per person up to 2 people in a room per day. So $40 per day max per room.

BlueZebra

And that is what it is currently...

Eujeanie

I wonder what happens over at Ho'Olei...we technically have 3 rooms (and should be paying 3x as much), but I'm sure it's still just for 2 people.

Mehdron

We had a great experience at the GW in late Feb. Used two AmEx Aspire free night certs. Upgraded to Napua. Zero lines at pool check-in. Staff at the counter reserved our chairs for us for the next day. No one using the water slide. Restaurant half empty. Couldn't use the $20 breakfast benefit for lunch food, but the clerk there let me slide the first day and get take-away stuff instead and told me to be there before 11 the next day. Can't imagine what it's like when it's not capacity restricted.

matthewcr

Has anyone traveled recently between islands (not connecting through HNL but staying nights before flying to OOG) after arriving from outside Hawaii? Did you have to get another test? If so was the process easy? Trying to decide if we want to visit more than one island, but not if it's a major hassle and takes a whole day.

BlueZebra

Go over to the Hawaii board, here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/hawaii-435/

Many discussions of the interisland flight issues there.