777 global mile hound

Sounds like business as usual which is good
I’ll bring along my do you know who I am card just in case 🦒😉🏖

josephstern

Fortunately, I don't think I've ever seen a dog here.

beachfan

I thought the food at both Kaana Kitchen (dinner) and Morimotos has slipped- a lot at Morimotos. This was the week before thanksgivng.


Sent my Kona kampachi back at Morimotos. Not top quality, even though they said it arrived that day,

Kaana Kitchen lost their head chef since I was there in 2022. Food was good enough but I usually go twice in a week, not this time,

Breakfast was still great. Lineage had the freshest fish.

Neric

Directly from a manager.

It won't start until after the holidays, but there are subcontractors measuring things in unoccupied rooms. (only rooms that are have no one staying in them)

Kacee

We were also disappointed our last time at Morimoto (in July). Enough so that I don't think we'd go back without credible reports of improvement.

josephstern

Agree on the problems with Morimoto. We tried it again last month after skipping it for several trips. We'll begin skipping it again next trip.

I also find the newer waitstaff there to be patronizing.

scillyisles

Noise
Noise issues at the Andaz are due to the floor type being tiled and the furniture not having soft slides or castors on them. We always stay in a Deluxe Ocean View Suite (always one of two rooms) and if we are in the one with the another Deluxe Ocean View Suite above us then you can get noise issues from furniture being moved around or guests/children running around at odd times. There is not a lot you can do about it.

Food.
Morimotos
We were last at the Andaz in October and found the food at Morimotos to be as good as we remembered from previous visits - the big issues we have with Morimoto is the front of house/management is so disorganised. You turn up at your reservation time and wait around even though there are tables available. Service can also be an issue. The problem is that staff turnover is quite high and it shows in the disorganisation.

Kaana Kitchen.
Kaana Kitchen is one of our favourite eating places on Maui. Breakfast has varied over the years - it was great when the Andaz first opened, had some low points when management changed and I think when the Andaz was sold by Hyatt it also went downhill. I would say based on out last visit in October it is back to a good standard. There is normally a good selection of items, somedays some of the specials are superb, others not so. The bacon is very good. There some evidence of cost cutting in that you used to be able to get avocados at breakfast as well as lilikoi etc but they seem to have been removed. The juice bar is ok now but still not as good as when then used to prepare them fresh to order. A fair proportion of the breakfast staff are still there from when the hotel opened and they do provide great service.
Dinner I would say is not as good as it used to be. The menu has not really evolved that much and those items that they have put new on the menu have not been as good as the items they replaced. The desserts have gone downhill - our favourite dessert is the Coconut sundae - it is now a shadow of what it used to be.
Wine selection is still good but pricey.

american2020

,
That is exactly our expectation as well -- we don't expect complete silence even in the middle of the night, we actually have a couple of travel size white noise machines we typically bring, and this is one of the few hotels we have ever complained about noise. And it sounds like others have had similar noise complaints. It sounded like a troop of juvenile giraffes doing their Riverdance practice well past 3 am multiple nights. Probably just bad luck being in a room below some very noisy guests, and the acoustics of the tile floor with heavy furniture with no padding makes it more noticeable.

Morimotos is (and has been) our go to lunch place so can't comment on most of the main courses, but their calamari salad and sushi/sashimi is as fantastic as ever. Split that every day -- calamari salad (which is huge) and the chef choice sushi/sashimi sampler which comes with 10 or 20 pieces of sashimi plus some rolls (had spicy tuna and spicy salmon rolls). Everything was very fresh and delicious, and they have the nice choice of both a ponzu sauce or yuzu soy (in addition to regular soy) if you request them. Guava sorbet was fantastic light dessert as well, and the gentleman in the table next to us was raving about a chocolate coconut mousse cake dessert of some sort.

Only complaint we had with Ka'ana kitchen is their menu is always fairly limited, and it was very beef heavy which we weren't feeling like the night we were there. Everything we got was very flavorful and well executed, but we only ate there one night since we ate everything we wanted to try on the menu that first night. Watermelon salad with li hing mui was particularly good -- almost like eating shave ice. We would have returned if we were staying longer this trip or if the menu had more to choose from.

Agree about Lineage -- food was all excellent and seafood was very fresh and tasty. Fairly easy walk from the hotel too -- can either go on the main street to the shops, or walk up the boardwalk to the Marriott and go inland there.

Boardwalk was great for walking in general -- it was about a 1.5 mile walk from the Andaz to the end of the path (which ends at the Fairmont). Fairly busy with runners/walkers first thing in the morning, but quieter for a pre-sunset walk which we did daily on our way to dinner. Lighting is hit or miss after dark in places, so bring a flashlight or use a phone flash light.

JetAway

I think you shot your credibility with a statement like this.

beachfan

you can get sliced avocados on request. But not the “smoothie of the day” anymore

josephstern

I definitely agree on Lineage. We never go to Wailea without a meal there.

Funny you mention the calamari salad at Morimoto. We had always liked that in the past - thought of it as a safe dish. This last time, the calamari had clearly been fried well in advance. So it was cool and soft. The salad dressing was still great, but man, that calamari was not at all what fried calamari should be.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, one of the best dishes at Morimoto is the side of mushrooms, although they weren't quite as good this last time as they had been historically.

JJ804

I had a wonderful stay here last week. I booked it back in March for 25K pts/night, so it was the end of an era. I had noticed that no Andaz suites were showing available for my dates, and I preferred an ocean view room anyway, so I responded to the welcome email with that preference, and the day before my stay, the app showed me in an ocean view king room. Upon arrival, the front desk gave me an excellent welcome drink of lavender lemonade and directed me to X37. That stack of rooms, next to a stack of suites X39, appears to have the best ocean views, so I was pleased. In the room, there was a welcome amenity of four cans of beer and some shortbreads, chocolates, and fruit candies. The in-room minibar was stocked. Strangely, there was no glassware, although there was a corkscrew. I guess we're supposed to drink wine out of paper coffee cups? I noticed scuffed tables and a chunk missing from the door, so the room refresh mentioned up-thread is needed.

I enjoyed several of the ocean activities included in the RF, as well as the mixology class. There were great views from out on the water, including of a humpback whale in the distance. The mixology instructor commented that he visits a lot of other Hyatts and is pleased that the Andaz Maui actually gives guests valuable experiences for the resort fee, in contrast to other places. I had wondered upthread about the effect of the wind on ocean activities, but it wasn't a problem. One afternoon, the staff did have to close the pool umbrellas due to the wind. The tranquility pool (adult pool) is more sheltered from the wind and they were able to keep umbrellas up there.

Crowds were quite moderate. It wasn't too hard to get a pool lounger, although I did notice one morning that someone had used the in-room magazines to reserve a row of about 8 chairs. There are signs up about reserving chairs for a maximum of an hour. Nor was it hard to get a table for breakfast. The breakfast was fantastic, if not quite up to the level of my first visit in 2016. I have a photo from my 2016 breakfast with a pasta dish, rice dish, and couscous dish all on the same plate. This time, there was only one of that type of item each day. They had some very good chicken teriyaki and a very good potato/pepper/onion mix, along with an abundance of good fruit, breads, griddle items, meats, etc.

I dined at Morimoto one night. I wasn't thrilled with my table location, but the service and food were excellent. I greatly enjoyed the massive pork chop, although it has now increased to $50. A manager came by my table twice to make sure I was satisfied.

On a more comical note, I had a fruitless search for good chocolate milk. The Island Gourmet did not live up to its name in this area, with Nesquik and Darigold on offer. I thought surely Hawaiian Natural Foods in Kihei would help me, but they did not have ANY chocolate milk - the worker told me that some dairies had stopped making it during the pandemic, and Straus won't ship its glass bottles from CA. Neither of the general stores at the Shops at Wailea were helpful either.

Finally, on a sadder note, it's probably worth posting here that a shark apparently killed a snorkeler off Kihei just before my stay:
https://governor.hawaii.gov/newsroom...t-dec-16-2022/

Fluff Ermine

Looks like a fat chunk of availabilities just dropped. Seeing many multiple day stretches available from now to April, including standard suites.

Adelphos

Simple question - is this hotel worth 45,000 points a night, for two nights, in a standard room as an explorist? Meaning I won’t be getting suite upgrade, breakfast, etc

Would be about half my points bonus. With other Maui options in the Hilton and Hyatt systems, I am thinking about saving my points for something more unique to Hyatt (Big Sur, etc)

canyonleo

No, not for 45k, that's some peak/temporary pricing. Go when you can get the same room/experience for much less, weather is similar enough all year. JMHO