There is an 'a la carte' menu at breakfast in addition to the buffet. Prices range from about $15 to $25 for dishes.
You could also get breakfast at the marketplace in the hotel. They sell coffee, sandwiches, ice cream, pastries, soft drinks, etc.

What about the drinks by the pool? Any daily specials like some Hyatt pool bars have?

We are arriving a day before our 5 night package at Hyatt Maui and wondering whether we should spend the first night here just to check it out? The elite rate @ Andaz is $359 v. $223 @, or we could do C&P. Probably not worth burning a suite upgrade for 1 night though we have some to spare.

5 days at Andaz Maui; loved it
 

We stayed 5 nights on free nights - 2 from Chase Hyatt card, and 3 on cash and points. All were in suites (I was on Diamond challenge when I got the cc.)

Our first suite was 239 which was an end (oceanfront) in the Makai tower IIRC. On higher floors this would provide a stunning view but on the 2nd floor it was the roof of the villas that you most noticed from the oceanfront window, though the balcony views were still very nice.

After 2 nights we moved (at our request, not do to split reservation) to 737 which is second from the end on the top floor. The view was spectacular.

We were not Diamond at the time of our stay so the breakfast buffet was not complimentary...but we paid for it twice because it was so good! Loved it. Dinner at Ka'ana Kitchen was terrific also.

The pools were nice and bar service was good. The one time we ordered drinks poolside that service was slow.

Our only issue had to do with the room change taking longer than anticipated. We were told at 8am to go ahead and pack and to call if we hadn't heard anything by noon. It was 4pm before we got into our new room. Normally on Maui I would have been out having fun all day but since it was a rainy day we were inside and felt unsettled due to having packed at 8am. Wish I'd just waited until they said the new room was ready and it would have been more comfortable.

The manager was apologetic and comped me a coffee from the deli.

We saw lots of whales and enjoyed Maui immensely. We walked through the grounds of the Grand Wailea and were very glad we chose the Andaz instead.

Andaz and Maui Trip Report
 

My first trip review. My name isn’t Ben, Gary or whatever Points Mommy’s name is. Please be gentle.

Went for a quick 3 day, 2 night stay this last weekend.

I used 2 free nights from my Hyatt credit card AND was lucky enough to have scored R/T on Delta for about $83 during their after Christmas “sale.”

One quick blurb about the flight as I have never flown Delta (I’m AA EXP). While the plane was an old 757, I appreciate the fact they offer beverages during boarding. I’m on vacation. I don’t care if it’s 7am, I want a screwdriver! And they delivered with a smile. I fly MIA to LAX frequently on AA’s 777-200 in J, it can take over an hour on that last flight just to get a water. (Also, The guy sitting next to me apparently never heard of a Kindle and tried to stuff a library into the seat back.)

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Anyways. I arrived on time at OGG around noon on Friday. My friends flight on AA was delayed a little, so I made a right turn.

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OGG doesn’t have many food options or lounges. I went to Sammy’s. Here’s what their burger looks like. It was pretty good.

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I figured since the airfare and hotel were so much of a steal and I almost felt guilty, that’d I’d splurge on the transportation. Back in January after I booked I inquired with the hotel regarding their transfer options. I spoke with a guy named Matthew who emailed me the options. I haven’t gone through this thread thoroughly, so I don’t know if it’s this has been covered, but here’s a screen shot of the PDF that was sent to me almost immediately after getting of the phone.

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The SECOND I saw a Tesla S was available, I booked it cause who knows when I'll ever get to be in one ever again!

The company is called The Limo Company and this was the email I received after notifying them the AA flight was a little delayed. This was their response. Very professional.

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The car is amazing. Very quiet, very quick. Huge 17 inch dash in the monitor. Live internet. Huge back seat! (I’m 6’6”) Just awesome.

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She climbed into the front trunk at the hotel.

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When we pulled into the driveway, yes, it’s a little underwhelming like other people have said…until you walk into that entry. I was admiring it so much I forgot to take pictures during the day, but if you’re this far into the thread you’ve seen it.

We were greeted by a very friendly host (don’t remember the name) where we were checked in and given lei’s. Yes, they really do smell as great as everyone on here has said. We were also given a blueberry lemonade drink of some kind. I thought it was a little sweet, but I guess I was in the minority on that one. The host thanked me for being a diamond member and excused himself to see if he could improve the room. I was hoping for a suite, but knew that was unlikely. Instead we got an Ocean View room that fit our needs anyways as we planned to spend most of the time outside.

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For the welcome amenity we were offered red or white wine. Neither sounded to great, so we asked if champagne was an option. He said he’d see what he could do and we were escorted to our room and scheduled the amenity to be delivered while we would be walking the beach.

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We went down to the Ka’anna Kitchen where I wanted to try the lobster grilled cheese I’d heard so much about. I don’t think there was any lobster in it! On it’s own though, it was a good grilled cheese and the fries were good. (Where was the lobster?!)

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We went back to the room, and to my surprise, they came through on the champagne when we had returned!

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View from the room (earlier ones were lobby view):

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For dinner we went off site to Monkeypod. I had heard good things and I won’t bore with those details. But I wasn’t impressed.

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We got back around 11 and called it a night as we had a morning whale watch booked and I wanted to try this breakfast buffet.

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Saturday morning we woke up and it was raining. Oh well. We went down to the kitchen, and after getting our room number and name we were told everything would be complimentary due to status (including mimosas) and to treat the restaurant like your home, help yourself to anything you want, and if you don’t see something particular, feel free to ask. I think the juice of the day was strawberry-watermelon. There were chorizo and egg bahn-mi sandwiches, sausage, bacon, a TON of fresh fruit, an omelet station, pastries, and on and on and on. Again, I was so excited to load my plate, I didn’t take many picture. But there’s plenty in this thread to cover that. Did I mention the bacon? It was amazing. Amazing.

We sat down and were greeted by our server Jenny. Coffee and water had already been placed on our table for us and she asked if we wanted anything else to drink. Mimosas!

She asked what flavor and we said surprise us. A few minutes later, out came 2 papaya and guava mimosas. Mine didn’t last long. If you can, get those!

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I would have stayed there all morning stuffing my face, but we had to get to Lahaina Harbor for the whale watching trip. I called quickly to make sure the rain wouldn’t be an issue, they said it wouldn’t be and we went up one level to the hosts to get a taxi. A friendly guy who reminded me of Kenneth the Page called to get us one. Turns out, I’m an idiot and Googled the wrong harbor. I thought it was 25 minutes away…wrong. It’s an hour. No way we were making the 10:30am tour. We called again and they rebooked us on the 2:30 and we hopped in our cab.

I had to just laugh when the fare of the cab hit $90, surpassing the total for my first class flights. (Thanks Delta!)

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Ultimate Whale Watch leaves from slip 17, so we found it to check in and asked what we should do to kill the time. The woman directed us to Lahaina Cooler. It was about 11:30 so we went to hang out. It’s definitely a local spot with cool, laid back staff. The owner was sitting next to us eating breakfast. Very nice lady who lives around the corner.

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After a bit we wanted a change of scenery. I wanted to watch some basketball so we went a couple blocks away to a place called Captain Jacks. To get there you have to go upstairs where a lifeless dog awaits you. I swear the thing didn’t move for like 30 minutes.

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Ok, I’m rambling. Off to the whale watch really quick, then back to the hotel as this is what this thread is about. Here’s the whale watch, it was awesome. Worth the money. Fast boat, 15 people, they were able to get out to sightings faster than other boats.

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When we got back on land we went to Lahaina Cooler again to ask our new friends if we could get a flat rate back to Wailea. About 15-20 minutes later a car arrived to pick us up. Definitely wasn’t a cab. I think it was just the bartenders friend who just so happened to be going to our side of the island. Ha! Sunset back was gorgeous.

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Back at the hotel, I fell asleep almost immediately. A 30 minute nap turned into 3 hours. We missed our reservation at Morimoto. I finally dragged my butt out of bed and we went downstairs. The resort was pretty dead, but we hoped we could get some food at the beach bar. Unfortunately it was 11:15 and they were done with food. We chatted with Fernando (I believe) the bartender who moved out to Maui to open the property earlier last year. I think he said he’d been with Hyatt 6 or 7 years. He was great and a wealth of information about the property.

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Finally awake, we decided to grab some food from the 24/7 kitchen. There’s a bunch of cool stuff in there (coffee table books and what not.) Also, not to sound like an alcoholic, but the same bottle of Tito’s that’s in the room for about $48 is sold downstairs for about $26.

Ok, grabbed some food, went up to change into our suits and go to the hot tub and pool.

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This is where the trip took a turn for the…well, interesting.

There was just one other person in the hot tub when we got down there. About 15 minutes later a group of 4 very drunk Canadians joined us. They got in the hot tub, asked where we were from (Vegas), we asked them (Montreal). The one guy who was there before us got up and left I guess his peace and quiet was ruined. The Canadian’s then started hopping on the disability lift for no reason trying to lower themselves into the pool. They got frustrated and then just hopped in. About 5 minutes later I hear “Oh god!!” and I’m told to turn around. Let’s just say I hope there was lots of chlorine in the pool. They didn’t “last” long and left soon after, gathering their things and leaving the pool area. About 3 minutes after they left I noticed the chair we had put our stuff on was empty. All our stuff was gone! They had taken my shirt, hat (which had a room key stupidly still in the paper carrier with our room number on it and a spare credit card with my full name on it.) as well as sun dress. Even all our towels. We walked into the lobby soaking went, the front desk woman looked at us quizzically but was then was very nice and apologetic and gave us some robes when we explained what happened. She wiped out our old room keys and issued new ones. The she filled out a security report. I wish more had been done to track these people down. How many people from Montreal could have been on property at the same time?

The next day, we woke up and went down to have another amazing breakfast. Jenny was our server again, and I don’t know how it was possible, but she was even friendlier than the previous morning. More omelets, more bacon, more fruit, more bread! Both breakfasts (with mimosas and tip included) came to $125 for two people. Pretty good deal for free Diamond breakfast. Well, I presume it was comped, I never saw the bill at check out and it’s still not in my profile. I’ll get to that in a bit.

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We went down to the beach and had the crew set us up with some chairs. It was a gorgeous day out. After a bit we went up to Morimoto for lunch since I slept through dinner there the night before. We weren’t starving because the breakfast really does have SO much food. I ordered the lobster roll in an attempt to make up for the case of the missing lobster in the grilled cheese from our first day. It didn’t disappoint. We also ordered 8 pieces of sashimi: fatty tuna, yellow tail, and I forget the third. For SURE get the fatty tuna.

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It's also a cool spot to watch whales breaching. (Trust me, they back there)
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We then relocated to the pool where we met some really nice people from LA and New York. It’s like Maui makes everyone 10 times more friendly. An hour or two later we found ourselves in the same hot tub as the night before and just laughed. I had been upset the night before, but was over it (for the time being). We watched the sunset, then went upstairs to clean up, pack and head back to the airport.

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Checking out in the lobby, wouldn't you know it, a woman walks by us wearing my girl's dress. She approached her, said, excuse me, that's my dress! The woman took a drag from her e-cigarette, blew it right in her face and said something like "We have to get our bags, maybe I'll get it back to you." At which point I about went nuclear and went off on the woman and her boyfriend/husband. The Canadian woman said “What, I thought it was my friends?” To which I replied “And the hat, shirt, credit card and room key?!” She said "What, you just want me to take it off right here and be naked in the lobby?!" "I couldn't care less lady!" The Canadian woman took another drag of her e-cig and I think I said something like “If you blow that anywhere near her face we’re going to have a [massive expletive] problem.” The Canadian man then said something like “One sec, we’ll go get your stuff” “You shouldn’t have it in the first place [massive expletive]!” Next thing I know I’m being handed a drink by one of the host. Having much less of a temper than me, my friend told me to go wait in another part of the lobby, which I did. That’s when I noticed the 2 security guards. Great, I’m in trouble, I thought. If we had just checked out 5 minutes before or 5 minutes later, we never would have seen the woman walk past us in the stolen dress. But security was on my side! Hooray! Again they were nice and professional. Another guest who had seen everything couldn’t believe the girl I was with didn’t smack the Canadian girl after the smoke/vapor blowing incident. Eventually we got the Canadians to return the rest of our property including my card, which was already cancelled. Most of the hosts were sympathetic with us because they were aware of this from the day before. We got in the cab late, barely made our flight, got back to Vegas, grabbed breakfast in the AMEX lounge and just ended up having to laugh at it all. Bottom line: fantastic resort, fantastic rooms, fantastic food, even more fantastic staff...And 99.99% of all Canadians are fantastic as well :)

This is by far the best trip report I've read in a _long_ time. Possibly ever. :) Thanks for posting.

how much was the whale watching? and do you ( or anyone else) know if the whales will be there in July?

great trip report , thanks for the info and this makes us want to be there now. we are scheduled to be there this summer, can't wait.

Great breakdown, awesome that you saw the lady. Also what kind of camera did you use for the pictures, definitely not a P&S I wouldn't think

I love your trip report!

And thanks for clearing up who all was making that noise down at the jacuzzi Saturday night. I had to close my lanai door. ;)

Afraid the whales will be gone. Mid-December through March is the time. I've seen some stragglers in April.

jepiv: Wow! What a story! I can't imagine how I'd respond seeing someone with my property! I'm glad you got it all back. And agree Jenny is awesome. Love her.

Great report! And ridiculously entertaining story. What's the deal with this? Did the hotel just comp your entire stay after this debacle?

"Checking out in the lobby, wouldn't you know it, a woman walks by us wearing my girl's dress. She approached her, said, excuse me, that's my dress! The woman took a drag from her e-cigarette, blew it right in her face and said something like "We have to get our bags, maybe I'll get it back to you." "

Isn't smoking prohibited? regardless of whether it's an e-cigarette or not.
In any case the woman should have been arrested for stealing another guest's property.

@SquareDanceGuy - Thanks, it was a great trip.

@jordandawg05 - The whale watch came to $105 for 2 people. This is the companies website: http://www.ultimatewhalewatch.com/ It is my undertsanding whale season is only November to March however.

@ac921ol - All the pictures were taken with an iPhone 4S. It was one of those time when you wake up at 3:45am to get on your connecting flight to LAX and leave the battery to you Canon charging in the kitchen. I didn't really have time to look for a new one on the island once I realized the was no battery in the camera.

@Pat89339 - Mystery solved!

@l'etoile - Seriously, Jenny is the best. She even gave us a parting gift!

@heatheresq - No, nothing was comped other than the amenity that I know of. Charge has posted to my AMEX account, a little more than I think it should be, but still no detailed portfolio on hyatt.com, but I've put in the request for one. The fact that someone had my room number and name for a day may come back to bite me as they don't ask for ID when signing. At first we just figured they were drunk, would wake up and return everything to lost and found, which clearly they didn't. So I wouldn't put it past out neighbors up north to have made a few unscrupulous charges. I'll find out soon I guess. Total rookie move leaving the room key in the sleeve. I NEVER do that.

Wow, I'm amazed that the thief's girlfriend had the audacity to wear a stolen dress at the resort!
Glad it all worked out for you and didn't spoil your stay :)

I would have called 911. Was there any reprecussions at all for the criminals?