Trip Report A little bit of Disney and a lot of luaus!

Hello all!
We're back from our "Aulani, a Disney Resort & Spa" stay, and I'm finally able to get this trip report started!
(And fyi the closest I came to a spa was getting a water bubble foot bath at the kids splash area!)

Our party of 6 and a 1/2 consisted of myself Cindy, husband Gary, son Seth, daughter Aleisha (and the half), SIL Julio and our 20 month old granddaughter Una. (You may remember her as crazy girl from our Oct. 2021 WDW trip report.) Nothing has changed there!

Same cast of characters except in a different location!

We left home 9/24/22 and returned 10/5/22.
On Saturday the 24th we flew from Pittsburgh to Sacramento via Dallas. (That is a big airport)!

Before we left I bought myself a new (larger) suitcase for the trip. Someone may or may not have packed one and a half suitcases full of kid crap treasures and needed more space! When I retired my partners bought me the smaller version of this and I love it so much (and it's held up for 4 years of Disney adventures) so it made sense to buy the matching larger one! I'm glad they still offer the same pattern.

We packed up all of said stuff and headed to the airport. Our flight was at a reasonable 1:30pm so we didn't have to kill ourselves to get there.
I put this photo in to remind myself to never do this again. I wanted to save $3/day and so I parked in the economy lot. @riverside will be able to tell you how silly this decision was. There are no shuttles and it was a full on 20 minute walk with my annoying hip back to the terminal. You see that strip of brown there past my car? That is the highway surrounding the airport! But hey, I saved $3/day!

We got through security no problem that time of day and got on the monorail type thing that takes you from the land to air side.
And ps, I'm with every other human on the planet that is sick of mask wearing but Gary's oncologist has asked him to keep wearing them indoors as much as possible due to his immunocompromised state with ongoing chemo and so we do.
I tell everyone it's not going to be his cancer or covid that takes him out, it's going to be me.
See post of family fracas that occurs in a few days.

We had time to grab an early lunch so we shared Chick-fil-A nuggets, waffle fries and some Auntie Anne's nuggets.
He's happy, honestly! He doesn't earn those Grumpy shirts for nuthin!

And then on to what started out as one of the most controversial subjects of this trip.
As his illness progresses and he gets more tired (and grumpy) I try to figure out how to make things less stressful and easier for him.
Flying has become something he detests. So I proposed for the first time in our life that we try to fly first/business class and see if it is any easier for him. If you hate it or feel it is not worth it, never again I tell him.
(Remember I'm the person too cheap to park closer, I don't throw money away either).
Oh boy did the grumping and complaining begin. That's too expensive, I don't want to do that and on and on. I finally wore him down and he acquiesced.
So, how do you think it went?

Give you a little hint, that's actually a smile behind that mask as he sits in his nice wide soft seat!

Do I get to do a wifely eyeball roll yet?!
Hope you'll stay tuned for more of our adventures!

 

[MickeyCB]

Sounds nicer and more polite than any family fight I've been in or witnessed - even those that happened in public LOL. We're all a bad tempered, easily triggered mean bunch and usually curse words, insults, threats, and/or fists are thrown

If I was allowed to give in to my true nature this is what you would see.
I have let loose a few times. Seth was probably 12 years old and pushed my last button with something. I started chasing him down the hall at home and said the chances of you making it to 13 are pretty small. He doesn't even stop running and says, the chances of you getting any taller are pretty small! Punk.

 

[MickeyCB]

This gif actually reminds me of an argument I had last week with one of the three sisters. I had another sister on a phone call on my cell phone and had to hold it up in the air (I'm taller) while she was trying to grab it out of my hand, with me trying to yell the story out to the one on the phone before the one there could grab it. Totally reminded me of our childhood!

 

[LeighM]

If I was allowed to give in to my true nature this is what you would see.
I have let loose a few times. Seth was probably 12 years old and pushed my last button with something. I started chasing him down the hall at home and said the chances of you making it to 13 are pretty small. He doesn't even stop running and says, the chances of you getting any taller are pretty small! Punk.

I was spanked all the time for my sassy mouth. Eventually my butt became numb and I didn't care. I was about 10 or so when I got in trouble and I told my Mom that she could spank me if she wanted to but it was going to hurt her more than me LOL. That just took all the wind out of her sails

 

[Darstarr]

If I was allowed to give in to my true nature this is what you would see.

I win!

 

[MickeyCB]

View attachment 677612

I win!

Yeah sorry you do!!
But no judgement here, I'm just jealous!
I love watching tiktoks of mothers winging a flipflop at their kids heads!

 

[meggo819]

Seth gets annoyed because we're apparently bothering him worrying about a $1000 charge and gets grouchy.

I wonder what his version of this story is….cuz this seems like a really silly reason for him to get so upset Just to be clear, I’m def on your side lol - just wondering how he justified being such a bother!

 

[MickeyCB]

I wonder what his version of this story is….cuz this seems like a really silly reason for him to get so upset Just to be clear, I’m def on your side lol - just wondering how he justified being such a bother!

Don't know if you have teenager/early young adults yet, but my experience is it only takes something as simple as a "how is your day going" comment to them to turn them into beasts. Snarling beasts.
If you do have some of those and they don't do those things please give me some tips.

 

[meggo819]

Don't know if you have teenager/early young adults yet, but my experience is it only takes something as simple as a "how is your day going" comment to them to turn them into beasts. Snarling beasts.
If you do have some of those and they don't do those things please give me some tips.

Ha, good to know! I’ve got 3 girls under 6…now I know what I have to look forward to

 

[Swissmiss]

Don't know if you have teenager/early young adults yet, but my experience is it only takes something as simple as a "how is your day going" comment to them to turn them into beasts. Snarling beasts.
If you do have some of those and they don't do those things please give me some tips.

So true. I love it when my teen wakes up, comes out, says something to me and when I reply back I get the snarl. ?

 

[MickeyCB]

So true. I love it when my teen wakes up, comes out, says something to me and when I reply back I get the snarl. ?

 

[MickeyCB]

Day 8- Dukes, tattoo's and the North Shore!

This is the day that my son-in-law that I think actually likes me told me "you just shut up."
But that doesn't happen till much later in the day and probably quite a few posts from now.
It wasn't really as bad as it sounds!

So, to start at the beginning.
Today is Gary and my anniversary! 39 years of wedded bliss!

Anyway...We woke up to another morning of BB's and coffee on the balcony and a few people acting less like Alien Swirling you know whats.

There were several items on the schedule for the day. Since it was Gary and my anniversary I wanted to eat lunch in Waikiki at a fairly famous place called Dukes. It is right on Waikiki beach. When my sister lived here and we got to visit it was a favorite place to eat.

It has a pretty cool story about a guy named Duke Kahanamoku who was initially a gold medal Olympic swimmer in 1912 (and was in several other Olympic games), and and then became a kind of surfer ambassador introducing it around the world. It's a really cool story to look up if you are interested. Not sure if this is him or not, but it is what came up when searching gifs.

I initially made a reservation on open table but could only get it for 5. I couldn't decide if we should just show up and hope for the best or to call. Julio convinced me to call and the person who answered look up our reservation and said no problem and added the 6th.

As is our usual MO, we barely got there on time because we had significant problems finding parking.
I called again and they said no problem they were holding our table.
You enter from the street side and head towards the back of what almost looks like a little mall.
We checked in and they told us to have a seat it wouldn't be long to be seated. It couldn't have been 5 minutes and we were taken back to our table.

It's hard to tell with the glare but from our table you could see straight out to the beach.

This was our table. It was so cool. We were tucked into what looked like a little hut.

They had a full menu but because it was Saturday they also had a buffet. We all decided on the buffet. Again I don't have a lot of food pics, luckily Seth remembered again.
It was absolutely excellent food! I had a salad with a dressing that had so much flavor I could have drank it!

I had to txt my sister because I couldn't remember what dessert she recommended but it was their Kimo's Original Hula Pie! Oh baby was it good!
Anniversary celebration photo.

I had another thing I wanted to do on Waikiki beach.
In the 1970's my mother took my Grandmother and my sister and I to Hawaii. My grandmother was an immigrant, lived through the depression and was a farmer and coal miners wife who raised 5 kids. She never really had much and never asked for anything but was an amazing lady.
She had only ever talked about seeing Hawaii. So when my mom could, she took her.

I have a picture of her on the beach by a palm tree and one with my sister and I from that trip. Then when my sister lived there, she Aleisha and I posed on the beach in what we think was the same place. So now that I was a grandmother I wanted to try to redo the photo with Me, Aleisha, Seth and Una.

These were the original photos that I drug all the way to Hawaii with the intent that we would hold up these photos and get the next generation. The third one down is Aleisha at probably 12 years of age holding up the prior photos.
The last one was of Gary and I a hundred years ago that I swore was also on Waikiki beach but Julio insists that that couldn't be Diamond Head in the background. My sister thinks it was from the opposite side of Waikiki. It remains a mystery.

After we finished our lunch we headed out to the beach to try to do a recreation.

 

[Wicked Sisters]

Love the photo of Una with her drink bottle, adorable

 

[MickeyCB]

Love the photo of Una with her drink bottle, adorable

I liked it too! Then I saw that I caught it with someone walking directly behind her. I'm going to see if Seth can photoshop out the walker.

 

[MickeyCB]

Day 8- Waikiki beach

We went outside onto the beach to see if we could find a good palm tree to take our photo when I remembered I forgot the photos that traveled 3000 miles, in the room.
Well that was annoying.
So I pulled out my phone and held up the picture that you see above and we did our best.

An aside that has nothing to do with anything, but since the start of the pandemic I have developed a different attitude. I am an annoyingly type A human but for some reason I now say in my head quite frequently, "oh well, it's just another thing that's not perfect."
I think I'm using less prilosec as a result.

View as we walked out onto the beach from the restaurant.

The beach is quite different from 20 odd years ago. (Ya think?!)
There were a bunch of caution cones, and all kinds of warning signs tacked onto the palms.
But we persevered.
In this one you can see Diamond Head behind us.

Not quite the pics I was hoping for, but new memories nonetheless.

It was at this point that we were all separating.
Seth had made arrangements to meet a tattoo artist that he has apparently followed on social media for about 6 years. She has quite a following and is quite busy. Seth was very excited to be able to get an appointment with her and we were going to take him there after lunch.
It was in Kaneohe, about 30 minutes away and would take several hours to get the tattoo.
Aleisha and Julio decided to stay in Honolulu and explore the shops.
Our plans were vague but we were going to drop Seth off and go explore and then either pick him up if he was done and swing back to Honolulu or the opposite, get Aleisha and Julio and then Seth.

Not too long after we were on our way Aleisha sent a few pics of them, they looked like they were having a nice time.

Apparently the reality was quite different!

 

[amjt660]

Today is Gary and my anniversary! 39 years of wedded bliss!

Congratulations (belated of course)

a few people acting less like Alien Swirling you know whats.

well at least no one was acting like a Monster Inc Laugh Floor


Max

 

[MickeyCB]

Congratulations (belated of course)

Thanks!

well at least no one was acting like a Monster Inc Laugh Floor

That comes later, except more floor and less laughing.

 

[MickeyCB]

Day 8-continues, let's take a drive!

We left Aleisha, Julio and Una in Waikiki and headed out for Kaneohe to drop Seth off to get his Hawaiian vacation souvenir.
He had warned me that it was in an industrial type neighborhood so I wouldn't be concerned about leaving him there.
After we dropped him there we decided to just drive and see where we ended up.

We were fairly close to the coast line so I suggested we head towards it and simply make a left and follow the coast to wherever it took us.
We drove along and it was simply gorgeous. Sometimes the ocean was 15 feet from our car. After we drove for awhile we came upon a park on the ocean called Kualoa Beach Park.
It was gorgeous. There were a lot of cars but because it was so huge it wasn't congested at all. We decided to get out and walk around and also use the restrooms.

This first pic we sent to the kids and Aleisha commented on how they wish they had joined us.

Can anyone tell what is behind us and what Gary is taking a picture of?

At the time we didn't even know it is an important landmark the Chinaman's Hat!
Apparently you can walk, swim or kayak over to it and then hike it. (But, I read there are hammerhead sharks there.) That's a big old nope for me!

The beach was practically deserted and it was on a Saturday. A lot of the cars were further down the beach. It was so cool. Apparently huge families and groups bring big tents, grills and food and set up for the day.
We saw a huge grill off of the back of a pickup truck and a guy that could have been Maui's brother cooking.
Looking south.

Looking north.

We loaded back into the van and decided to make a right hand turn and continue further north. We made the decision not to use the gps because we just wanted to see where we ended up.

Another aside that has nothing to do with anything. Since I retired and when covid hit and you really couldn't go in anywhere we started doing a thing where as we are driving somewhere unfamiliar we just "take a road."
Usually it's when we are on the way home from somewhere and are in no hurry. Despite living where we are for about 28 years we have discovered areas we didn't even know are around us. I enjoy trying to figure out if we are going to end up where I think we will. (Frequently I am wrong)!

As we continued driving along I told Gary that I was sure we had been here before and if we kept driving we were going to run into the Polynesian Cultural Center and he thought I was crazy.
We passed by the Kualoa Ranch on our left that I thought looked really cool. It is a 4000 acre nature reserve and a working cattle ranch. Multiple movies have been filmed there including Kong Skull Island and 2 Jurassic Park movies. And what's funny is without knowing this I commented that the landscape looked Jurassic Park-ish!

The ranch was right past those mountains you see behind Gary in the last photo.

So, we continued along and saw a wood carving place that I suggested we stop at because Gary adores wood carving and has several pieces from his stay in Samoa, and prior trips to Hawaii. He said no and we continued on.
Guess what we ran into? Right! The PCC parking lot!
We had approached it coming in a southernly direction the day before!

There was a McDonalds right there so I went through the drive through and got a soda and some french-fries. Later Julio the absolute gourmand had a heart attack. You ate McDonalds in Hawaii?!! Yes I told him because they were Hawaiian french-fries!

After that we turned around and headed south again thinking that Seth should probably be finishing up within an hour or so.

 

[amjt660]

Can anyone tell what is behind us and what Gary is taking a picture of?

This was going to be my guess!!

Later Julio the absolute gourmand had a heart attack. You ate McDonalds in Hawaii?!! Yes I told him because they were Hawaiian french-fries!

So I guess I had Japanese fries when I went to Mickey D’s in Nagoya???

Max

 

[Darstarr]

That comes later, except more floor and less laughing.

Ummmm, no.
@amjt660 do you want to explain or shall I?

 

[amjt660]

Ummmm, no.
@amjt660 do you want to explain or shall I?

Max