Over the next several days, I’ll be writing a series of posts on our recent trip to the island of Maui.
We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, located on the western end of the island. When you drive to Kaanapali Beach from the airport, the Hyatt is the first in a fairly long row of resorts in this area.
The grounds of the hotel are amazing. A large Japanese garden spills into the lobby and contains a variety of birds: warm-weather penguins, flamingos, swans, and cranes. E. loved looking at the birds everyday as we came and went from the hotel.
The public areas of the hotel are decorated with Asian art from Japan, China, and Thailand. Many of these artworks date to the 18th or 19th century.
We were very happy with our room. The bed was very comfortable. The bathroom area was nice and large, and the room also included an actual walk-in closet, rather than the small, creepy sliding-door kind found in many hotel rooms. I liked that the room also included an empty frig, in addition to the super-expensive mini-bar fridge. We also had a fairly large flatscreen t.v.
Only one complaint about our room: the balcony was very small. Although there was a small table with two chairs, it would have been almost impossible for all three of us to sit or stand on the balcony at the same time. And even if Nick and I wanted to sit there while E. was asleep, reaching the farthest of the two chairs from the door took some effort. But hey, the mountain view rocked. (Sorry. Bad joke.) We actually had what would be termed by some hotels as a partial-ocean view. Nice!
The highlight(s) of this hotel, in my opinion, are the two pools. The regular pool is quite large and is located near the beach. This pool feeds under a waterfall and into the grotto (complete with swim-up bar), which then feeds through another waterfall and into the kids’ pool area. The kids’ pool features two slides (one of which was tame enough for E. to ride down on my lap), several spraying fountains, and a large bridge. A portion of the kids’ pool is covered with tiny sand-like rocks that E. loved to play in. The best part was that this wasn’t actual sand, so it was much easier to get E. cleaned up at the end of the day.
The hotel is located on Kaanapali Beach, although this portion of the beach is much narrower than it is further up by the Marriott and some of the other resorts. However, we did spend time at this portion of the beach and had lots of fun. Also, the wider portion of the beach is only a ten minute walk from the hotel, so it was still very convenient.
All opinions are my own, as if anyone had any doubt. I wasn’t compensated by the Hyatt Regency in any way to write this review.
