Day 6 - Marriott Maui Ocean Club

I forgot to mention the most interesting thing about day 6. When we arrived at the airport at about 6am, we tried checking in curbside with the skycap, but he told us that our flight was cancelled and the next flight wasn't until 2:30pm! We went inside to see if there were any other options to avoid spending 8 hours at the airport before our 6 hour flight. The person at the ticket counter said that our flight wasn't cancelled at all. I don't know what that skycaps problem was - he probably just didn't want to deal with our huge tower of luggage!

After we arrived in Maui, we stopped at the world's busiest Costco to stock up on supplies for the week. I didn't think it would be that busy since the Superbowl was on. We are staying at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club which is very nice. We rented someone's 2br unit for the week. We are going to get spoiled having all of this space! The room is nice. It is technically considered a garden view room, but we have a really nice view of the ocean anyway. As soon as we got in the room we got our swimming suits on and headed to the pools. The kids had a blast playing in the pirate ship pool and practicing their swimming skills in one of the regular pools. Zoe ate rocks. Whenever I stopped her, she would scream at me. We'll have to come up with a better strategy tomorrow. We haven't adapted to Hawaiian time yet, but apparently we're finally to Pacific time. The kids were all asleep by 7:00pm.

Our kids really are very good travellers. I know everyone sees us and hopes they don't have to sit by us, but at the end of every flight, we get numerous comments about how good our kids are. Zoe has been a little more difficult to keep happy than the others when they were little, but she still isn't screaming or anything. She just requires more work from us! This flight was pretty empty. The pilot noted that it was the emptiest flight he's seen in years. I wondered if it's because people didn't want to fly during the Super Bowl or if the skycaps actually rescheduled people to other flights?! They really would have done that to us and we wouldn't have known better had we not gone inside to find other options!

After the flight from Chicago to California, I learned not to sit by both Ella and Zoe, and it's okay. It was surprisingly busy at Costco espcially since it was right in the middle of the Superbowl. Doesn't anyone watch that in Hawaii? We bought stuff like bread, eggs, fruit, cereal, peanut butter and jelly, etc. It was way more than we needed since everything is in bulk, but still cheaper than buying groceries in Lahaina. Since our minivan was already stuffed full of luggage and carseats, the floor of the van held our groceries. So jam-packed into the van, we proceeded down the highway. What a beautiful drive (except Zoe really wasn't happy.) The last 15 minutes though when she was asleep was great!

We stayed at the Marriott Maui Ocean Club. We rented a two bedroom mountain/garden view week from someone over the internet. The communication with them had been good, but Marc and I joked that we would get there and not really have a place to stay--that it was all a con! Fortunately, check-in went smoothly. The person we rented from had even made a special room request for us and we got a great room! It cost us $2700 for the week. Considering 4 years ago when were here, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency right next to this place for about $400/night, I think we did pretty well. This trip we would have needed 2 rooms at the Hyatt for the six of us. So the Marriott was considerably cheaper than 2 rooms at the Hyatt and the accomodations were great! Our room was in the Lahaina Tower which was one of the newer towers...the one adjacent to the Hyatt Regency where my conference was being held. We had rooms 10212 and 10213 which are a one bedroom combined with a studio room making our 2 bedroom villa.

You enter the room into a foyer with a stacked washer and dryer in the closet there. We used this area to store the stroller, our bottled water and our empty suitcases which served as laundry baskets through the week. Again, Marc did laundry every day which was awesome!

Then you walk into a nice kitchen, dining room, and living room. The great big window looks out at the mountains. Beautiful!

The bedrooms were on either side of this main living area. The master bedroom had a smaller than normal King size bed, a chair with an ottoman, dresser with a flatscreen TV, and a spacious closet. The master bath consisted of two areas. The first area had a sink and vanity with storage and a whirlpool tub which opens to the bedroom. The second area contained the toilet, a large shower and another vanity with lots of storage. This bathroom also opened to the kitchen, but we just kept that door locked. There was a balcony off of this room which had a dining table and 4 chairs. The big surprise was what an amazing ocean view we had from the balcony! I enjoyed sitting out here and enjoying my coffee and eggs every morning. What a treat!

The kids' room was the studio portion of this unit. It had a queen size bed and a pull out sofa bed.

They also had a balcony with 2 chairs that overlooked the ocean. We didn't use that much.

They had a kitchenette which we didn't need at all, and their own bathroom with a combination tub/shower. This came in handy when they came back to the room all sandy from the beach. We'd put them directly into their tub to wash off. It was really a great room! We were very pleased!

We found our swimsuits as quickly as possibly and headed down to the pool. Woohooo! We're in Hawaii! We had fun exploring the pool areas. We ate quick service food from the marketplace for dinner. It started to rain as soon as the food was ready, so we packed it up and ate it on the balcony in our room. The kids went to bed early and I unpacked. Perfect.