Today I wrap up the story of our last full day at Aulani with still MORE photos of the pool, the beach, the resort, and the buffet at Makahiki. If you didn’t have every square inch of the place memorized before, you will now!

Hopefully these two most recent ginormous posts will tide you over til after Memorial Day, when I’ll move on to our last day on Oahu and show you the Roots’ version of our trip in many breathtaking images.

Read on…

I have almost 500 photos from our last full day in Hawaii, and although I swear I really am editing, I’m going to split the rest of Day 5  over two posts just so you don’t break the scroll wheel on your mouse. The good news is, the last part of Day 5 of Aulani to Walt Disney World will be up tomorrow! The bad news is, it’s cuz I won’t be able to post over Memorial Day Weekend. But if you hang in there, I now I have the Roots’ stunning vacation photos from our trip, so those will be forthcoming when I start up again.

In the meantime, read on for an extensive photo tour of the Waikolohe pool area and Rainbow Reef snorkeling experience!

Get those eyeballs ready… today’s installment of Aulani to Walt Disney World is the first part of an exhaustive photo tour of Aulani! On our last full day in Hawaii, we blew off our plans to hit the Oahu sights we’d missed because we didn’t feel like we’d gotten to enjoy all our resort had to offer yet.

We started the day with an invisible sunrise and breakfast at the resort’s other sit-down restaurant, Makahiki. Then we toured the model Disney Vacation Club villa like the one I was originally going to book for our trip. If you’re curious what a one-bedroom unit (and a good view) looks like, this is the update for you!

Read on…

If you’ve read any of my trip reports, you know I’m sort of obsessed with cake—specifically, with ordering cakes at Disney, to the point where I have an entire section of this site devoted to ordering cake at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Two of the most disappointing Disney cakes I’ve ever had came from Epcot, and I’ve been continually frustrated with their supermarket-level quality (and insistence on using blashphemous whipped cream frosting instead of buttercream). The work-around has been to order cakes from the Yacht & Beach Club’s pastry team, which has been delivering to three of restaurants in Epcot for the last couple years.

So when alert reader Karen let me know that the Yacht & Beach Club had discontinued this practice, I did some digging and discovered that Epcot now employs a real, honest-to-goodness pastry chef! Which means you can actually get fancy, fondant-covered cakes there like the ones turned out by the Grand Floridian and the Contemporary! They also do mini cakes (which are my favorite, due to their superior frosting-to-cake ratio) and offer most of the basic white chocolate figures that people so love.

… like Stitch!

For complete details on the new options, check out the Epcot section of my Cake Options By Location page.

Note: Because several of the pavilions in World Showcase are operated by outside vendors, these new fancy cakes are not available at every restaurant in Epcot. The restaurants in Mexico, China, Italy, Japan, Morocco, and France are serviced by outside cake vendors, and you can find complete details on what they offer at the link above.

Farewell to crocheted Kleenex box-cover cakes at Epcot!

Today I finally wrap up the story of our vow renewal day at Aulani with our experience at the resort’s Starlit Hui, which is kind of like a luau with a stage show and pre-show crafts but no meal. After our dinner at ‘AMA ‘AMA, we met back up with the Roots for front-row seats at the event. If you’re wondering whether you can skip a real luau in favor of Aulani’s version, read on…

At last we start to really get into the Aulani part of this Aulani to Walt Disney World trip report! After our vow renewal brunch, Patrick and I splashed around in Aulani’s pool a bit and then spent a few hours at the resort’s spa, Laniwai, determined to wring every last drop of value from the bazillions of dollars they charge. And also take a TON of photos.

Then it was back to ‘AMA ‘AMA for dinner and a sunset before we hit up the resort’s Starlit Hui with the Roots.

Read on!

After they’d shot Patrick and me standing in front of Hawaii from virtually every angle except upside down, the Roots took a break and we all changed clothes for our post-vow-renewal brunch at Aulani’s open-air restaurant, ‘AMA ‘AMA. This was the part I’d really been looking forward to because it was our first chance to spend quality time with our guests. Also, there was cake. And after, more photos!!!

Read on…

This week’s installment of Aulani to Walt Disney World ran really long, so I’m posting half today and half tomorrow. Today’s post covers our post-vow renewal photo shoot around Aulani with the Roots, including all the classic Hawaiian scenery you could hope for: sandy beaches, swaying palm trees, waves crashing on volcanic rock, and slimey, slimey tide pools…

Read on!

At last, we get to the whole point of the Aulani to Walt Disney World trip: our Disney’s Fairy Tale Weddings vow renewal at the resort’s Alohi Pointe (a.k.a., the Jacuzzi)! If you’re curious, I’m in the middle of documenting the planning process for this event in a sort of post-planning journal, but today’s installment begins the story of how it all turned out.

We were incredibly lucky to have our friends the Roots be there to share our day, not just to document it in their inimitable style, but also as a celebration of a friendship that really began 5 years ago that day, when they shot our wedding.

Read on…

Today I finally wrap up the story of the third day of our Aulani to Walt Disney World trip, with the tale of our tour of the North Shore with our pals, the Roots! This was the day I was most looking forward to when I was planning, and I think it may have been our favorite day of the trip.

After we left Kualoa Ranch, we drove up around the northern tip of Oahu, with the obligatory tourist stops at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck and Matsumoto’s Shave Ice, but also some unscheduled photo ops in between—including a creepy burned-out reform school and the aptly nicknamed Turtle Beach.

Read on…