A Review of the Grand Hyatt Kauai

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    EDITORIAL DISCLOSURE:

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Let me just say….the Grand Hyatt Kauai lived up to the hype and exceeded our expectations. We spent 4 nights at this tropical paradise, explored the island of Kauai, and spent exactly $0 on our booking. What more could you ask for?

Keep reading to dive into all the details on how we booked, things we loved about the resort, food recommendations, and so much more!

Booking

So let’s break down how we booked it, and how you can too with the ✨magic of Hyatt points.✨

The Grand Hyatt Kauai is a category 8 hotel and standard nights will cost 40,000 points. If you’re lucky you can also snag off-peak nights for just 35,000 points, and peak night pricing is 45,000 points. I booked this property over a year ago when this hotel was a category 7, so we paid 35,000 points per night.

Speaking of booking over a year ago….

🔥Hot tip: the award calendar for this resort opens up 13 months in advance, and these nights can book up QUICK during peak travel seasons like this, so book early if you can!

My husband and I each opened up an Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card to earn the points that we needed for this stay. After earning the welcome offers, we transferred our points to Hyatt to book directly.

How we got there

If you guessed that we flew Southwest to Hawaii, you would be right! ✅

Having the Companion Pass made a huge difference for us too and saved us the price of my husband’s flights! I paid for three round trip flights and we have one Companion Pass.

In total, we paid: 171,414 Rapid Rewards points and $44.80 in taxes.

The points for our flights were earned from Southwest cobranded credit cards that I opened while working toward my Companion Pass. You can also transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Southwest.

My family of four flew to Hawaii for less than $50. I will never get over how amazing that is!

Rooms

After checking in and getting our leis, we made our way to our room to settle in. We booked a standard room with 2 queen beds which had plenty of space for our family of 4!

We walked in to find the sweetest welcome from the hotel. I had sent an email to the hotel a week before arriving to let them know that we were coming to celebrate our daughter’s birthday, and they had decorated the room for her and left a ton of treats and Hawaiian snacks for her! It was such a nice touch and she felt so special. 🥰

👉🏻 Grab my FREE Hotel Room Upgrade Request Template for my exact template I use every time I travel to score room upgrades and freebies like this!

The beds were comfy, we loved the balcony off of our room with a view of the mountains, and we didn’t feel squished into the room which was nice! There was a fairly standard bathroom with a tub/shower combo, two sinks, and the toilet was behind a separate door.

💦They also leave these nice water bottles in the room which are so handy for your stay! There are plenty of water filling stations around the property so it was easy to stay hydrated. They did say that there are two per room, but I called down and asked for an extra for us and they brought us two more!

Food at the resort

The resort had plenty of food options to keep us happy during our 4 night stay. You could easily eat there for every meal, but I highly recommend finding food off property too so you don’t get bored of the same thing!

Tidepools

This is the fanciest restaurant at the resort and is in a very cool location right over the koi pond. You’ll want to make reservations ahead of time as they do book up! We all really enjoyed our dishes and the chocolate lava cake for dessert was the absolute highlight. 🤤

Hale Nalu

This is a quick service restaurant that serves lunch and dinner. During the day there are also servers walking around taking food and drink orders so you could order lunch while you’re by the pool (which we did a couple of times during our stay). The kids menu portion were generous too, so our two teenage girls even opted to share a couple of meals!

There’s also a small conveniece store section there too for snacks and drinks so it was really convenient right by the main pool area.

Seaview Terrace

You won’t find a better view for dinner and a drink than the Seaview Terrace. 😍 This restaurant is right off of the lobby and has fantastic views of the ocean. You can go for coffee and a light breakfast in the morning at the Honolulu Coffee Co., or you can get drinks and dinner in the evening. 🎶 And they have live music too!

The Captain’s Bar

This bar area is right next to the adults only pool (for ages 14 and up) and serves drinks in the afternoon and into the evening.

Stevenson’s Library

We didn’t make it to Stevenson’s Library, but this is a great spot for a sushi or seafood dinner! You’ll find the entrance to the restaurant right through the main lobby.

Fish tacos from Hale Nalu

Honolulu Coffee Co.

Drinks at Seaview Terrace

Dinner at Tidepools: Tofu vegetable fritter

Club Access

I was SO GLAD we had Club Access during our stay. Free breakfast every morning. Access to sodas, coffee, juices all day long. And snacks multiple times a day. The convenience was great.

Now, was the food stellar? Meh. Some things were a hit and some were a miss. But most importantly, it was FREE.

I had a Club Access Award that I applied to our entire stay so all four of us were able to access the club anytime and as much as we wanted. I earned the Club Access Award from staying 20 nights at Hyatt last year. These awards can also be gifted from one Hyatt member to another.

If you don’t have a Club Access Award, you can also opt to book a room with points that has access included.

At check-in we were give wrist bands that were also our room keys. Since we had access to the Grand Club for our stay, the wrist bands were also our keys to access the club.

Pools and activites

Let me just start by saying….this property was ✨beautiful.✨ Everything was so thoughtfully laid out, well designed, and truly felt like a tropical oasis. 🏝️👌🏼

You’ll find multiple pools on the property too, so you can try out something new each day! The adults only pool (really like two pools though!) was tucked back behind the Captain’s Bar and was for ages 14 and up. There was also a huge main pool area that connected to the lazy river and the water slide. And YES. They had a lazy river and a water slide!

There were 3 hot tubs on the property as well, the largest one being in the middle of the main pool (pictured below). We didn’t notice any age limit on the hot tubs.

Our favorite area to lay out was the lagoon pool near the front of the resort (pictured below). There was a sandy beach area with lounge chairs and a beautiful pool that extended pretty far along the property. Tubes could be rented at the Recreation desk for $6 a day and they had to be returned by 5pm.

Main pool with hot tub in the center

Lagoon pool at the edge of the property near the ocean.

And if you’re worried you’re going to be bored…don’t be! There was so much to do and we felt like we always had something new to do each day.

🎲 Each afternoon you can find games on the lawn by the lagoon pool, like Jenga or bags.

🐟 Twice a day they put out food for guests to feed the koi fish outside the Tidepools restaurant.

📆 They have a daily calendar of events (some complimentary, some for a fee) so you can sign up for any of the activities during the day.

🏋🏼 There is a fitness center at the resort that is open 24 hours.

🧖🏻‍♀️ The Anara Spa is also available for paid spa treatments.

And so much more!

Koi pond outside Tidepools restaurant.

Koi fish food is outside Tidepools every day at 9 am and 12 pm.

Lawn games were out every afternoon by the lagoon pool.

Excursions

🚙 We decided that one day of our trip would be “adventure day!” This was a big part of the reason we knew we wanted to have a rental car because we wanted to be able to explore other parts of the island. We started that day with a quick breakfast at the Grand Club, and then set out around 9am!

Our stops:

💦 Wailua Falls: this was an easy 30 minute drive from the resort and we decided to make this our first stop as we journeyed up to the North side of the island. There was a parking lot right near the look out point for the waterfall so you could easily park, walk over and have a great view of the falls!

Wailua Falls.

🎣 Opaekaa Falls and Wailua River overlook: our next stop was about another 20 minutes North and the overlook was right along the same road as the falls! There were convenient parking spots next to each stop so you could walk to each of the view points in a few minutes.

Wailua River overlook.

Opaekaa Falls.

⛰️ Hanalei Bay: once we finally reached the North side of the island, we made it to the town of Hanalei. And it is so CUTE. The first stop in town was for Jojo Shave ice (which did not disappoint 🤤), we walked around and did some souvenir shopping, and then I had to stop and get the famous pineapple grilled cheese from Pink’s Creamery. I know…this sounds weird…but it was surprisingly good! I had my doubts too, but it was the perfect easy lunch before we headed to the Hanalei Beach!

Pineapple grilled cheese from Pink’s Creamery.

Hanalei Beach.

Jojo Shave Ice.

⛴️ Smith’s Family Wailua River Cruise: after a couple of hours at the beach, we drove back South to the river cruise. You’ll want to book tickets ahead of time because this does book up! The Smith Family also has a luau (which I’ve heard is the best on the island) but we were glad we ended up just sticking with the river cruise. We were exhausted after a long day of adventuring!

The river cruise was about an hour and a half round trip and we loved this experience. It was a great price point ($35 for adults / $17.50 for kids), it was the perfect length of time (we weren’t looking for a half day or full day boat excursion, so this was just right), and we got to have a relaxing boat ride at the end of a busy day. Half way through the boat ride you get to stop and get off to explore the Fern Grotto, which was really amazing to see. I highly recommend this boat ride!

🌭Puka Dog: we had heard about Puka Dog from so many people, so we knew we had to try it! We drove back toward the hotel (Puka Dog is about 5 minutes from the GHK) and ended our night with hot dogs by the water. The hot dogs totally lived up to the hype. So. Good. 👏🏻

Follower recommendations

I had so many fantastic recommendations from followers, and while I couldn’t possibly squeeze them all into our 4 day trip, I wanted to share them all here so you can find some great food spots too! A ⭐️ means we visited that restaurant!

Puka Dog ⭐️

Da Crack

Kenji Burger

Beach House

Wishing Well Shave Ice

Duke’s - for dinner

Tiki Tzatziki

Wailua Shave Ice

Anake’s Juice Bar

Little Fish Coffee

Pink’s Creamery ⭐️

Jojos Shave Ice ⭐️

Kukuiula market

Holey grail donuts

Koloa fish market

Final thoughts

Did I mention that this was our daughter’s 16th birthday celebration? It was an absolute dream come true to be able to take her on such a special trip to celebrate a milestone birthday like this. 🥹

This resort is a perfect destination for families, couples, a girls trip, or anything in between. It was such a great value for our Hyatt points and we felt like 4 nights was just enough time to truly get to experience this resort and all it had to offer.

I would happily go back!








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EDITORIAL DISCLOSURE: Opinions  expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

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