Spring Break 2021: Day 8

On Saturday morning, we landed in Phoenix for a pretty uneventful five-hour layover. During that layover, our flight time changed a few times and our seats changed multiple times as well. With absolute no communication or reasoning. When we went to the customer service desk, they couldn't answer any of our questions or explain what was happening. We ended up being seated ten rows apart and I was not happy about it. This leads me into my thoughts about American Airlines.

Way back when I first moved to the U.S., I was fresh out of university, with no credit history here and a job that paid $7.02 per hour. In the interest of building a credit history in a new country, I applied for a credit card and was approved. It was affiliated with American Airlines and C and I used it for everything (of course always paying it in full every month) for about 20 years. Over that time, we earned over 860,000 AA miles and we've taken a lot of flights with those miles! However, over the years, we have grown less and less enchanted with American Airlines. The flight routes, the customer service, the planes themselves...just awful. We decided to stop using that credit card a few years ago and use up the miles so we could be done with American Airlines. Having traveled on so many different airlines over the years, it's clear that AA simply cannot compete as far as we're concerned.

As I've written countless times, C is an incredible travel planner. Flights. hotels, tours, car rentals, activities...you name it, and he will find the best way to do it. Long ago, he figured out that the most efficient way to utilize the miles, which were flights to California, so that was how we used the majority of them (although we did also fly to Hawaii, but those are generally about three times as costly in terms of miles). We were getting down to the final chunk of miles toward the end of 2019, and we booked three trips to California for 2020 to use them up, but we all know what happened in 2020. We ended up canceling those three trips and having the miles refunded to us, so then we had to figure out what to do with them. We decided to use them to go to Hawaii for spring break, which used up almost all them (I wasn't kidding when I said Hawaii was about three times as costly as California). The small chunk of miles that were left over got donated this morning, so our balance is finally 0 miles! Yay!

Goodbye, American Airlines!

The good thing about the flight home from Phoenix is that despite sitting so far from C on the plane, the lady in the seat next to me had a little dog as her carry-on! So she, the man in the aisle seat, and I chatted about dogs before the plane took off and at the end of the flight while we were waiting to deplane, she let him poke his head out of the bag. Adorable!

After landing at DCA (don't get me started on what a nightmare that airport is!), we drove to my mom's and picked up Ginny. My mom is so amazing and I don't know what we'd do without her. She takes such incredible care of Ginny whenever we go away and this time was no exception. As Ginny gets older, taking care of her does require more and more effort, especially with her medication, but my mom never bats an eye when we ask her to watch Ginny for us. She is always willing and we are always so, so grateful to her!

That wraps up our spring break trip! What a great week!

landing in Phoenix

so excited to
get home to Ginny!

so cute and perfectly behaved
during the flight!

reunited...
I think she missed me

Happy Tails to you!

Spring Break 2021: Day 7

We had a lazy morning and slept in because we knew it would be a long day before our flight at 11:30 pm! After checking out and dropping our bags off at bell services, we took a lyft back to a restaurant where we'd gotten take-out earlier in the week. They offer a Korean tofu burger and I can't even describe how good it is! After lunch, we stopped at a little shop for a lychee smoothie and then took another lyft back to Aulani to spend the rest of the day relaxing. We ate shave ice, we took some character photos, we had dinner, we watched the sunset, and we got a final Dole Whip. Overall, such a lovely day!

Aulani is an absolutely beautiful resort and I'm so glad we visited and checked another item off our Disney bucket list! As a wrote a few days ago, it's the third stand-alone DVC resort and there is no comparison between Aulani and the other two. I liked Vero Beach and would consider going there again, but Hilton Head was absolutely a one-and-done place for me. If there weren't so many places in the world I want to see, Aulani would be a place I'd visit again and again and again.

Of course the worst part of any hotel stay are some of the other guests, and despite Aulani being on the fancy side, it's still a DVC resort. Our neighbors were pretty awful - yelling and arguing at 6:30 in the morning - and we witnessed many families letting their kids run wild in the hallways, shouting and screaming. I have no problem with excited, loud kids at the pools or beach, during activities, or when meeting characters; not only do I expect it, but I'm usually pretty entertained by kids' antics. But honestly, behave inside the hotel. This is not your house and you are not the only people here, so try having some consideration for your fellow guests. I don't blame the kids for this, but I most certainly blame their parents for not teaching their children how to behave in shared public spaces.

While Aulani is more focused on the Hawaiian theming and less on the Disney theming, one little detail I loved was the elevator music, which was a collection of Hawaiian versions of Disney songs. I loved it so much that I searched to find the name of the album, which is Mele from Aunty's Beach House: Aulani, A Disney Resort and Spa and it's available on Apple Music. The songs are The Bare Necessities, Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride, Under the Sea, Welcome, You've Got a Friend in Me, Be Our Guest, Colors of the Wind, We Belong Together, That's How You Know, It's a Small World, I Just Can't Wait to Be King, and When You Wish Upon a Star. I highly recommend it! The arrangements are beautiful and I love listening to the songs in Hawaiian!

When it was time to go to the airport, we collected our bags and checked on the status of the lyft we had scheduled. Well, guess what! No cars were available! It felt like the Seinfeld episode where he made a rental car reservation only to arrive at the counter and be told there were no cars available. What is the point of making a lyft reservation when it apparently does nothing to secure a ride?!?

Over the course of our travels, I have been extremely unimpressed with lyft. In cities, at WDW, near home...it has been incredibly unreliable in my experience compared with uber. We've almost always used uber, but recently upgraded our credit card to one with additional travel perks, and the card is affiliated with lyft, which is why we've used lyft this week. Again, not impressed whatsoever. Thankfully, we were able to get an uber very quickly and got to the airport in plenty of time. It's a red-eye flight, so I'm hoping to sleep through most of it!

spotted at the Honolulu airport

Happy Tails to you!

Spring Break 2021: Day 6

We ate breakfast at a little place across the street from the resort - we'd gotten take-out from there a couple of days ago and it was so good that we decided to go back! We realized that this was only the fourth time in almost 13 months that we've eaten a meal inside a restaurant (two of those times were at WDW restaurants last July and the third was at Shenandoah NP)!

After breakfast, we spent the morning in the lazy river and at the pool prior to the intense mid-day sun, and then spent the afternoon enjoying the resort and completing an Easter Egg scavenger hunt, which I naively thought would be a bit of a joke, but actually turned out to be challenging! We ended up wandering all over the place trying to find the eggs, and while we were doing so, we happened upon Mickey and Minnie who had just appeared for a character meet! Perfect timing! At one point, we'd found nine of the ten eggs, but were stuck on the last one, so I eventually had to ask a cast member for a clue; I'm glad I did, because we wouldn't have found otherwise, as it was tucked up high on a balcony!

eggs to find!

this is the one we wouldn't have found
without a hint from the cast member!

Once the sun wasn't quite so intense in the later afternoon, we hung out at the beach for a while, which is what I'm going to miss most about this place! I love just sitting and listening to the waves and staring off at the horizon because life is so calm and peaceful in those moments and I feel like I don't have a care in the world!

Every night this week, we've ordered dinner from local places through Door Dash and we've eaten in our room, and the Mexican food we had tonight was absolutely delicious! Once it was dark, we went for a long walk along the beach and studied the night sky, and then took pics around the resort. It was such a beautiful night!

Tomorrow is the dreaded check out day, so we also spent some time packing so that we don't have to get up particularly early in the morning. I'm pretty pleased with the restraint I showed in terms of souvenirs because for years, I used to bring home far too many things from trips and I'm so much better about that now! We've been decluttering for a year or so at home and that has really helped me have the mindset that even if I think something is super cute, I don't want to have to find a space for it! My weakness is coffee mugs, which I buy all the time, and this trip was no exception, but because the room had a coffee maker in it, I bought the mugs on the first day and we've used them all week!

Happy Tails to you!