My boy and I just came back from Oahu. We were there for 5 days and spent most of it at a friend's house on Ewa Beach, but we did stay at the Ohana Maile Sky court in Waikiki the first night.
We arrived at 2:15 by shuttle and they wouldn't let us check in till 3, so we stored our bags with them and went to walk around Waikiki. I liked the look of the building - they had a nice pond and seemed like a quality hotel from the lobby.
If you look at a map of Waikiki it seems this hotel is quite far from all the action at Waikiki, but it's really not too bad. I wouldn't want to walk to the beach with all my stuff and walk back all sandy, but just walking down for dinner or shopping is not bad. I carried a 35 pound two-year-old round trip to the International Marketplace and back with little problem.
We did walk down there twice, and one time I just didn't want to walk back so I took a taxi. It was less than $7.00.
Ok, on to the hotel - I will *never* stay there again. I generally like Ohana hotels but this one I did not. We were on the 21st floor - I think there are like 40 floors - and our room was the smallest hotel room I have ever seen. It was even smaller than the Honolulu airport hotel. Because it was so small there is no entranceway or hallway between the actual room and the door opening, so you can hear what goes on in the hallway from the bed. The slamming of others' doors kept me jumping up out of bed until midnight, when it finally stopped.
Then, there was the air conditioner. The room had a small window airconditioner which worked fine, but was blown about by the high winds in it's window socket and made very loud frequent clicking and popping sounds. Turning it off didn't help at all. I don't know if that was only this particluar room or what, but my two-year-old, who can sleep through anything, was up and down until almost two in the morning because of this. I even tried to get him to sleep in the bathroom but he could stillhear it. I called the desk around one in the morning and asked for a room change with they were glad to give me, but they said I would have to pack up all my stuff and completely change rooms, when all I was looking for was somewhere else to sleep. I don't know if this is unreasonable or not, but it sure seemed unreasonable at that hour, so I just hung up. The wind finally died down around two and we were able to sleep for a few hours.
One more thing that bothered me was the metal lock that you flip over the bolt on the door didn't work, and there was a small metal patch covering some scratches on the other side like the lock had been forced. This scared me a bit so I jammed the ironing board under the door lock to keep the door closed in any event.
Then, in the morning I tried to check out over the phone. I was put on hold for several minutes, so I hung up and went downstairs. The line was small, but there were at least 7 people at the desk
all talking on the phone. Not one customer actually in the hotel was being helped. Well, I wasn't waiting around for that so I just threw my keys on the desk and left. We'll see if there are any adverse charges on my bill because of it.
Anyway, room was clean but very small and very noisy. Pool was on the fifth floor - very windy and very cold and small like a postage stamp, oh, and full of drinking teenagers. sigh.
I chose this Ohana because it was very inexpensive, but I will not make that mistake again.
