Travel Party of 5 | Points & Miles for Family Travel

Grand Hyatt Kauai - Booked on Points as a Family of 5! (Part 1 of 2)

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Tune in to learn:

  • How we used points and miles to book flights and a stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai.
  • What to expect from the property, including its amenities, dining options, and more.
  • Tips on how to score club access and save money on meals during your stay.
  • Current offers on points and miles cards that can help you book your next family trip.


In this episode of Travel Party of Five, we’re diving into the first part of our family’s recent trip to Kauai, including a detailed review of our stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. As always, we’re focused on how we used points and miles to make this dream vacation happen—without breaking the bank. We’ll walk you through the entire experience, from flights to food to activities, while sharing tips on how to maximize your points and miles to stay at luxury properties like the Grand Hyatt Kauai.

We started the trip by using our points and miles to book flights with Southwest, taking full advantage of our Companion Pass to fly our family of five for the price of three tickets. For our stay, we used Hyatt points to book the Grand Hyatt Kauai, a Category 7 property, saving us over $8,000 in cash costs. We’ll explain how we secured this luxury stay with just 30,000 points per night and offer tips on making the most of the club access at the hotel, which helped us save on meals during the trip.

Our review of the Grand Hyatt Kauai covers everything from the beautiful ocean views and spacious property to the pool areas, which include a lazy river, water slide, and even a lagoon. You’ll hear about how the property’s location near Poipu Beach provided access to wildlife like Hawaiian monk seals and sea turtles. Plus, we’ll share our experiences with on-property dining options, including our memorable meal at Tidepools, and what to expect from the club lounge.

We’ll also touch on a few mishaps, including a stomach bug that hit one of our kids, which led to some unexpected challenges. Despite this, the Grand Hyatt Kauai provided plenty of space and amenities to make our stay comfortable, even during a family emergency.

So if you’re looking for practical tips on how to use points and miles to book family vacations at luxury properties like the Grand Hyatt Kauai, or you just want to hear about what it’s really like to travel with kids, this episode is for you. Stay tuned for part two, where we’ll cover all the fun activities we did in Kauai, and share more about how points and miles made this dream vacation possible.

Whether you're a seasoned points and miles pro or just getting started, we hope this episode helps you learn new ways to travel more for less!



Raya:

Today's episode is part one of two, all about our family's trip to Kauai, including our review of the Grand Hyatt, kauai and an unfortunate mishap or plot twist that sometimes happens when you travel with kids. So tune in. Hi, I'm Raya and I'm Dwayne, and we are your hosts of the Travel Party of Five podcast, where we share how we travel as a family of five around the world.

Duane:

We will also share how we use points and miles to travel as affordably as possible and sometimes even completely free.

Raya:

So if you're wanting to travel more with your family but you're not sure how, we'd love for you to listen in.

Duane:

So welcome to our podcast, where we hope you learn a thing or two to get you closer to your next trip.

Raya:

Hey guys, welcome back to Travel Party of Five podcast.

Duane:

Welcome back, thanks for joining us.

Raya:

We are fresh off of our trip to Kauai and we're going to give you all the info and all the details, but first I wanted to start doing a new segment, maybe not every week, but when it's necessary, and that segment is going to be a like a card talk, basically. So if there's any good cards that have like updated or elevated offers, then I think it makes sense to share those with you here, and there are actually two really good ones that I want to talk about today. So we're going to do that. Then we're going to jump into the first part of our Kauai. Yeah, okay.

Raya:

So the first card is an elevated offer just announced in the last day or two on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, and so Chase, as a reminder, has the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Those are their two personal cards and you can only hold one of the two at a time, and the Reserve has a higher annual fee. That's not the one that has the elevated offer. So the Chase Sapphire preferred card, if you sign up, currently the offer is 60,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first three months, plus a one-time $300 credit that can be used to book travel through the Chase travel portal. So 60,000 points plus an additional $300 credit.

Duane:

Which expires.

Raya:

Yeah, that credit expires within 12 months of you earning it, so you do want to have a plan for it. But I mean, a few days ago the offer was just the 60,000 points. So now, if you sign up, you're getting an additional $300 credit. I like to use those travel credits for things like car rentals, um, or maybe like a one off flight where, just like, one of us is going somewhere. So really good offer, um.

Raya:

And as a reminder, you can earn the bonus on the Chase Sapphire cards once every 48 months. So if you have this card and you've had it for longer than four years, you can either cancel it or downgrade it. I would downgrade it probably to a Chase Freedom and then I would wait maybe 20, 30 days and then I would apply for this updated offer. So that's the first one. The second one I am very excited about because I was going to apply for this card anyways in the next month, and that is the World of Hyatt personal card has a new offer.

Raya:

So the World of Hyatt card again, this is the personal card. I had planned to apply for this anyways, because one of the things you get when you open that card is five qualifying nights towards globalist status, and that is, those five nights are needed in my strategy for us to get to globalist, and so I've just been waiting till we were closer to the end of the year and I think the offer was originally like 30,000 points, you know, after a certain number of spend, and then another 30,000 when you spent like, oh, some insane amount, like $15,000. Not doing that Wasn't, wasn't excited about that.

Duane:

We already have one world of pirate card, right, that's a business card.

Raya:

Yeah, we have the business card, and so the business card doesn't give you any qualifying nights. You just earn five qualifying nights for every $10,000 you spend on the card. But the current World of Hyatt personal card offer you now are going to earn five category one through four free night certificates after you spend $4,000 in the first three months. So that is, in my opinion, a way better offer than whatever it was before.

Duane:

Yeah, I mean because there's some nice category four hotels.

Raya:

Yeah, like if you're getting a category four at an on peak, that's 18,000 points a night and so you know if you're doing five of those, that's 90,000, yeah, 90,000 points. So way more value if you can maximize it. Now a couple of caveats. So those five free nights will expire in 12 months. So you do want to make sure you have a plan to use them, similar to, like a Marriott you know 50k five night free certificates on their cards. You want to have a plan for how you're going to use those nights before you open the card.

Raya:

I do have a plan because we already have a plan for how you're going to use those nights before you open the card. I do have a plan because we already have a couple of category fours booked for next year and so my plan is to get the points back and use the free nights to book those nights once we earn them. So I'm super excited about that because that'll put a lot of points back in our pocket and it was a card I was going to apply for anyways. So if you've been on the fence about Hyatt and want to give it a shot, I would Google Category 1 through 4 Hyatts. You can also look on their website and sort by category and I would see if there's any near you or in destinations that you're planning to visit that might work for you and your family.

Duane:

Yeah, that was very helpful. Okay, insightful.

Raya:

Well, so yeah, um, I can put links to these cards in the show notes. Um, we do not have affiliate links for these cards, which is why we're able to say the name Chase. There's a lot of other Points and Miles content creators that do have affiliate links, and Chase has very strict rules around what you can and cannot say, and they can't even refer to the bank by name. We do not have those links, so I will find some links, I will put them in the show notes. Probably, for the Chase Sapphire card, it would be a referral link, which means we would earn a few points if you apply using our link. Obviously, if you do that, we appreciate it, I guess. While we're on that note, our podcast hit 5,000 downloads, which is very exciting.

Duane:

Very exciting. Thank you, guys.

Raya:

And I would just like to again ask, if you enjoy the podcast, to leave us a rating or a review wherever you listen, because that helps more people find the podcast and the more reviews that your podcast has, the more likely you will show up in a search when someone is searching for you know the type of content that we yeah, so if you enjoy the podcast and you enjoy us, we would greatly appreciate a review.

Raya:

Maybe we're getting into the holiday season. Maybe we'll do another giveaway, um, like we did a month or so ago, but I think let's dive in to our trip to Kauai. Do you want to talk about the microphone? Really quick?

Duane:

Yeah, I was going to say we are. Well we. If you listen to prior episodes, what was it? A week or two ago, we were having some mic issues. We got a new one, a pretty fancy one, but we don't know how to work it yet. So bear with us, we will. I feel like we're always having technical difficulties so we appreciate you sticking with us we can't tell. We're not professionals at this yet.

Raya:

So someone did reach out to me a couple times about editing the podcast and I thought that would be fantastic, but the editing isn't what we have the problem with. No, if someone has a podcast studio, hit me up, let me know in the Phoenix area that I might be interested in. Anyways, okay, let's talk about our trip to Kauai. So we flew there and back on Southwest as per usual. We have two companion passes and in fact, in a couple of weeks we're going to do an episode about the companion pass, because companion pass season is beginning in the next few weeks, and so if you've been on the fence about getting one, hang tight. You don't want to apply for any cards yet, it's still a little bit too early, but in two weeks we will have an episode for you all about how you can earn it, how you can maximize it so you have it for the most amount of time, and how we have been able to use it to take our family of five on what I think is a lot of trips in the last two years.

Duane:

We've definitely taken advantage of the Southwest companion. Yeah For sure.

Raya:

So we used that to fly to Kauai. So we paid for three tickets and five of us flew. I tried to look up how much we paid for the tickets and it was roughly around 40,000 points a person, so 120,000 points plus you.

Raya:

you know, because then our companions flew and we just paid the taxes on the other two tickets which, which is like nine bucks, right the taxes yeah, the taxes are five dollars and sixty cents per leg, and so it was eleven dollars and twenty cents per person in taxes because we flew from Phoenix to Oakland and then Oakland to Kauai and same on the way back. So $11.20 per person which is up Each way. Yeah, we flew to Oakland. We went in the Oakland. Oakland has a priority pass lounge now which they didn't used to. It's called the escape lounge.

Duane:

It's probably the worst lounge we've ever been to yeah, it's called the escape lounge because as soon as you get in, you want to escape it. It's just food was blah. We were there on the trip back from kawaii and they had ran out of beer and it was like it was like 2 pm. We were standing in line. The guy was. Guy was like are you kidding me? You're out of beer. I think it was like 5 pm. Oh sorry.

Raya:

But yeah, Well, they also. They had no water.

Duane:

Yeah, the water was empty the whole time we were there. It's just one of the worst lounges we've been to.

Raya:

It's no Capital One Lounge, that's for sure. But is it a place where you can eat for free? Yes, and will your kids enjoy it? Our kids thought it was fine.

Duane:

I mean they had cereal and you know all the dessert chips and essentials.

Raya:

Yeah, so yeah, it's fine. But I think like, don't get your hopes up, but let's talk about Kauai. So we flew in on a Friday. We got there Friday night. We had a rental car through Hertz.

Duane:

Which was super easy to deal with.

Raya:

Yes, so with my Amex business platinum card I have Hertz Presidential Circle, I think it's called Whatever the highest status is with Hertz. And so they emailed me like here's your vehicle and it's in like spot 604 or something and the keys were in it and we just had to basically get in the car. The only thing we had to do was grab a car seat from inside and install that in in the van that we rented, and that was it. We were on our way.

Duane:

Yeah, yeah, we had a brand, a brand new van for us. I mean still had plastic on the wheels yeah, there was like 10 miles on it.

Raya:

I think it was brand new if that, and so that was super easy. We also ended up only paying like 430 dollars total for a week's rental, and that included the car seat rental, which was maybe 90 bucks or 50 bucks or I don't remember, but yeah and we had to fill up the tank once, which in Hawaii was pretty expensive.

Duane:

How much did it cost? It was like 92 bucks to fill it up. Crazy, what like five, something a gallon it was $5.59 or something.

Raya:

so we got into our rental car, we drove to the hotel. It's about a I don't know half an hour from the airport to the hotel.

Duane:

Beautiful drive, though I mean mountains.

Raya:

Yeah, Kauai is just, it's very underdeveloped. It's the most underdeveloped island, I would say. And so a lot of times you're just driving through fields. Let's talk about the hotel.

Duane:

Grand Hyatt, Kauai Beautiful beautiful property.

Raya:

As expected, you walk in the lobby and you just it's set up so that you can see the ocean, like immediately, and it's stunning. It's so beautiful, the property is huge, huge. It's so beautiful, the property is huge, huge, like we were fortunate that our room was pretty close to everything, but there are rooms that are not, and so I would pay attention to that. When they're assigning you your room number at check-in, they're going to show you a map and I would take a look at where the pool is and all the things you want to do in comparison to your room.

Duane:

Yeah, and if you have an option or you're willing to pay a little bit more, I would definitely ask for an ocean view room?

Raya:

Yes, we did not have an ocean view room. No, and I don't know if it just wasn't an option when I was booking, because I even went on the app to look and there was like it was the two queen room was. There was no ocean view option.

Duane:

I'm sure they leave those open for paying customers.

Raya:

I mean, I don't know, the property is so big, I'm pretty.

Duane:

I feel like you could probably. I just feel like they can charge a lot more for an ocean view Because, I mean, the views were stunning. And don't get me wrong, we didn't have an ocean view, but we had a view of mountains.

Raya:

It was still very nice. Yeah, when I tell you what happened on our second day there, I was actually kind of glad that I didn't have an ocean view, because I feel like I would have been more sad looking out at it than being stuck in the room. So we got there around six. I had made a dinner reservation at 745 at Tide Pools, which is like the fancier restaurant in the hotel, and we got there actually a little early and they gave us the most incredible table. It was like a table that you would see in a movie, where you like walk out on this like walkway, and there's like a little gazebo and your table is the only table in the middle of it.

Duane:

Yeah, just one single table.

Raya:

And you're surrounded by water and full of koi fish and it was beautiful. I was like, oh my God, this is our table.

Duane:

This is great. Even the host was like oh, you guys have a great table.

Raya:

We really enjoyed it, and they brought us out free dessert too, which I don't totally know why, but it was much appreciated. We really, really enjoyed that. I would say food was like it was okay. It wasn't the best meal I've ever had, but it wasn't awful either.

Duane:

The appetizer we got was the best.

Raya:

Well, you, yeah, duane, and the boys really liked it the calbee ribs, yeah. And so then we just went to bed and we woke up and our plan was to spend the entire first day just hanging by the pool, and that's what we did. The pool at this property is huge.

Duane:

Huge, it's almost too big. They have an adult pool. They have a water slide, 150 foot water slide. They have a lazy river. Not only that, they have a beach like pool which is on sand. It's like a separate, it's like a second pool basically.

Raya:

Yeah, it's a lagoon. A lagoon, yes, and the reason that they built that is because the beach that's directly in front of the hotel is really not swimmable. So they have a red flag up, I think, at all times, because the waves are really rough and like, maybe if you're an experienced swimmer and you're an adult, then go ahead, have at it. We saw some adults in there, a lot of boogie boarders. No chance would I let my kids swim in there, and no one else was either. It was just, yeah, too rough, waves, too big, yeah, but because that's why they built the lagoon, and the lagoon was great, the little sandy area where you can play, you can also walk on the beach and it's beautiful.

Duane:

And there were seals that we saw hawaiian monk seals which are like severely endangered yeah, one lady told us, there's only 700 yeah.

Raya:

So they have volunteers that when the seals come up and like lay on the shore, there is volunteers that come and basically put up signs and block off an area around the seal or seals and the sign basically says because the seals are sleeping and they're not moving and you could easily think like is this seal alive? So yes, they are alive. And the signs basically say like the seal is alive and well, it is resting, like please do not touch it. And the lady also told us that they bite and she said if you go to the emergency room with a bite, they like turn you in because you're not supposed to get, you're supposed to be like 50 feet away and obviously if you're getting bit, you're not following the law.

Duane:

So I did not hear her say that, yeah, and I was like oh wow, nice beach, just water's too rough.

Raya:

Yeah, you can totally like have a nice morning walk on the beach. That it would be beautiful. Yeah, the hotel is just a couple minutes from Poipu beach, so I guess, while we're on the subject of wildlife, so you can also go to Poi Poo Beach and see the sea turtles, and we'll talk more about that when we talk about the activities that we did, and that is next week in part two.

Duane:

Yes, the Grand Hyatt also has bikes. You can rent and you can just ride a bike to Poi Poo Beach, which is not very far.

Raya:

They were all adult bikes, though, right?

Duane:

Yes the kids and I were going to rent bikes, but they didn't have any kids' bikes.

Raya:

We spent our first day at the pool. We were probably outside for like eight, nine hours. Kids were having a great time. We had lunch at the pool, we were really enjoying it. And then I had made reservations for us to go to dinner at the Beach House and that is in Poipu, not far from the hotel, and it's a fancier restaurant and they had like it's just, they have a beautiful sunset view and I had made the reservation for like right at sunset or a little after. So we go there and we order our food and our wine and we're just waiting, and then my daughter says I don't feel very good, I think I'm gonna be sick, and I'm like, oh. So I get up and we are walking to the bathroom and I just want to set the scene that it is Saturday night at a busy restaurant at 7 pm, and the bathroom happens to be right next to the host stand.

Duane:

And the waiting area.

Raya:

Yes, and the waiting area for people waiting for tables and the front door. So it's a busy area. So we are walking to the bathroom and we are maybe seven steps from the bathroom door when our daughter gets sick all over the floor and herself and me a little bit, and I am just in shock. For a second I literally stand there. No one seems to notice what has happened, until I catch the eye of a hostess and I kind of wave at her and point and I say like I'm so sorry and she's like, oh, no problem, we'll get it taken care of, take her right in the bathroom. So I do that, I take her in the bathroom.

Duane:

Meanwhile, me and the boys are at the table.

Raya:

Our oldest had been behind me on the way to the bathroom. Thank God, because I didn't have my phone or any way to tell Dwayne what had happened.

Duane:

So then my oldest comes back to the table and is like laughing and smiling and says that his sister got sick on the way to the bathroom. And I'm like what? And he's like, yeah, she got sick on the way to the bathroom. Mommy's in the bathroom with her. So then I go over towards the bathroom and I see this guy cleaning it up and I'm like I'm so sorry. And he's like, oh, no, worries, it happens all the time, or things like this happen.

Raya:

I hope it doesn't happen all the time, yeah, so her and I go and wait out. I walk out of the, out of the bathroom, and I see Dwayne standing there and I'm like we got to go. And he's like, well, yeah, that's why I'm standing here, and so I take her outside and we wait and he gets there. We have ordered food and wine and everything. And my wine I never touched it, never took a sip $20 glass.

Raya:

Yeah, it never took a sip $20 glass, yeah. And he got our food to go and they charged us for every single thing, including the wine that we didn't drink, which, if I'm honest, I'm a little salty about that. But I mean, if we had taken it to go it would have been fine, but we couldn't do that. So, anyways, we paid $300 for a meal that, quite frankly, wasn't very good because mine was cold. I mean, I understand things happen and whatever. It was just a wash at that point.

Raya:

So now it's day one of our vacation and I think that this kid has a stomach bug. And now I'm in full on panic mode Because usually when one gets a stomach bug, they all get a stomach bug. So we go back and, you know, she goes to bed and she's fine, she seems fine. No more, no more incidents. She wakes up in the morning and she definitely is sick, but she's not throwing up, she just is lethargic and, like says her stomach hurts. So her and I spend most of Sunday in the hotel room.

Raya:

Dwayne and the boys went out and about. Now here's the other thing. We I had booked family photos for Sunday night and at this point we are well past the cancellation window and there were no other options to reschedule for the entire time we were there. So it was either cancel and lose out on $400 or attempt to go and cross our fingers, and so she seemed to be feeling a little better in the afternoon. She ate some of my room service lunch, and so we decided to chance it drove there the photo.

Raya:

So we stayed in Poipu, which is on the south side of the island, and our photos were in Hanalei Bay, which is on the north side. So it was about an hour and 20 minutes drive, one way to get there. I steal barf bags from the plane because we have a kid who gets motion sickness, and so I had taken a few, thinking that I might need them in the car. Not thinking I would need them because someone was going to get sick, like you know, from a stomach bug, but I had them nonetheless, and so we loaded the kids up, everyone got dressed, we went and we actually took the photos and it went fine. It was seamless, the photographer was great yeah, I thought it went great we've already got the photos back.

Raya:

They're incredible, and so we booked the photos through flytographer f-l-y.

Duane:

Talk to her yeah, her photographer was if you go to kawaii.

Raya:

We used michikaela that was her name. There's only a few options like maybe five or six photographers you can choose from. I purposely was looking in the reviews for uh mentions of being good with kids and so there was two that I was kind of deciding between and it came just down to availability and, and she was great. She was originally from Czech Republic, I think, has lived on Kauai for a few years and she was great with the kids. The photos turned out wonderful.

Raya:

There are different sessions you can book and I'll put a link. We have a flightographer referral link that I will put in the show notes if you want to book it for your next trip. This is not sponsored or anything. We paid full price for this, but there are different package options you can choose. I chose the cheapest one, which was a one hour session, and it was $395 plus a $60 travel fee that you have to bring in cash and I. In other locations I haven't seen the travel fee, but every single Kauai photographer on there had the same travel fee. So I don't know if they all got together and we're like this is what we're going to charge or if there's another reason, but I'm assuming they're coming from all parts of the island and they just want to make sure that their expenses are covered. So you know, totally get that. And we gave her that in cash. We also tipped her on top of that. I don't think that that was necessary. Maybe she even kind of said like oh no, you don't have to do that.

Duane:

Yeah, she was kind of surprised that I handed her extra money.

Raya:

But here's what I'll say to you. She gave us extra photos, yeah. So the package the one hour package, I believe came with 30 photos and she sent us more than 40. So I guess, if you want to throw in a little tip, I think that probably goes a long way, and I was. I'm super happy with our photos. There are a few that I'm going to frame and hang up, and that was the purpose. So it was a really good experience. She also told us a recommendation to go for dinner, and so we did that. Um and again, our daughter was fine. So when we woke up Monday and she was still sick, I was really concerned at this point because it was not not unlike or I mean it was unlike any stomach bug I've ever seen. I called my sister and she had to talk me off a ledge because I was about to take her to the urgent care for appendicitis.

Duane:

Christopher Aurea always puts herself on an edge when something happens to the kids.

Raya:

Go ahead, say more.

Duane:

I mean, I was just going to say, I just she overthinks things and I think she puts things in her head and then the wheels are just turning the whole time and I'm just sitting here, calm and collected.

Raya:

Well, here's the thing. Okay, If I don't worry, no one's going to worry, because Dwayne doesn't worry about anything ever in his life.

Duane:

So someone's got to do it.

Raya:

I just worry when it, when it's time Like it felt like time to me my sister fortunately so my sister is not a nurse or a doctor, but she is an athletic trainer who is trained to diagnose injuries and so she was like this is how you would test for appendicitis. And I did it and she didn't have it, she didn't react to the test. So I thought, okay, I'll give it another day. And we gave her some Pepto and then she was fine.

Duane:

She was perfectly fine.

Raya:

By Tuesday. She was fine. So then we were, you know, Tuesday on. We were able to go and do all the activities that we had planned, which we'll we'll talk about in next week's episode uh, because we're already a little bit over time. But gosh, when your kid gets sick on vacation, it is incredibly stressful, super frustrating for a lot of reasons, and maybe we'll do a whole episode on it.

Duane:

And this is not the first time it's happened. If you listen to the previous, some of our previous episodes, yeah, costa rica costa rica, part one, we had to go to the hospital.

Raya:

So if you're new, I would recommend going back and listening to that one, because that was just earlier this year and I said to duane can we just take one vacation where there is no medical emergency, like that is what I'm looking for here, goodness, okay. Do we have anything else to cover with regards to the hotel? Oh yes, we do. We have to talk about the club. Oh yeah, okay.

Raya:

So with the Grand Hyatt Kauai, when you book on points or if you have globalist status, you can. If you're a globalist, you automatically get access to the club and this is where you'll have your like free breakfast and then, you know, midday snacks and light bites in the evening. If you don't have globalist status, you can also use extra points to book what's called a club access room, and so the club access room basically just gives you access to this club, and so instead of paying like 30,000 points a night, you would pay maybe 39,000 points a night. It varies, I think, depending on how many people are in your party. So we booked the regular points rate, so we paid 30,000 points a night at the time of booking for our stay 30,000 points a night at the time of booking for our stay, and then I had a club access award and I applied that award.

Raya:

You can get those awards, like if you have a friend that has them, they can gift them to you. Or if you have stayed a certain number of nights with Hyatt, like when you reach certain tiers. That's one of the things you can choose as club access awards. I do want to point out that to apply the club access award, the club has to have availability, so they do limit the amount of people that can enter. So if you have one that you want to apply, I would do it as soon as you can. Don't wait, because the clubs do fill up.

Duane:

So what does the club entail? So, the.

Raya:

So the club has it's breakfast in the morning and it's more continental breakfast. So yeah, duane and our oldest were not a big fan of this club.

Duane:

I'll just be brutally honest, it's because I am a vacation foodie snob. So like when Maria wants to like make lunch on vacation to save a little money, I just like kills me inside. But you know, I do it because I love her so much.

Raya:

It's not even because you love me. It's because it allows us to take more vacations. I know Because you love me, it's because it allows us to take more vacations, I know. Wouldn't you rather eat a sandwich, you know, once a day and then be able?

Duane:

to take a whole other trip. I mean, yes, but vacation. I think when you're on vacation, you're on vacation and you should treat yourself.

Raya:

Dwayne wants to treat himself like every minute of every day.

Duane:

Anywho, the club consists of, you know, continental breakfast, bagels, yogurt, fruit. There were scrambled eggs.

Raya:

They were not good scrambled eggs, they were not good. They have a rotating meat every day, so Portuguese sausage, chicken sausage, pork sausage, maybe bacon one day. I didn't see bacon. But yeah, maybe and they have a menu so you can see every day of the week what you're going to get.

Duane:

They have coffee station, juice station. Again, I mean, it was okay for what it was.

Raya:

It was fine. It saved us hundreds of dollars.

Duane:

And the kids.

Raya:

You know cereal, like all the kids, what it was, it was fine, it saved us hundreds of dollars. And the kids you know cereal, like all the kids, thought it was great. They had smoked salmon I had smoked salmon and like cream cheese and capers on toast. Almost every day that we were there I thought it was yummy, it was good. Is it the breakfast of my dreams? No, but is it saving us over $100 every single time? Yes.

Duane:

The breakfast of my nightmare.

Raya:

So I think if you're not a picky eater or you have a big party, it will for sure save you money, especially if you take advantage of the snacks they have midday and then the light bites that they have at night. And again they have a menu of what they have for food each night. So one night it was like chicken yakitori skewers. One night they have chicken wings. We missed the chicken wing night because it was Friday night. Well, we missed every night, to be honest with you.

Duane:

That's true. We didn't go most nights.

Raya:

But we did go for the dessert. They have dessert from 7.30 to 8.30. And they had, like what? A creme brulee, a brownie and some other kind of pink something. I was full so I didn't have any. But again, perfect way to let your kids have a little dessert without you having to pay for it. You know, let your kids have a little dessert without you having to pay for it, you know. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the.

Raya:

We booked for four and we had five people. Our room was the two queen standard room and so there were two queen beds Plus there was a little chair and the chair folded out into a single bed, almost like a cot. Yeah, it was plenty big enough for our 10 year old to sleep on, and so he slept on that. Our daughter, we had a pack and play for her and then duane, in our middle one shared a bed and and I had a bed to myself. The beds as a side note, the beds were different sizes, like there was a queen bed and then what I'm pretty sure was a king bed, even though the room said two queens, yes, so I slept in the smaller one and him and the, our seven-year-old slept in the the big one.

Raya:

People are always asking how we fit five people in a room, and so I'm sharing that, because this is how we did it on this particular trip. Was it a little bit of a tight fit? I mean, yeah, kind of. There's always enough space. The problem is that the kids are loud and so like there was one day where I really wanted to take a nap and I couldn't because they were just bouncing off the wall. So I would say that's the downside. They were just bouncing off the wall, so I would say that's the downside. But again, we already paid 30 000 points a night, which I think is a lot, so I wasn't about to pay 60 000 for two rooms.

Duane:

No, thank you no um should we talk about the restaurants?

Raya:

oh yeah, yeah, we talked about tide pools already.

Duane:

So tide pools. There was a Seaview Terrace which was that was the buffet right. No, oh, that was the one where it had live music at night, where we got the coffee in the morning. Oh yes, they also have a breakfast joint. I don't even remember what it was called.

Raya:

It was something terrace, that's what I thought. But the breakfast buffet there was legit. It was very good, very good. We did eat there a couple of days.

Duane:

Yes, because we couldn't do the club every day. Yeah, um, there was another like bar slash restaurant, sushi restaurant called stevenson's library, I think it was called. Uh, we didn't go there either.

Raya:

Um, it looked too fancy well, duane was also disappointed to learn that they had what what did you say?

Duane:

whiskey whiskey flights, which I'm a fan of duane likes whiskey, but it was just sushi yeah, it was just sushi, so we didn't. We didn't go there. It was very fancy, though. Service at breakfast was excellent.

Raya:

Every server we had had worked there for over 30 years, which says a lot about a property yeah, everyone there had worked there for a really long time and I think that we were just there during the start of their slower season, and so I think they didn't have as much staff like around the pool as they probably do during the summer.

Duane:

So the bartenders at the pool had also been there. One guy was there for 21 years, the other guy was there for like 33 years. It was just crazy.

Raya:

I mean it's definitely a sign of a good place to work. You know, yeah, one guy told us, you know that they all, you know, when they started working together they were like in like college age, and then they all know kids. Yeah, so having a great time going out and partying. And then they all you know, got married and had kids, and now their kids are going to college and their grandparents and so they kind of have like grown up together, which I just thought was was fun, you know.

Raya:

Yeah, so again, it says a lot about the property thought was was fun, you know, yeah, so again says a lot about the property.

Raya:

Yeah, um, the other thing you can do on the property that's really good for kids is they have koi fish that you can feed twice a day and so they put out little bags of food and a cooler and you just walk up there and you take a bag and you feed it to the koi fish and our kids thought that was wonderful, yeah and I mean there were probably a hundred koi fish in this pond.

Raya:

It was aggressive? Yes, there was a lot. They also have a lot of different parrots and tropical birds in the lobby that you can go around and visit. They all have names. They have a little plaque that tells a little story about them, and so our kids really enjoyed that too.

Duane:

Oh, and another great touch they had, and so our kids really enjoyed that too. Oh, and another great touch they had. So if you go to the beach obviously to a different beach they provide towels for you to take.

Raya:

Yes, at the valet you can get towels to take to the beach from the valet stand as you're walking out.

Duane:

Yeah, no questions asked. You just ask for a towel and they're like how many?

Raya:

And boom Also self-parking at this property is free.

Duane:

Yep.

Raya:

So you can valet if you want, but the self parking lot is super close to the hotel. We never had a problem finding a spot and it was no charge.

Duane:

Well, the funny thing is, the valet parking is in the same parking lot.

Raya:

Oh is it? Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, but so definitely do self parking. Save some money. It's not a far walk at all.

Raya:

The last thing that I was going to share is so I was curious and I looked at the cash rate of the room, the exact room that we stayed at, so two queen bed standard room, the Grand Hyatt quiet, is a category seven hotel, so the cost for seven nights at this property for the exact dates that we stayed, which was Friday September 27th to Friday October 4th, was $8,421. And instead we paid 30,000 points a night and $0. That's the kind of math that I like. Yeah, because we don't have $8,000 to spend on a hotel room. We'll just stay home for that, for that cost. So I think we've covered the hotel. Um, really enjoyed the property itself. Um, oh, the other thing is they have pool floats that you can buy or rent, but my recommendation is people seem to leave them near the elevator when they leave. So we picked up a bunch of floats that people had left, and so that's what I would aim to do, is just look by the elevator doors and try to snag a float that way. That's my recommendation versus spending money.

Duane:

People leave whatever they don't want to take with them by the elevators and one day I picked up like three um white claws and took them to the pool.

Raya:

Yeah, that seemed to be the thing to do, and then we left our floaties when we when we left. So, yeah, um, next week we will be back for part two. We will share all the activities that we did, and there's a few good ones. So see you then.

Duane:

Catch you there.

Raya:

Thank you so much for listening.

Duane:

Have a good one.

Raya:

Bye.