Maui honeymoon
 

Hello. My fiance and I will be honeymooning in Maui in late July/early August and I'm wondering about where to stay. I understand that Kaanapali is a great place and thought perhaps I could do half the trip there and then half the trip in Lahaina at the Plantation Inn (comments are appreciated here). I've been searching for a hotel/B&B but am not finding exactly what I want. A few questions if you please: Does anyone know of a great hotel or B&B that is on the beach? It'd be great to sleep and wake up to the sound of the ocean. How about hotels/B&Bs that have a hot tub or jacuzzi in the room? Are there beach(es) in Kaanapali that are not too crowded and more couple oriented? Basically we're looking for a place that will pamper us but not take us to the poor house (as in over $200/dy)!!!! We'd just like to do the romantic thing, but get in shopping and party also. Your responses are truly appreciated. Thanks-marc

We like Napili Sunset. It's an older property, but beautifully refurbished and on a lovely stretch of beach.
One website I always check for ideas is epinions.com
Go tho this website, then on the lefthand side, scroll down and go to "destinations". Click on and then it will go to where you want to go.
You can click on different people's trip reports for where you are going to. It's very helpful.

Kaanapali and Lahaina are right up the street from each other, there isn't much reason to move from one to the other. Kaanapali/Lahaina is a very busy, crowded part of the island--lots of big hotels, lots of restaurants, lots of tshirt shops. Staying IN Lahaina will feel very untropical to you, being in the center of a busy town. The Wailea area is quieter and more honeymooney. It's not nearly as frenetic, and the beaches are just wonderful down there--pretty quiet and many with great snorkeling right offshore. Driving from the end of busy Kihei into Wailea you can actually feel the peace and calm settling in, it's awesome. It's about a 40 minute drive to Lahaina for nightlife, but Kihei, next to Wailea, also has lots of restaurants and nightlife, but Kaanapali Beach/Whaler's Village area has more of a strolling around a town center feel; Kihei is strip malls, albeit lively ones, and with some good restaurants, which can also definitely be had in Wailea.

We stayed in a condo, so I don't really know about hotels. $200 to be pampered AND right on the beach is a stretch, although probably with Priceline you could get a great deal actually. The Maui Prince hotel in Makena, past Wailea at the end of the road on a great beach would be very quiet. A better split of your stay would be Wailea/Kaanapali, or, even better, Wailea/Hana, as we did. We spent five nights in Wailea and the last two in Hana, at the Hale Malamalama. Hana is excellent for exploring bamboo groves and fulfilling embracing-under-waterfalls fantasies, if you're into that sort of thing, and wonderfully quiet and romantic at night--our villa had a freshwater hot tub on the porch where we sat each night and soaked under the stars right next to the bay! I think it's a great way to end the trip, it's just so wonderfully serene, and you can see the back side of Haleakala, which is otherworldly.

You just have to decide what you want from your trip--we hate the Lahaina/Kaanapali area, it just feels more like Ft Lauderdale than Hawaii to us, but some people adore it. Wailea is so much more laid back and restful, but you just have to feel it out for yourself.

I have a detailed trip report at http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34436140.

Let me know if you have any questions!

love
roxy

I respectfully disagree totally with your conclusion. To me Wailea is the same as being on any hotel property in the world. You get there you stay there or spend your day in a car. Its all the matter of preference. I don't particularly like to have to get in the car if I want to go to a different restaurant, or to go shopping or to go to nightlife. Kaanapali wasn't named the number one beach in 2003 by accident. I can go to the beach and my partner can go shopping or to play golf and we can go to 25 different restaurants and later that night go dancing without ever getting in a car and spending 1.5 to 2 hours roundtrip. And Lahaina is a 5 minute trolly ride from Kaanapali. That said I understand other people feel differently. The thread was started looking for advice on their honeymoon in the Lahaina area. Why try and put that down because you don't like it.

Even further off topic, I will strongly disagree that Kaanapali's beach is anywhere near 'best' relative to other beaches in Hawaii. The beach rating you mentioned has been issued for 13 years now and Kaanapali's never won before.
Why? Because according to the rules of the rater (Dr. Steve Leatherman) once a beach has won it is removed from the list for future ratings.
So Kaanapali was behind at least 13 other beaches before it won in 2003.
By Leatherman's own standards, both Wailea Beach and Kapalua Beach are more highly rated, but were 'retired' from consideration in years past.