Am planning trip to maui mid-december w/21 year old son, 18 year old daughter and huband. Need feedback on Westin-Maui, have booked there, but am now reading some negative feedback on this property. Do not want condo, think kids would be happier in a more lively place, help! How about the westin?

Westin is nice. Has nice grounds and even one of its pools is designated as adults only. Hotel shares a beach walkway with other Kaanapali hotels that allows you to walk from the Sheraton at one end to the Hyatt at the other end and Whalers Village in the middlish. Whalers Village has lots of shops and some restaurants that are quite enjoyable.

Nancy,

I stayed at the Westin last year. Grounds are nice and the pools and water slides are lovely and great for kids. The one thing you will not get with Westin is customer service. Kids will definately like the Westin more than a condo, but you definately sacrifice service with the Westin.

Good luck on your trip! Maui is lovely.

X, could you be more descriptive about lack of service? Is it with the front desk? room cleaning? pool side drinks? It might be helpful for Nancy to know what area of service was lacking.

llovemaui, I'll answer your questions since you too had little to add to the post.

Nancy, x is right, the resort is great for kids but lacks in service. Your kids are older so I'm not sure if Westin will be the right fit. The water slides are fun, but are desiged for younger children. Most of the kids I saw were around 10-15 years of age.

As for the service, my room had the beds made once a day and new towels put on the racks, but that was it. They never vacuumed, dusted, or refilled the coffee supplies. There was no pool-side service, so getting a drink by the pool was difficult. The lines for morning breakfast were long. And the check in staff were rude and short. Parking is also a big problem. The parking spaces are so close together, your rental car gets lots of scrapes and dings which the rental agency will want you to pay for. We finally asked the manager on duty to have our room cleaned and the response I got was, "well we're very busy". It was never done.

Hope this helps you.

The problem with this forum is that readers can use whatever tone they want when reading a post and totally misunderstand the meaning. This appears to be the case that Jana had with my post encouraging x to provide more info on the poor service he/she received. I appreciate the additions Jana made but could have done without the slam. I certainly was not critisizing x at all when I asked for more info. Sometimes it's good to know if there's crummy service where it counts, like a drink by the pool or something you can live with like attitude from the towel guys. Thanks for the response Jana.

My wife and I spent our honeymoon at the Westin Maui last August and had a great time. Service was OK -- but we didn't require much. Check-in was smooth and easy, only one person was ahead of us in line, and when they realized we were going to be there for 8 nights on our honeymoon, we were upgraded to a suite, free of charge. Room service (which we got twice) was reliable and relatively quick (about 40 minutes, if I remember correctly). Pool service at the adult pool was slow, but that was because they had a total of three waitresses working that area and the pool directly below it. Once the waitresses got to know us, service improved. We had, I think, two sit-down meals at the property our entire time there -- they were both fine (the Sunday brunch was VERY good). Housekeeping was also good -- whenever we returned to the room after a day at the pool or beach, beds were made, floors were vacuumed and new towels were readily available.

You might want to check other similar hotels that are similar, but a littler nicer. The Marriott was just renovated, and the Hyatt is gorgeous. The Westin is a little run down and everyone has 2-5 kids (think they give a deal on kids meals). Balconies are very small. You are staying in the right location for your older kids--Kaanapali is the place to be. There are two condos in this area you could check out--Kaanapali Alii and the Whaler--both are fine.