The Grand Islander By Hilton Grand Vacations

The views are even better than home 😆, and the room is roomy with great amenities.

Honolulu around the property is lively, but I prefer a slower Hawaiian pace. Your mileage may vary. The place sprawls, so give yourself a day to learn the shortcuts. There’s no valet, and parking means about a five-minute walk. Staff are unevenly accessible, and the driveway is easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. Hilton is rarely my first pick.

The room and the service staff were great, but the parking setup was a real drawback. They’ve stopped offering valet at the lobby. You can valet at the Hilton Hawaiian Village main entrance, but that’s a 7-10 minute walk, which defeats the point for me. After being out all day, my parents, who are at least in their mid 60s, didn’t want to walk back from the car when it felt like 3 am. We dropped them off when we could, but they didn’t always want us to. We used the Hale Koa garage across the street instead. It was a shorter walk and, despite being closer to the actual hotel, monthly parking for our 5-6 night stay saved us about $150 versus Hilton self park, and even more versus valet. DoorDash struggled to find us every time, even with the correct address for our building. You have to drive up a ramp to reach the lobby drop off, and it isn’t marked clearly. The elevator setup assigns you a car after you select your floor, but there are only 4 elevators. Sometimes the assigned one arrived full, so we had to request again and wait. Hilton uses the same system at Elara in Vegas with more elevators, and we never had that issue there. Friday fireworks also meant a long elevator line, so avoid getting back at 8pm on fridays. The shower is rain fall only, and it doesn’t give me enough pressure.

We were really impressed and will definitely come back. The rooms were consistently spotless, and having a full kitchen, fridge and freezer, stove, oven, microwave, dishwasher, plus a washer and dryer was great. Staff were friendly and knew their stuff. The location is fantastic, just a short walk to the beach, with several pools nearby and plenty of restaurants and shops.