Vacation – Pre-Trip Concerns

A few months ago, my wife and I decided to go to Hawaii to celebrate our 25^th wedding anniversary. We have been to both the Maui and Kauai islands several times before. We like both islands for different reasons. We had always considered going to the big island, but have never been. I am not sure why, except that we knew we would enjoy either Maui or Kauai, but were not sure about the big island. This time we decided to try the big island. Once we made this decision, we got pretty excited about exploring this new island.

About 2 months ago, we started exploring condominium complexes that we might want to stay at. We found a few that looked good to us. We started looking around the web to see if we could get a good deal in one of these complexes. As we were looking around, we found this great deal on a resort (the Hilton Waikoloa Village). The deal was priced about the same as the nicer condominiums. Now that I think about it, I don’t think we have ever actually stayed at a resort on Hawaii or anywhere else. We realized that the cost of staying at the resort is not only the room, but also the food and everything else. However we decided to splurge since it was our 25^th wedding anniversary.

After booking the resort, we did not think about the vacation until a few days before we were to due to leave. The night before departure, I decided to look at weather.com to see what the weather would be like the next week. The forecast for the next week showed cloudy skies the first day and then showers every day for the rest of the week! Uh-oh! However I have visited Hawaii before during rainy times and it was not too bad. On days when there were showers, it would rain sporadically in the late afternoon and it was a very warm rain. We would be in the car or get under a tree until the storm would pass. Sometimes, we would go into the ocean or a pool while it was raining. So I had hopes that the showers would not ruin our vacation. And it was too late to change anything anyway. My wife was really excited about the trip, so I did not tell her about the forecast, I did not want to dampen her spirits. We would just have to make the best of it.

I was also starting to wonder about the resort. It looked great on the web and the user reviews were generally excellent. Of course, it is going to look great on the web! They aren't going to give a description that makes the resort look mediocre! There have been times in the past when we have gone to a hotel or some attraction and found that it did not live up to it's billing. Sometimes we have also found that the rooms that are part of a "great deal" are not all that nice. It may be a so-so room in a great hotel or resort. Once again, there was not much I could do about it, but I did have some concerns.