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Old 6 Nov 18, 09:08 PM  
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Lolly90
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Hawaii Honeymoon Oct 18! Day 1 - Travelling to Oahu

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Pre-Trip Report

Thursday 18th October 2018

Today was the day we were finally off on our honeymoon and the trip of a lifetime!

This year we decided to stay at the Hyatt Place on Bath Road the night before our flight, rather than the usual Premier Inn near Heathrow.


I was happy with this choice; the rooms are a decent size, nicely decorated and we had fresh fruit in our room on arrival. We also had a runway view, but we arrived and left in the dark, so didn't make much use of this.


This is the only photo I have of the room, so please ignore Mark taking off his shoes

Our flight with Virgin this morning was at 09:20, so we had to get up pretty early. We were up around 05:00, got ready and left the room at 06:00.


There is a bus stop right outside the hotel, to get the free shuttle over to the airport terminals. They run every 10-15 mins and the journey took us just under 10 minutes. We usually get the Hoppa from the Premier Inn, which drops you off right outside Terminal 3. I'm not sure where this bus dropped us off, but I know we had to walk a little to get to our terminal.


I'd already checked us in online and printed our boarding passes, so we just had to do bag drop. Both our suitcases weighed around 15kg. The lady at the counter confirmed our luggage would be tagged for Honolulu but we would have to collect it at LAX to go through customs.

We were through security and into Duty Free by 07:00. We headed straight for breakfast and decided on The Curator. Mark went for the breakfast burger and I had the buttermilk pancakes with bacon and syrup, both with a vanilla latte. Airport breakfasts aren’t always great, but I really enjoyed this one. Total cost was £30.85.




After breakfast, we had a wander round Duty Free but didn't end up getting anything. I realised I'd forgotten to pack any spare hair ties, so I picked some of these up in Boots along with a couple of bottles of water for the flight. Soon enough we were heading over to Gate 13, to board our first flight to LAX, taking off at 09:45.


I had a look at what films were available and watched Ocean’s 8, Game Night and the first four episodes of This Is Us. We seemed to get so much food on this flight, starting with orange juice & pretzels followed by lunch, which was rigatoni with cheese & crackers and a passion fruit GU. We also had a steak pasty, mini twister and finished with afternoon tea an hour and a half before landing.






We landed in L.A slightly early at 12:20, making the total flight time 10 hours 25 mins. We were through immigration really quickly and our baggage was on the carousel as soon as we were through. The bag drop point for connecting flights was right after customs, so it was easy to drop off our baggage here for the next flight to Honolulu, with Delta. We were through passport control, to the departure terminal by 13:00. We only had a 2.5 hour layover in LAX and I was worried this wouldn't be long enough but everything went so smoothly. I went to wash my face and brush my teeth etc. just to make myself feel a bit better after the long flight. We got a quick Starbuck’s too, to keep us going.


We started boarding at 14:20, took off at 14:50 and landed on time at 17:30. The total flight time was 5 hours 40 mins and I wasn’t feeling too bad. I think I had a quick nap on the plane, which probably helped.






After collecting our luggage, we took the shuttle from the airport over to Dollar to pick up our car. Each car hire company seemed to have their own shuttle and the journey took less than 5 mins. We actually booked our car hire with Thrifty but for some reason we had to pick the car up from Dollar and drop it off at Thrifty.

We’d booked an intermediate SUV but they only had 1 left, which someone had just taken so they asked if we would like to take a Jeep. Mark was more than happy with this, so we went with a Silver Jeep. We got ourselves organised and set the navigation up on my phone (I bought a 3 mobile add-on and used Google Maps on my phone, rather than getting a Sat Nav). We were soon on our way to our hotel in Waikiki, which was the Coconut Waikiki, arriving at 19:15.

We checked in, paid for valet parking and were kindly upgraded to a suite. They also dropped off a bottle of wine and chocolate macadamia nuts to our room. I was fairly happy with this hotel and think we got a good deal considering how expensive hotels can be here. The room was a good size but it could definitely do with an upgrade and I do wish we had gone for a slightly nicer hotel, as it was our honeymoon but never mind, it still done the job!




We were very tired by this point, so quickly went to the McDonald’s down the road for an easy dinner. Then it was back to the hotel to unpack and shower before heading to bed around 21:30, after being up around 27 hours.

Quite a boring first day travelling but it definitely gets better and at least we had finally arrived in Hawaii!

Next: Day 2 - Waikiki & Honolulu

Edited at 08:37 PM.
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Old 6 Nov 18, 09:40 PM  
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Beth_Disney
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That was a long but smooth travel day. You look so fresh after the first flight!

We stayed at Coconut Waikiki in 2015 and I thought it was good value for the location. Is the gorilla still in the breakfast area? I’d tweeted the hotel and my name was on the chalk board in the reception, I liked the little touches.

Thanks for posting and I’ll be following along.
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Old 6 Nov 18, 11:06 PM  
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Sounds like a great but long travel day, hassle free is always good. Looking forward to reading along
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Old 7 Nov 18, 08:45 PM  
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Lolly90
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Originally Posted by Beth_Disney View Post
That was a long but smooth travel day. You look so fresh after the first flight!

We stayed at Coconut Waikiki in 2015 and I thought it was good value for the location. Is the gorilla still in the breakfast area? I’d tweeted the hotel and my name was on the chalk board in the reception, I liked the little touches.

Thanks for posting and I’ll be following along.
It certainly was a long day but not as long as coming home

It was definitely good value. Oh I'm not sure, I didn't notice one anyway I'd agree about the little touches, the afternoon popcorn was great and how they updated the weather on the chalk board too. I think it was just the room decor that let it down a little for me but for the price, we couldn't complain!

Thank you for reading along

Originally Posted by Pussycat Doll View Post
Sounds like a great but long travel day, hassle free is always good. Looking forward to reading along
We've never flown indirect on the way there before and I wasn't really looking forward to it but I was so happy it went well. Thank you for reading
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Old 7 Nov 18, 09:19 PM  
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Beth_Disney
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Originally Posted by Lolly90 View Post
It certainly was a long day but not as long as coming home

It was definitely good value. Oh I'm not sure, I didn't notice one anyway I'd agree about the little touches, the afternoon popcorn was great and how they updated the weather on the chalk board too. I think it was just the room decor that let it down a little for me but for the price, we couldn't complain!

Thank you for reading along
I’ve just checked at the hotel has changed owners since we went. It was a JDV hotel which tend to be a bit quirky.

I think you’d have spotted these by the lifts...

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Old 15 Nov 18, 10:49 PM  
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Lolly90
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Originally Posted by Beth_Disney View Post
I’ve just checked at the hotel has changed owners since we went. It was a JDV hotel which tend to be a bit quirky.

I think you’d have spotted these by the lifts...

No, we definitely didn't see those
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Old 21 Nov 18, 09:28 PM  
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KarenG
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Great travelling day! We were on the same flights a week after you. We had breakfast at the Curator too!

We weren’t brave enough to drive after such a long flight, so we just got a taxi and got to our hotel at about 18.15 which was great. It was a long day but we were happy to wake up in Waikiki the next day rather than have another flight.
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