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My wife and I spent 6 nights at Mauna Kea as part ...
My wife and I spent 6 nights at Mauna Kea as part of our honeymoon trip to Hawaii. We had very high hopes for the hotel based on its status as an autograph collection hotel with Marriott. Unfortunately, the experience was underwhelming and not worth the money.
The pros:
The grounds and beach are beautiful. The water was generally calm and there was plenty to see while snorkeling. There were plenty of beach chairs to relax on. The front desk staff was pleasant and the valet/bell staff was very helpful. We attended the luau and while the food was mediocre the service was good and the show was enjoyable. We also took part in the night manta ray snorkel experience on site which was a wonderful experience and we would highly recommend it to anyone staying in the area.
The cons:
The rooms are certainly dated which was not unexpected with an older hotel but the room also came with friendly sugar ants who resided in the bathroom sinks. The room did not come with an iron or a bidet that was advertised on the website. The housekeeping staff never replaced the silverware in our room and in fact left dirty silverware in our room.
The food is overly expensive and terrible. My wife is a titanium elite member with Marriott and received the breakfast buffet as part of our stay. The buffet consisted of decent fruits and breads but the remaining food was terrible. The French toast was rock hard, the waffles would come out cold, and the bacon was hit or miss. The normal price for the buffet is about $45 per person and doesn t include soda. The service was not great, most of the time they forgot my wife s toast. Only one day out of 6 we had decent service at the buffet. I would have been even more disappointed if we had been forced to pay for the terrible food at this buffet.
The lunch/dinner food was also not worth the price. A simple California roll was over $20 and was mediocre at best. By day 3 of our trip we were driving to the grocery store to eat at their deli because it was that much better than the 5 star resort we were staying at that should say something. A simple meal of a tuna melt, fish tacos, and 2 alcoholic drinks was almost $100. We never even tried the main restaurant, Manta, because it was inexplicably closed for two of the nights and extremely expensive. The final night we were at the hotel the more moderately priced restaurant was closed and thus we ended up leaving the resort again for food.
The service at these restaurants was generally not much better. Some of the servers were wonderful. Our last afternoon we sat at the copper bar and had incredible service by Sho, Jenna, and the other bartenders but other than that, many of the servers were rude, incredibly slow, half the time didn t acknowledge our existence for way too long, and once we were served we were forgotten about. It is clear that the restaurants are incredibly understaffed as there were times that our food came out cold showing it had obviously been sitting for a while.
Finally, the other guests. So many stuck up and snobby people walking around like they are better than everyone else. We watched some woman yell at a manager that a person at the rental shop needed to be fired and the aloha spirit was bullshit . This wasn t the only incident with guests yelling at people.
Overall, my suggestion would be to stay somewhere else. The price per night at Mauna Kea is not worth the experience. There is only so much that a beautiful beach and grounds can make up for.
