Hawaii budget for a family of 4 ?

[Nebraska_Disney]

I am trying to get an idea of what is a price window for a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 kids) for a week in Hawaii? I went 8 years ago with my wife for 9 days, but it was part of a work trip for me and I truly don't know what I should be expecting. I know I can price trips online, but I'd like to know what others have done and if there are "hints" I should be taking advantage of. We would like to do Oahu and Maui, but if it came down to it, probably just Maui. TIA

 

[jujubiee4]

Get yourself over to the "I love credit cards so much" thread. If you are willing to open credit cards
to collect bonuses/miles it will save a lot. The folks in that thread can give you some great advice/tips/hints.

End of May 4 in our family are going 5 nights Maui 4 nights in Kauai. Between the great Amex offer I got
and using Hawaiian air miles and Chase Hyatt card. My out of pocket costs are 800 dollars for 10 days
9 nights ...12 flights...2 car rentals.... no resort fees (all prepaid) and amex threw in a 100 resort credit.

It could have been even less if i wanted to part with UR award points but im guarding those lol.

Hawaii is very expensive i have been many times. Right now im sweating saving up the cash for the endless
"activities" everyone wants to do.

You can tweak your hawaii vacation to make it not cheap but CHEAPER.

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Join us in the credit card thread to save on your trip.

I am planning this year. Not taking into account points...I would say $600-$800 pp for flights. Hotel $500/nt. Food, activities etc...dunno.

I don’t really budget. We decide what we want to do and pay what it costs, saving money where we can (points).

 

[disneymagicgirl]

Get yourself over to the "I love credit cards so much" thread. If you are willing to open credit cards
to collect bonuses/miles it will save a lot. The folks in that thread can give you some great advice/tips/hints.

End of May 4 in our family are going 5 nights Maui 4 nights in Kauai. Between the great Amex offer I got
and using Hawaiian air miles and Chase Hyatt card. My out of pocket costs are 800 dollars for 10 days
9 nights ...12 flights...2 car rentals.... no resort fees (all prepaid) and amex threw in a 100 resort credit.

It could have been even less if i wanted to part with UR award points but im guarding those lol.

Hawaii is very expensive i have been many times. Right now im sweating saving up the cash for the endless
"activities" everyone wants to do.

You can tweak your hawaii vacation to make it not cheap but CHEAPER.

What is your Amex offer? You booked a package through them?

 

[jujubiee4]

Hi....We received this offer in the mail for the Westin Ka’anapali studio villa in Maui.
https://www.flyinghighonpoints.com/...american-express-time-running-targeted-offer/
I thought we got a 100 resort credit though.... anyway we combined this with 4 free nights
from each of us opening a Chase Hyatt. We booked that for Grand Hyatt Kauai. The rest was the
AmexPrg 50 k offer and two Hawaiian air cards for 100 k and i had about 30 or 40 k Amex points
from my green card.....i transferred all my Amex points to Hawaiian when they had a transfer bonus
of 25 percent. So all flight to and from mainland and to kauai were by points/miles bonuses.

 

[DizMe]

I don't know. I think you're getting great advice from others. Just wanted to say I LOVE Hawaii but it's pretty cheap for me. I live in CA, get good flight deals, and my brother owns some properties there I did just use the advice for getting the companion pass on Southwest for almost 2 years in addition to the 115,00 points so I may use that when they open up their flight to Hawaii from CA (they emailed me that was starting in 2018, but who knows?). Even if they do, it may take so many points it's not worth it.

Tips on Hawaii, though, from someone who goes often. First, packages are very often a better deal than booking things separately there. I get free lodging but it's often cheaper for me to add a couple of nights in a hotel because the airfare cost drops significantly and I can add a rental car for a lot less. It's sounds weird, but it was significantly cheaper for me to fly over with my family (5 of us) on a 10-day package that included rental car for 10 days and 3 days in the Hilton Waikoloa (Big Island) than to book a 7-day trip for us with air and a week for free in my brother's condo. Hotels often have great offers and our last trip was booked through a super deal through Costco. We stayed at the Kea Lani hotel in Maui and the Fairmont Orchid Big Island. The Orchid upgraded us to a huge suite and it was incredible.

 

[TnTWalter]

We signed up for Alaskan Airlines deal. At the time we did it there were lots of automatic points $99 annual fee and $118 companion fare. Hubby and I each got a CC and bought companion fare for the kids. We had an extra kid so used points for her. So each ticket ended up being $500. We flew into one airport [oahu] and out of another [maui] so it was more expensive than roundtrip.

Also if you're closer to the West Coast or for the inter-island flights, I think there are deals for Hawaiin Airlines credit cards too.

We did vrbo deals for lodging. We did 3 islands in 17 days I think? Our favorite trip 2014.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Activities (zipline! Snorkel trip! Parasail! More!) can easily cost over $100 per person per activity. Meals are KILLER. Get a nice condo (with a pool in the complex), go shopping at Costco and the local markets & DIY all the meals you can. HUGE savings, especially on Maui. PB&Js are your friend.

Do you like pineapple? Do you have a Costco membership? Buy pineapples at Costco! (NOT the green ones ok? You buy the Maui Gold pineapple that is the orangest/yellowest you can find, and if you're not sure the color is right you should be able to smell that wonderful pineapple smell.) Last time I was on Kauai we bought them at Costco a couple days and then when there was a farmers market nearby one day all the good ones were gone. We went to the farmers market to look for one and they were selling them at twice the price of Costco and I literally saw them removing Costco tags before setting them out to sell... Also, Costco is where we pick up all our Macadamia nut chocolate/coffee/various flavored covered souvenirs! As well as the replacement set because we basically eat them all before we leave. And gas for rental car!

Merchandise: Kmart & Long's Drugs. Most of the trip souvenirs you want can be found there much cheaper than tourist shops & hotel gift shops. Actually all our Hawaii t-shirts came from Long's last trip! (Yep, it's still a thing there.) I majorly splurged on a Hilo Hattie dress at Hilo Hattie though last time I was on Maui so don't think you'll be getting off cheap on everything, you never know what someone might fall in love with

FWIW you could easily spend a week on Maui and stay occupied without having to hop to Oahu.

Oh! And rent snorkel gear for the week so you can do some of your own snorkeling! It's not Molokini Crater but still pretty in the right places to snorkel if you're looking to occupy an hour or two some days. (Avoid discounted afternoon snorkel trips, odds are the water will be rough so you won't see as many fish.)

 

[gottalovepluto]

I don't know. I think you're getting great advice from others. Just wanted to say I LOVE Hawaii but it's pretty cheap for me. I live in CA, get good flight deals, and my brother owns some properties there I did just use the advice for getting the companion pass on Southwest for almost 2 years in addition to the 115,00 points so I may use that when they open up their flight to Hawaii from CA (they emailed me that was starting in 2018, but who knows?). Even if they do, it may take so many points it's not worth it...

I'm beginning to think every SW seat to HI will be booked faster than a Hamilton ticket when they release their prices!

 

[gottalovepluto]

...Hawaii is very expensive i have been many times. Right now im sweating saving up the cash for the endless
"activities" everyone wants to do.

You can tweak your hawaii vacation to make it not cheap but CHEAPER.

Truth.

 

[DizMe]

I'm beginning to think every SW seat to HI will be booked faster than a Hamilton ticket when they release their prices!

I think you're right about that. I also checked how many points it takes to fly to Mexico for comparison and yowza! I really don't want to use up a ton of points but at least CP will make it more affordable to pay upfront. Hopefully.

 

[mom2rose&john]

We are on the east coast, Buffalo NY. I have priced out 12 nights 14 days flying roundtrip from Toronto (cheaper by $450 per person). 6 nights in Oahu and 6 nighs in Maui. With Food, condo rental in Oahu, Time share exchange in Maui with car rental, sight seeing costs, food, and souveniers I am planning on over $15,000 for a family of 4. In total that seems insane but breaking it down per person per day it is $312.50.

 

[ajwolfe]

Following along. This is something by family of 4 would love to do someday but seems daunting to plan and the guesatimate at a price always stops me in my tracks.

 

[kymom99]

Take a look at delta vacation packages. Just for kicks I checked some prices. Two of us could go to Maui in September for a week. Plane, condo, and rental car included for $4000. $5000 if we were to take 3 people in one room. The resort I picked is highly rated and looks beautiful. Has a full kitchen too. that is Tuesday- Tuesday. Saturday to Saturday was a little more.

 

[AlohaNow]

At least the beaches are free!

 

[kathy884]

When I recently priced a seven night trip for three of us (We live in St. Louis and there are three of us -- airfare is really expensive for us -- over $1000 a person), picked a double queen hotel room with a nice lanai and full ocean view (Ala Moana across from the Ala Moana beach park - we like this location and hotel) in Honolulu (It's Honolulu not Wikiki, but not far from Wikiki), added in a budget for food (eating out), activities, dog kennel, and rental car when I added everything up it was about $10,000. Ouch - almost our full annual vacation budget. My family decided that instead of Hawaii, they would rather do two less expensive vacations so we are doing Key West and South Dakota.

This is without using any credit card points or freebies, so great tips above.

Do note DH and I been to Ohau before and the Big Island before (business trip extended to a vacation), and more recently (but three years back now) we did a week long trip to Kauai - whole family (three adults). Our total out of pocket, despite super high airfares for that was about $7200. Lodging wasn't as much as we were just responsible for 1/3rd of a VRBO four bedroom house that slept 10 (We did this trip with an extended family group - party of 10). We did some expensive tours too -- all day movie tour, bi plane tour, but we had six people and got a discount for the whole plane, botanical garden tour, etc. Food was really high priced, but we ended up doing a lot of cooking in, getting food plates from grocery stores, eating at mostly more modest, but good, burger / pork sandwich places. We only did two more expensive meals on the whole trip that ran us about $80 for three of us (no alcohol ordered and moderate not high end places, but we loved the food). Grocery store prices FYI were about three times the cost of back home, as everything gets shipped in.

Hawaii is a beautiful place, but a long plane trip with layovers for us and expensive. We would be more inclined to go again if it was closer and easier to fly to. We don't have direct flights from our airport any more either. It's as painful if not more painful to fly there than to fly to Europe for us.

 

[CAFarmerGirl]

We will be going to Maui in July for 10 days. I rented a 2 bedroom condo on a bay ($3300) with snorkeling so I wouldn’t have to pay separately for that activity. We can snorkel every day and not even leave our condo. I also plan on stopping at Costco on the way to our condo. Rented a car through Costco, too ($475). Tickets from the west coast (but in summer!) were about $2500. I suspect most of our days will be doing free things like beach, hike, snorkel so, I am very liberally planning $2k for spending on misc meals out or whatever.

 

[jujubiee4]

Activities (zipline! Snorkel trip! Parasail! More!) can easily cost over $100 per person per activity. Meals are KILLER. Get a nice condo (with a pool in the complex), go shopping at Costco and the local markets & DIY all the meals you can. HUGE savings, especially on Maui. PB&Js are your friend.

Do you like pineapple? Do you have a Costco membership? Buy pineapples at Costco! (NOT the green ones ok? You buy the Maui Gold pineapple that is the orangest/yellowest you can find, and if you're not sure the color is right you should be able to smell that wonderful pineapple smell.) Last time I was on Kauai we bought them at Costco a couple days and then when there was a farmers market nearby one day all the good ones were gone. We went to the farmers market to look for one and they were selling them at twice the price of Costco and I literally saw them removing Costco tags before setting them out to sell... Also, Costco is where we pick up all our Macadamia nut chocolate/coffee/various flavored covered souvenirs! As well as the replacement set because we basically eat them all before we leave. And gas for rental car!

Merchandise: Kmart & Long's Drugs. Most of the trip souvenirs you want can be found there much cheaper than tourist shops & hotel gift shops. Actually all our Hawaii t-shirts came from Long's last trip! (Yep, it's still a thing there.) I majorly splurged on a Hilo Hattie dress at Hilo Hattie though last time I was on Maui so don't think you'll be getting off cheap on everything, you never know what someone might fall in love with

FWIW you could easily spend a week on Maui and stay occupied without having to hop to Oahu.

Oh! And rent snorkel gear for the week so you can do some of your own snorkeling! It's not Molokini Crater but still pretty in the right places to snorkel if you're looking to occupy an hour or two some days. (Avoid discounted afternoon snorkel trips, odds are the water will be rough so you won't see as many fish.)

I just saw yr post about not buying discounted afternoon snorkel trips. Will the water be rough May?June?

 

[bcwife76]

Living on the West coast has it's advantages for sure; we are leaving Tuesday for a 5 night trip to Honolulu/Waikiki, family of 4 and it's costing us $3200 CDN (which is approx $2500USD at todays' exchange rate) air/hotel/transfers. I'm pretty stoked with that price considering I booked it less than a month ago. Our hotel includes a hot breakfast every morning so that is definitely an advantage.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I just saw yr post about not buying discounted afternoon snorkel trips. Will the water be rough May?June?

It was some afternoons when we were there & I've only ever been in May/June. Sometimes the mornings were dead quiet though. Idk if the month has anything to do with the roughness in the sea, hopefully someone more familiar with Hawaii can chime in for us.