Google "Disney World Itinerary" and you'll find links to color-coded Excel spreadsheet templates to help organize each half-hour of your vacation. Sure, some parents thrive on that kind of structure, but most everyone can agree that jam-packed schedules involving poorly-napped kids thousands of miles from home are recipes for disaster.
For Aulani, however, once you book your stay, you can safely consider your trip fully planned. Sure, it was recommended that I book a few other things in advance, like tickets to the weekly luau, any spa treatments, and some dining reservations (a fact that I found out wasn't even 100 percent necessary), but otherwise it was actually difficult to find things to schedule ahead of time.
Now, as a Type A traveler, I admit this made me a bit twitchy — I don't much care for vacations that are never-ending hours of lounging in the sand with nothing planned. For people like me, the resort offers the "Daily 'Iwa," an activities calendar that has more than 20 different items each day, from fitness classes to craft sessions to storytelling hours to live music performances. It's the perfect way to let visitors plan out as much or as little as they want without fear of things booking up or selling out.
After the first few days, my family fell into a lovely little groove with most of each day spent in the water and then two planned activities — one of which was for the whole family, like lei-making or a picnic blanket movie night on the lawn (the featured film this trip? Incredibles 2!), and the other something my husband or I wanted to do. For instance, one afternoon, he did standup paddle-boarding in the lagoon while I made sand castles with the girls, and another day, I did sunrise yoga while they slept in. We stuck to one sit-down meal a day, and committed to giving the kids their afternoon naps at least half the time we were there. That low-key itinerary kept every day exciting but also kept us well-rested and as stress-free as one can be while traveling with young kiddos.
