Hilton Waikoloa Village - Hotels On Big Island Waikoloa, Hawaii

Hilton Waikoloa Village is a massive, mega-resort in the Waikoloa of Hawaii's Big Island. If you've heard of the Big Island then you've probably heard of this place. It's the biggest resort on the Island and probably the biggest hotel property just about anywhere. It's huge! It's essentially three large hotels on a single piece of resort property with several restaurants, large pools and slides, a huge lagoon, a dolphin lagoon, and much more.

The Property

This place is so big that they have transportation within the resort to get you from one place to another in the form of boats or a monorail (which isn't really a monorail, more of a super slow train on rails). Because it's so large, has so much going on, and has a (not quite) monorail you can't help but think of a Disneyland type of experience. But let's kill those thoughts right now because this is nothing like a Disney resort or park. Not even close.

As for that cool transportation, it's really not much of a feature here. It's good in theory but because it's so slow you'll either end up waiting forever for the monorail (or boat) to arrive when you could have walked anywhere instead (unless you hate walking). Even once you are on a monorail the thing travels at a snail's pace and makes many stops along the way. Kids will love it, at least for a few times, so it's a fun "ride" as far as that goes.

The resort is split up into three main hotel buildings which are the Lagoon Tower, Ocean Tower, and Palace Tower. The Lagoon Tower is located at the south end of the resort and is close to the larger of the two pools which is also the pool with the larger slide and sand bottom area for small kids. The Ocean Tower is on the opposite (north) end of the property and is close to a large pool that has three small slides on it as well as a separate adults only "quiet" pool. Hilton says the Palace Tower has a "central" location but it's actually right next to the Ocean Tower on the north end which is central only to the items around it, which isn't much. It seemed like most people in the Palace Tower didn't have kids with them so that might be a good option if you want to avoid kids.

Overall, the Lagoon Tower probably has the best location as it has the most food options near it as well as the retail shopping area, is closest to the lobby so you can more easily walk to your room, is close to the largest pool, beach lagoon area, and dolphin lagoon.

You'll notice a lot of flagstone all over the property, it's as if every walking surface is made of the stuff. It looks nice but isn't the best walking surface. Even the stairs are made of the stuff and that makes for some really dangerous situations, especially with some of the unusually steep stairs in some of the areas. Our five year old tripped up the tall and steep stairs cutting her leg on the razor sharp flagstone edges.

While I was out walking around with friends we heard a loud "thud" and then saw an older man flat on the ground. He had fallen walking down some of the uneven flagstone stairs, landing on more sharp flagstone. He looked to be in really bad shape, wasn't moving much, and his groaning sounded like it was about to turn into screams of pain as the reality of the situation set in. A hotel employee was right there when it happened, and while he clearly had no idea what to do he did radio in for help with a heartwarming "uh, some guy just fell" message. Chances are that guy now gets free vacations at any Hilton for life.

The lesson here is to be extra careful walking around this place!

Parking

The Hilton Waikoloa Village parking situation is horrible, let's just get that out of the way. You're either going to pay up for valet and then pay up for tips every time you have your car retrieved. Or, you can pay up by self-parking which requires a long walk to the parking lot that will be a good uphill climb on the way back to the hotel. It's a shame that hotels feel like they can nickel and dime when it comes to parking when virtually anyone staying here will have a car (as you need one to do anything outside of the resort). If this is a cost it should just be wrapped into the room rates rather than an add on fee they hit you with on top of the room rate all in the name of trying to make their room rates look better than they are.

The Rooms

For this review we booked a standard room with two queen beds. It's a standard sized hotel room but had plenty of space for a family of four (two adults, two kids). Inside it had a nice office desk with chair to work on that came with free Internet (cable or wi-fi) which was fairly speedy and worked well. There was an extra chair inside as well and a small table and two chairs on a tiny lanai. Our standard room had a great view of the dolphin lagoon and swimming lagoon in the Lagoon Tower building.

Our room felt like it had been renovated fairly recently and was fairly well kept up. It had some broken knobs on drawers and scuff marks all around but it felt fairly clean except for the carpet which wasn't as clean as it could have been. The bathroom sink area was spacious and clean though there aren't many options for hanging up wet towels, washcloths, or clothes.

The shower and toilet are squeezed together in a small space with a frosted glass sliding pocket door which overall doesn't give a ton of privacy. The shower, tile, and grout were all spotless. Finding non-molded white tile grout in a Hawaiian hotel shower is no easy feat so this really deserves mentioning.

There aren't many lights in the room so while it wasn't ever dark, you couldn't really make it bright at night either. There is no ceiling light or fan either and ceiling fans in Hawaii should be required by law! This means that you'll run the AC a few degrees cooler than is otherwise needed at night.

We had a connecting room and could hear talking by the people in the other room through the connecting doors so we do suggesting requesting a non-connecting room. We also noticed that the main door, which opens to the outside, didn't seal well at all with huge gaps all around and a 3/4 inch gap at the bottom that small critters could walk right through if they wanted.

There are huge amounts of really loud birds all over this place as well and they made a lot of noise in the morning and around dusk so you may want ear plugs if sounds disturb your sleeping.

The Pool

It's odd that Hilton built such a massive property here but failed to place it on an actual beach nor did they build their own beach on the ocean. That's right, there's no ocean beach here. Well, there is and you can access the beach area but it's all very rocky without any sand and there's no safe way to get into the ocean water so it's not a beach you can use.

Instead, they carved out a lagoon on the interior of the property which is fed by the ocean. Normally these turn out well but it was made in a way that the ocean waves don't really come into the lagoon so the water is a little on the smelly side. They do have a nice man made sandy beach on the lagoon and you can swim, snorkel, and even rent kayaks to paddle around in here but it's not water I would end up in! Drive to one of the nearby beaches instead.

The Lagoon Tower pool is huge and includes a sand bottom kids area on one end, a big cave area with waterfalls in the middle, and a pretty tall and long waterslide on the other end. Kids and adults alike will enjoy this slide! There are three hot tubs here as well but all of them were looking kind of green and gross during our entire stay here.

On the other end of the property you will find the Ocean Tower pool which has sort of a river style layout but is not an actual lazy river. It has two small upper pools that feed into the bottom river pool via very, very tiny and nearly horizontal water slides that even kids got stuck on. There is also one larger, and very fast, slide here that's a ton of fun. A fourth stand alone pool at the top is a good quiet place to go and if you walk back into the Ocean Tower building itself you can find a completely stand alone adults only quiet pool where I never once saw anyone!

While it is a fun pool and we all enjoyed the slides, a place of this size should have many more slides dumping into these large pools to make it more of a water park.

Food

There are a lot of food options on the property like the Lagoon Grill at Hilton Waikoloa Village, Boat Landing Cantina at Hilton Waikoloa Village, and Big Island Breakfast at Hilton Waikoloa Village. Cheaper options are just a short drive up the road to the Queens' MarketPlace. There is a good sized mini-mart type store near the Lagoon Tower that has drinks, chips, cereals, and all sorts of snack options.

Other Stuff To Do

This is a great resort to take a walk around, it has tons of walking paths that go all over the place so take some time and explore. It has a huge amount of art and artifacts on display throughout the property as well which can be fun to look at and learn about, only if you don't have kids with you as they'll hate this for sure.

There is also a Dolphin Quest program here where you can swim with the dolphins (for a fee of course). Even if you don't want to swim with the dolphins you can go watch them in their lagoon any time of the day for free. It's pretty neat to watch them swim and play though you can't help but feel sorry for them in their tiny lagoon and wonder if animals like this should really be kept in what is essentially a cage.

Club Keiki is available for the little ones (ages 5-12) that offers various full day or nightly programs so mom and dad can get away for a while on their own.

There are some pretty exotic looking birds throughout the property as well and they'll even let you hold some of them or place them on your head so you can get a funny souvenir picture. The catch is that you can do this for free but you cannot take any pictures! Nope, instead they'll take pictures for you and sell them to you. They'll tell you this only after your kids get excited about holding the bird and wait in line. This is beyond insulting, resist the urge to bite on this kind of touristy crap and give the hotel manager an earful about this type of thing to make it stop!

If you want to get a little more active then play some tennis. If you want to be less active then try the giant and life sized checkerboard out. Want even less activity? Then the Kohala Spa is probably what you are looking for but plan to spend $200 to $300 per person here!

Also, don't forget about the Legends of Hawaii Luau. Once you leave the resort you'll find a few beaches close by but little else as there really isn't much to do on this part of the island without some long (30+ minute) drives. So keep that in mind when planning your trip!

• Building: High Rise	• Building: Lanai / Balcony	• Building: Resort	• Building: Rooms Open To Outside	• Property: Business Center
• Property: Dining On Site	• Property: Fitness Room	• Property: Laundry On Site	• Property: Stores On Site	• Room: Coffee Maker
• Room: Hair Dryer	• Room: Mini Fridge	• Room: Safe	• Recreation: Gear Rentals	• Recreation: Hot Tub
• Recreation: Kids Club	• Recreation: Pool	• Recreation: Water Park	• Recreation: Water Slides	• Internet: Free In Room
• Parking: Paid Self Park	• Parking: Paid Valet