Menehune Abound at Aulani

One of the best things about our family's recent stay at the Aulani Resort in Ko' Olina, Oahu was the Daily 'Iwa.  Every morning I would venture down to Kalepa's Store, fill up my refillable mug and grab the daily itenerary for the Resort.  It felt like it was straight out of the movie Dirty Dancing...you get the picture, a family escape complete with daily activities, an arts and crafts room, dance lessons.  Of course Baby never got to eat breakfast with Mickey Mouse and his friends and I think Dirty Dancing would have ended quite differently if Hula was the dance of choice at the Resort!

The Daily 'Iwa clued us into the Menehune Adventure Trail.  The Menehune are mischievous little people who build things in and around the island of Oahu.  The legend goes that they come out at night and build useful things all around the island of Oahu.  Anything the Menehune start must be finished before the sun comes up or it never gets completed.  During the day the Menehune are stone creatures hidden around the Resort. There is supposedly over 200 Menehune located all around the Resort grounds.

The Menehune Adventure Trail is an interactive trail leading you on 4 separate adventures throughout Aulani.  The Trail takes you to see many of the things the Menehune have created as well as hidden items useful to Auntie and her friends.  The trail also contains special interactive surprises triggered by completing the different tasks Auntie assigns to you during your adventure.  I don't want to spoil the fun but my personal favorite was walking inside the volcano in the middle of the resort to calm the lava flow.

To begin we picked up our cell phone (aka connection to Auntie) at the Pau Hono Room (community center).  Basically you followed the directions from Auntie from there.  You provide the community center workers with you room information and they give you a phone and a reservation code.  If you don't finish part of your Adventures or want to do more than one Adventure later you simply use the reservation code later to pick up where you left off.

Here is Miles at our very first location activating the hidden Menehune with a special chant.

On the first full day of our trip we tried to complete an adventure with everyone in tow (aka 2 grandma's, me, my husband, our 9 year old son and 3 year old daughter). The grandma's got bored as well as our 3 year old. Our son LOVED the adventure. Later in the week we checked our daughter into Auntie's Beach House, dropped the grandma's off at the beach and finished the remaining trails with our son. The best part of the adventure is that each station has fun interactive features triggered by the cell phone. We had literally passed by numerous locations several times during the week and never noticed what we were walking by.

Part of the Adventure includes a water feature allowing you to try and spray people on the Lazy River with flowers that shoot water!!!!  This was a big hit!

 

 

You would never guess that this rock would light up with a hidden turtle.  We never even noticed it until on the Adventure Trail.

 

 

 

The Menehune Adventure Trail was also a great way to simply explore the Resort.  I would recommend doing it early so that you can fully explore all the nooks and crannies of Aulani.  We found some truly beautiful locations while on the Adventure Trail.