We spent nine nights here at Hilton’s Kings’ Land during a two week vacation.
We could’ve flown to anywhere in the Caribbean in the half the time or less than it takes to get to Hawaii, but we came here last year for a week and had such a great experience that we wanted to return!
Kings Land is owned by Hilton and is part of the larger and sprawling 600 something acre Waikola Resort, which includes two ocean front Hilton hotels, Kings Land and several other condo style vacation rental properties including condos and villas operated by Hilton Vacation Club and Marriott. The resort is basically a small town with two different shopping areas with higher-end shopping and dinning in one, and more moderate range shops and dinning in the other, which also has a full grocery store, a cinema, food court, gas station, etc. There’s also two golf courses to chose from on property. And a public ocean beach adjacent to the resort property.
The Waikola Resort is huge! It’s beautifully manicured and well maintained. It’s isolated in the 200 year old lava fields about 15 miles from anything. The area here is so peaceful and quiet. Even on resort grounds, you can hardly hear a car passing on the highway.
If you’re staying at Kings Land, you can avoid paying for parking, like you would if you were staying down the street at one of the two Hilton’s. There’s free parking here. You also get parking and pool passes to use if you want to go down there and use their multiple pools or ocean fed lagoon. Shop, dine, etc. There’s also a convenient property shuttle that runs a loop and comes every fifteen minutes.
The main clubhouse, where you check-in, is also grand luxury with its own courtyard, sprawling pools, and bar/cafe patio. (The room buildings also have their own private pool and hot tub shared among each group of three buildings.)
We only had one small issue with our stay. We were anticipating a single King bedroom room, like the one we had last year in Bldg 24 -across the street-
This time, on check-in, we were put in Building 4. There was no interior room access or an inside lobby, business center, etc. The rooms were motel style, where you access from the outside. Also, the room was smaller. The kitchen lacked some of the utilities and appliances we had the year before. There was a giant stain on the bedroom carpet. As well as a badly stained footrest in the sitting room and some dinged up furniture! The patio was considerably smaller.
After a quick call to the front desk, they offered to move us across the street to where we were last year in Building 24. However, we had to spend the first two nights in an inferior room. Ironically, of which they told me was actually one of their ‘Premier Rooms’ that most guests prefer! They also explained that since it was a Hilton Vacations property, not all buildings and rooms were exactly the same. -As a newer built property, I wrongly assumed the rooms were basically the same-
Once we moved across the street, we were where we wanted to be and got the room we’d expected. Had another wonderful stay! In fact, we would have stayed another night, but there was no vacancy for the tenth night when I booked months ago.
I definitely recommend asking for Buildings 23-24, or the other one’s on the opposite side of the road from the Clubhouse & Check-in. Those one’s have an actual building entrance with an Air Conditioned Lobby/concierge desk, carpeting, and indoor elevator access to room floors. And slightly larger rooms with larger balconies. The golf course views over the fairways with roaming mountain goats in the morning and evening are also better in these rooms! One of the reasons we chose to return.
