- Everything you need to know if you're considering a stay
at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Hotel.
In this video, I'm gonna show you
the neighborhood around the hotel,
the common areas of the hotel,
the inside of the Diamond Head Ocean Front View room.
Food's definitely important so I'll also be showing you
the breakfast buffet and then I'll conclude
with an overall assessment and review of this hotel.
Okay, first things first,
let's talk about where the Hyatt Regency Waikiki is located.
It is located here in Waikiki Beach.
It's those two tall towers right there.
And the Hyatt Regency, it's kind of on the south part
of Waikiki Beach. You could call it ocean front.
There are no other hotels in front of it.
The last ocean front hotel
that doesn't have a road in front of it
is the Westin Moana Surfrider right there.
But I actually really liked this location,
Waikiki Beach, because I love this Kuhio Beach Park
that I'm swimming in right now
because it's a protected beach right here.
Meaning that there's a little rock juddy out there.
And so if you've got little ones
or you just liked to swim without a lot of waves,
you can do it right here.
Now that we've seen the neighborhood around the hotel.
Let's check out the hotel itself.
But first I want to talk to you about the parking situation.
The parking, self-parking is actually across the street
in the Hyatt Regency Ballroom right up there.
There's eight floors in this parking structure.
The hotel usually does valet parking
that you'll see right here,
but it was currently closed due to the pandemic
and only self parking.
This parking structure does leave something to be desired.
The spaces are really narrow and it's hard to go up there.
So hopefully you have a small car
if you're doing self parking.
So now from that usual valet area,
you enter in the hotel on the ground floor,
into this ground floor open air atrium.
On the right we just passed a wedding dress shop.
There's a Sunglass Hut.
And then to the left is an ABC store
where you can get everything a tourist would ever need.
Now to head up to the lobby
we actually go up this escalator to the second floor
but I will point out that right here in the atrium
there's a whole ton of other shops that way
that we'll take a look at it in just a little bit.
Now, just up that escalator and down the hallway
we get to the main lobby of the hotel.
The concierge desk is on the left
to book activities, reservations,
and on the right is the front desk.
When we checked in, there was quite a long line.
This is the third day of our stay.
There's also quite a long line and check-in time.
I think right now they might be a little bit understaffed.
Now, if you have luggage, there's only one way
to get up here with luggage
'cause you can't take the escalator.
There is one elevator which you'll find
in the center of the building, just down this way
there is a white and blue awning that goes up to the spa.
That's what you'll have to take from the ground floor
to the second floor to get up here to the lobby.
You'll see it right back there.
If you're looking for it
just kind of walk right next to the waterfall
and then you'll find the elevator to come up here.
Now, when you're heading up to the guest rooms
the elevators to go up to the guest rooms
only go from the second floor up to the guest rooms.
So if you're coming here with strollers
or things like that, which we were,
it's a little inconvenient because you have to take
that one elevator in the middle and then transfer
to the guestroom elevators, which are over here.
So you gotta take two elevators to your room.
If you've got wheeled things or you're in a
wheelchair because you won't be able to use
the escalators to get from the ground floor to the lobby.
Now that we've checked out the lobby
and the parking let's check out
some of the restaurants and shops
starting on the north end of the hotel
here under the Ewa Tower,
we have Urban Outfitters clothing gift shop
that takes up two stories on this corner.
Just next to Urban Outfitters
down in the basement is the Kirin Chinese restaurant
just down this staircase.
I'm not really sure if this is even open right now
it looks a little bit dirty
might be closed due to the pandemic.
And then along the sidewalk here
you'll find tons of gift shops.
I should point out the Honolulu Cookie Company
which is really popular for cookie souvenirs
to bring back home.
There is an Ugg store, why you'd want to buy
really warm boots in Hawaii,
I'm not sure, you'll find a few more clothing stores,
a surf shop, but one store our traveling princess
really liked it was Dylan's Candy Bar.
This place is all about candy.
They've got ice cream. They've got sweets.
If you've got a kid with you
I'm sure they'll love this shop.
In the corner you'll find a cafe with ice cream,
with smoothies, and shave ice.
If you're looking for a place in Waikiki
to get some Hawaiian style shave ice,
you can get it right here.
Now, if you don't have a sweet tooth
but you have a sushi tooth
you'll find a sushi shop right next to the ABC store
that we went by earlier.
This place is called Furusato Sushi.
And you can see right there in the window
all the sushi chefs making up that tasty raw fish.
Now you can enter into the hotel
a lot of different ways to that first floor atrium.
But one of the ways is through the ABC store.
This is one of my favorite ways
because this area is air conditioned.
So this is what I'm walking through
to get to the ground floor atrium.
Now, as I mentioned before anything you'd want
as a tourist wines, drinks, sunscreen,
you'll find at the ABC store.
This is the escalator that we started up at the beginning.
And so let's take a look at what's inside the atrium.
Right here's a gift shop
that doesn't look like it's currently open.
On the left you'll see that candy bar
that I walked by earlier.
It opens to the front street and also to the inside.
There's a little gallery here
that you can get some Hawaiian style art.
One thing you'll want to know about
if you don't have breakfast in the hotel
is this Kai Coffee Hawaii, pretty good coffee shop.
They've got pretty inexpensive breakfast things.
I've seen long lines here in the morning.
So this is an inexpensive breakfast spot.
In the center of the atrium
is a really impressive three-story waterfall
our traveling princess likes looking at this one.
And then the spa is right there on the fifth floor.
Tucked in the corner behind Urban Outfitters
is Local Motion, kind of surf shop gift shop kind of thing.
It's also got the elevator that'll take you up
to the second floor. The second floor is home
to a lot of tour operators
that were closed when I was here.
Notably, if you're renting a car,
there's a Hertz Dollar and Thrifty
rental car office here on the second floor.
Now there are a few more shops that I skipped
on the first and second floor,
mostly because they were closed
likely due to the lack of guests due to the pandemic.
So on the third floor between the two hotel towers
you'll find the hotel's quite small swimming pool.
It's a big hotel and this is the only swimming pool in here.
There's a hot tub there in the back under that roof
but we're right next to the beach.
So that's probably why it's okay to have
a small swimming pool because you're literally
50 steps to the sand from this hotel.
Now if you are heading to the beach
you'll probably want some pool chairs and some towels.
You can pick them up right at this service desk
at the swimming pool. If it isn't open or closed yet
you can also pick up towels and chairs
by the bell desk over by the parking garage.
across from the pool, you'll find a small,
but well-appointed gym.
The hotel's main restaurant is called Shore.
It's on the third floor.
This is where the breakfast buffet is.
During the pandemic they've been doing
a pretty good job of a breakfast buffet.
They serve you as you go by.
Every day they've had different eggs benedict.
It's our second day here. This is a salmon benedict.
Our traveling princess loves the fresh fruit
they have here. Yesterday it was watermelon,
today it's strawberries
but most important definitely get that papaya.
And at the Shore restaurant at nighttime
they light up torches, put lights on the tables.
It's a pretty neat place to eat at night
and also have a view of the slightly dark Beach Waikiki.
There's usually torches down there
on the main street, but not right now.
In addition to dine-in for the buffet due to the pandemic
you can also take it to go.
Three eggs Benedict to go right here,
a whole bunch of papaya to go.
They give you two containers per person,
by the way prices work out to be $29 for adults.
If you're paying for, about 10 bucks for kids,
but if you take it to go for your room,
most of these rooms have really great views.
This is a super sweet place to eat breakfast,
even a little better view up here
than than down from the breakfast buffet.
And for Elite Hyatt Members, the Regency Club is located
right through the Shore restaurant.
It wasn't open right now, but I'm sure it'll be open again.
And on every guest room floor,
something I really liked, they've got ice machines,
but not just ice, they've also got filtered water
on the ice machines as well.
This water actually tasted pretty good.
And if you're looking for the fancy filtered water machines,
you'll find these Flowater filter machines
on the third floor by each of the elevators.
This is room 27 62, a Diamond Head
Ocean Front View room in the Diamond Head Tower.
We are going to show you around.
Now, as we come into the room,
this room has two queen sized beds.
I will point out to you that it does have a crib
in the middle of the room.
Cribs are complimentary here at the Hyatt
and our little traveling princess
is definitely gonna enjoy her crib.
Beds have nice white sheets.
Let's take a look in the corner of the room.
There's a nice chair that you can sit in
and relax and drink out of your sippy cup,
which is what we do because
we're pretty refined that way.
Now the balcony, this is the amazing part
of the room to check out
and I will invite you out onto the balcony
to see the full view.
Come out onto the balcony let's take a look at this.
She's not going to go too close to the edge,
but come over here and you take a look at this.
Over that way you can see Diamond Head out there,
the famous Waikiki hike.
Down this way is my favorite part of Waikiki Beach
because it's these protected swimming areas with no waves.
And then just down that way
you can see like a gazillion surfers.
And if you wanted to eat there's a nice table
out here that you can eat on.
Okay, let's go check inside.
Okay, so now that we're back inside,
there's a big long desk in the room.
Lots of power ports right here, big flat screen television.
If we come over here the room comes with
two complimentary water bottles
and they've got ice machines with filtered water
just out in the hallway on every floor, which is nice.
If you wonder if the room has a refrigerator
it does right down here.
And then if we look down here,
there's a whole kind of coffee spread
that has Hawaiian Paradise coffee
and some Japanese green teas
because the Japanese love Waikiki.
And I'm sure that's a big part
of their clientele at this hotel.
What else in this room?
There's the closet right over here.
It's a pretty good size closet.
It's got a couple of luggage racks, an ironing board,
and they provide you a complimentary Hyatt Regency
shopping bag to go shopping with.
I always like that to take home as a souvenir.
A couple of drawers, you can put things in,
some shelves you can put things in.
So just around this corner, I wanna show you the bathroom
and something in the bathroom.
I'm gonna show you you'll definitely know
it caters to Japanese tourists that are coming here.
But this part of the room,
the sink part of the room, is really big
great echo chamber, nice sink.
But if we come over here to the toilet part of the room
you will see that the toilet right here
is a Toto Washlet toilet.
That's the one that actually,
if you come in and take a lookit here,
you can see it has the control panel on the wall
where you can wash your front,
you can wash your rear,
you can make it oscillate, pulsate it,
save settings for two different users,
and even dry yourself. That is pretty fancy.
Here, this is a really nice shower.
It's got a fixed head, it's got a handheld unit,
which I really liked.
It looks like it was recently replaced.
And they've got these Na Ho'ola Spa shampoos.
Nice, big size soaps. I like those.
And a really nice touch in that crib
there was baby shampoo and baby powder
and a baby blanket that says baby on it
so that nobody steals it. Yeah.
I'm talking to you, Topher. I know you look pretty comfy
but you can hear the traveling princess.
She wants her blanket back.
Okay, Topher, do you know what time it is?
- [Topher] It's hotel review time!
- It's time to review the hotel.
And for those of you who watch our reviews regularly
you'll know, we rate hotels
on a scale of one to five Tophers.
And so, Topher, how many Tophers
does the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach get?
- [Topher] Three and a half Tophers.
- Three and a half Tophers!
So now we're gonna tell you
the pros and the cons of the hotel
and tell you why it got three and a half Tophers.
By the way we're out here on the balcony
right now we just finished our takeout breakfast buffet
on our balcony table, which was pretty nice.
Let's start with the pros, great location,
central to Waikiki Beach,
in front of my favorite swimming area,
Kuhio Beach where I started this video.
I like swimming there because it's protected
from the ocean waves a great place for big kids
and little kids to swim.
It's also really close to the commercial district
of Waikiki. And even though it's not ocean front
on the sand there's nothing in front of it.
So you have unobstructed ocean views.
If you have an ocean front room.
The room itself was clean, we slept well in it,
we loved that they provided a crib.
The room seemed to be recently remodeled with new furniture.
The breakfast buffet was really good.
In fact, I think this was the best breakfast buffet
I've had in Waikiki Beach hotels.
Another thing we really liked about the room,
it's really big. This is the biggest
of all of the Waikiki hotel rooms we've stayed in.
So we had plenty of space to lay out our luggage.
There was plenty of space to put that crib
and in the bathroom where the sink is.
I think we could play twister in there.
I recently stayed at the Westin Moana Surfrider,
the room was so small in there
I actually had a hard time
opening my suitcase in that room.
Oh. And I can't forget having the ABC store
right in the hotel, super convenient.
Not just one but three ABC stores.
So no matter what part of the hotel
you are staying in or if you're at the swimming pool
you've got convenience store food, right at your fingertips.
And it's also really nice going to the beach
that they provide, not just beach towels
but they provide chairs and they were good chairs
that you could wear as a backpack.
They gave those out at the pool.
And so that was pretty nice too.
Cause most Waikiki beach hotels only provide
towels for free, not chairs too.
I also saw they had like boogie boards
and some other things, we didn't take them with us
but they looked like they were things
that could be taken down to the beach.
So those are the pros now onto the cons.
The first con this hotel definitely feels
like a 1970s type construction
that was grand in the 1970s
but just doesn't feel all that grand now.
There are some areas of the hotel,
like the escalators that were broken
a few days we were here.
So there's clearly a lot of deferred maintenance
this hotel has, they've definitely remodeled the rooms
and the guest room floors
but there's only so much they can do
I think with the bones of this hotel.
Also since it's on the main street and Waikiki beach
although the room was quiet from the other rooms
we did hear quite a bit of road noise
coming from that road down there
when loud motorcycles and things like that would go by.
That's what you're gonna get
with a hotel in Waikiki that's not ocean front.
If you have a truly ocean front room
with just the beach in front of you
that'll be a lot more quiet
than the room back this way.
Now, something that I give as a con
in almost every Waikiki hotel that I've stayed in
and includes this one is the parking situation.
The parking garage is somewhere between mediocre and awful.
The spots are tiny. The way to go up is tiny.
It's eight floors, but it feels like 16.
cars get stuck in all the time. During the pandemic
there was only self parking.
And so that made it worse.
If I came here, I don't like valet parking,
but I would valet park just so that I didn't
have to drive in that parking garage.
So finally, just to sum up the cons
this is a Hyatt Regency,
which is one of Hyatt's kind of top end chains,
and it just doesn't feel like one.
It doesn't feel that grand like most Hyatt regencies should.
Maybe 'cause it's by the beach,
maybe 'cause of the people who stay here,
maybe because they don't charge enough
for the room rates to maintain it like they should.
We paid about 200 a night for our room
for this trip here at the beginning of June,
maybe a little lower because of the pandemic.
But we recently stayed at a Hyatt place in Tokyo
which is a lower end chain than this Hyatt Regency
and that Hyatt place was so much nicer.
The furniture was so much nicer.
The lobby was so much nicer.
that Hyatt place in Tokyo was really grand.
And this Hyatt Regency just isn't.
So, you know, part of that rating might be
because of the expectation
that comes with the Hyatt Regency.
If this was like a Hyatt Centric
or one of Hyatt's lower end chains,
we might not expect as much.
And I think that's actually something common
not just amongst us, but if you read
the TripAdvisor reviews, people say that a lot too.
People also cite on TripAdvisor
that they hear noise from the other rooms.
We didn't really hear noise from the other rooms.
I think it's because this little Diamond Head
Ocean Front room is like a room off to itself.
I feel like a lot of the noise in the hotel
came from underneath the doors,
that that's where the noise came from.
We did smell some marijuana smoke
from other balconies near us even doing this review.
But I don't know that the hotel can be faulted
for the people that were just sending
smelly smoke towards us.
But now the question really is would we stay here again
if we came to Waikiki?
And I think the answer is yes,
we would stay here again.
As I said earlier, we love the location.
We love the breakfast buffet.
We love the really big room.
We love all the baby amenities
they provided for our traveling princess.
There's actually one last con I forgot to mention,
which is that the situation of the elevator
doesn't go all the way down to the ground floor.
The elevator only goes down to the second floor
for the guest rooms, and then you have to take an escalator
down to the ground floor.
Made it super inconvenient with a stroller
where we had to transfer elevators.
We basically left the stroller in the car
and only used that when we went around,
'cause it was so difficult to get the elevator down,
out with the stroller.
So if you are disabled, use a wheelchair,
you have a stroller.
Just know that's gonna be a big inconvenience
in this hotel because the guest room elevators
don't go all the way to the ground.
But all that being said, we still would stay here again.
If you want to see more of our hotel reviews for Waikiki
you'll find the link here on the screen
to all of our Waikiki hotel reviews
that include the Marriott, the Hilton Hawaiian Village,
the Westin Moana Surfrider, and the Sheraton.
As usual, we won't say goodbye,
'cause we'll see you in one of those videos.