Review – Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa

Introduction

My friend had a wedding physically at the Sheraton Maui last week.  It was the impetus for my SPG points or cash post.  Overall, I thought the cliff dive and snorkeling area were the coolest things there, but the hotel is in desperate need of a remodel because the rooms look like an airport hotel.

We also attended a luau at the Westin, and I was able to walk around the hotel, so will compare some things between the sister hotels.  By the way, the Sheraton is about a 3 minute drive from the Westin, which is a 3 minute drive from the Hyatt Regency.

 

Checkin

I got to the hotel around 11:45AM.  I knew checkin wasn’t until 3PM, but I figured with 508 rooms, surely there would be a room available by noon, especially since I was a Gold member.  When I checked in, the rep told me I was given a partial ocean room (not sure if this was an upgrade or not,) however the room wasn’t ready yet.  In the past when I’ve checked in early for a hotel, the room would be available within an hour.

My wife and I checked our bags at the bellhop and we went to use our 1 free drink coupon (odd it wasn’t 2.)  We also walked around the property checking it out.  After an hour, at 1PM, we asked if our room was ready, and the rep said he couldn’t guarantee us a room until 3PM.  Frustrated, we decided to now grab food.  By 1:30PM, now I was getting angry.  I wanted to go up to the front desk and tell them forget about the stupid partial ocean view and give me ANY available room since I wouldn’t be staying there much anyway.

Before I resorted to that, I decided to DM @SPGAssist on Twitter.  They reached out to management and within 13 minutes, they let me know they reached out to management and my room was ready.  At this point, I’m not sure if tweeting them did anything or it was just a coincidence that my room was finally ready since it was 2PM by this time.  Regardless, I was NOT HAPPY about this checkin process.

 

Wifi

There was no need to log on and it was hanging up Pokemon Go quite a bit.  Eventually I turned off Wifi and got a better response time with my Tmobile LTE service.

 

Room

As you can see, the room looks super outdated.  My ‘partial ocean view’ meant I had to stand at the door and look left to see the ocean in the horizon.  The room was a bit noisy and the blackout shades didn’t do a good job either.

 

Breakfast

We ate at the Black Rock cafe for breakfast.  Besides the fruit, which is hard to screw up, the food was dreadful.  The eggs were not good.  The ahi ahi was super dry.  The sausage was worse than McDonald’s.  The omelette station was too busy for me to even try out (can’t blame the crowd since the other items were no bueno.)

 

Swimming

I actually liked the pool at the Sheraton a lot.  It has an interconnected ‘lazy river’ type of pool, which I prefer over a big massive pool.  This was also the first time I’ve seen an 8 feet deep section of pool.  Without lifeguards, maybe the Sheraton assumes someone will jump in and save other people. I thought the pool here was better than the Westin as well.  The Hyatt Regency pool edges out the Sheraton due to the big water slide.

While I didn’t snorkel here, my friends said they liked the snorkeling here better than their paid snorkeling excursion.  They saw sea turtles near Black Rock.  You can also cliff dive here as well.  So if that’s your thing, you may choose to stay here.  However, I’m pretty sure all Hawaii beaches are public beaches, so you don’t actually need to stay at the Sheraton to snorkel at Black Rock.  It’s probably a 10 minute walk from the Westin and maybe 20 minutes from the Hyatt.

 

Conclusion

The wedding location was probably the most gorgeous wedding location I’ve been to.  However, since you’re most likely not here for the wedding, do yourself a favor and stay elsewhere (the Hyatt or the Westin.)  The rooms are outdated, the breakfast buffet is dreadful, and making people wait 2 hours to checkin is not excusable.