I have spent over 150 days on Maui in the past 10 years. I also take annual business trips to Oahu and have vacationed on Lanai, Kauai, and Hawaii. The northwest side of Maui (Lahaina to Kapalua) is by far the best location in the entire Hawaiian Islands. It offers the most consistent and pleasant weather/sun, activities, and restaurants. In order to truly enjoy your time at Kahana Falls and at Maui, you MUST rent a car and you MUST do some homework BEFORE you get to Maui. Vacationing at Kahana Falls is not like sitting by a pool at an all inclusive resort in Cancun or Jamaica. If you like that kind of experience, you need to stay in a $400-800/night resort in Kaanapali or Wailea. If you like the Honolulu/Waikiki experience, just go to LA or Las Vegas and save yourself the long plane flight.

Kahana Falls basically provides you with a full kitchen condo that use can use as your home base while you are in Maui. The hotel units are NOT DESIGNED for people to stay in as a hotel alternative. They are second bedrooms that lock off so that the time share owners can either stay in them for one week and then move to the condo side the second week. Or they stay in the hotel unit AND the condo at the same time and just accommodate more people. Anyone who books the hotel unit as an inexpensive alternative to staying at a $300/night Sheraton, Hyatt or Westin is just kidding themselves and will be extremely disappointed. The Hale Kipa efficiency units in the rear are very inexpensive time share accommodations that allow owners to return to Maui for a low purchase price. A larger 2 bedroom time share cost about $8,500 to buy at Kahana Falls (on the resale market). A hale Kipa cost $3,000. A new 2 bedroom timeshare at the Marriott or Westin cost between $60,000 and $75,000. for the people who live in Maui, a basic 2 bedroom/2 bathroom condo anywhere near the water cost well over $1,000,000. Hopefully, you will get the picture (with these prices) and not expect Kahana Falls to be more than it is.

Kahana Falls does not have king size beds, a restaurant or sit on a beach. It is across the street form the beach. The pool is small and the views are limited. But it is still a great resort. There is a small gold sand beach across the street at Kahana and there are many wonderful beaches that are less than 5 minutes drive (Kaanapali, Napili, Kapalua, DT Fleming). One of the best restaurants in Hawaii (Roy's) is a 5 minute walk away. But the secret is to go to Costco right next to the airport or Safeway in Lahaina and buy the food you want ... and then cook it in your kitchen or on the outside gas grills at Kahana Falls. I could list hundreds of other good things to do in the area, but you are just better off buying a guide book and exploring it on your own. When you are going to Kahana Falls, you are basically staying in a small condo and using it as your home base to explore the rest of the island. The staff is extremely nice and you are very centrally located to the best part of the best island. If you book a room in the Hale Kipa or hotel unit and don’t like it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

We stayed at the Kahana Falls Resort, Feb 22 - Feb 29. What a wonderful surprise. Our unit 112 (Hale Kipa) was clean, no bugs, nice furniture, comfortable beds. We had what seemed our own hot tub just on the side of our building. It was clean and no one seemed to know about it. We enjoyed doing our own Bar-B-Que which was near the hot tub. The laundry facilities in the same area were FREE, two washers and dryers. Parking is free and pleanty of spaces available.

The welcome Mai Tai party was very enjoyable which was held by the main pool area. Free Mai Tais and snacks.

All the staff from the front desk to the maids were very pleasant and helpful. The activities personnel were very interested in making your outings enjoyable and affordable. There is even a free business center, where we checked our email daily.

A couple of nice restaurants are just a short walking distance (1 block) from the resort.

We have a timeshare that week in that unit and are so looking forward to our next visit.

The resort is old and rundown; it was supposed to have been upgraded two years ago. Obviously the owners do not want to invest the money. We had the misfortune of staying in their so called "studio" room which was smaller than a university dorm room. Small is an understatement for this room: there was no place to put our luggage, the appliances were old and cheap, the mattress, bedcovers and rugs should have been changed 10 years ago. There was a small table and two chairs pushed into the corner of the room, but inorder to sit at the table one person had to sit partly into the bathroom.

The location of the resort was good and was close to some nice restaurants. The pool was small and not very inviting.

This resort is in need of major updates and renovation. While we were there they were replacing some of the floors of the unit next to ours but not any of the furniture, which was old and dirty. THe beds were not very comfortable. We had a two bedroom lock-off unit that faced the pool and could see a bit of ocean if you leaned over the rail in one of the far corners of the lanai. In the front bedroom on the morning of the first day, there was a roach on the wall near the ceiling. We contacted the front desk and someone came up immediately to remove it. We didn't see anymore during the trip but yuk! The pool was nice but the weather was not nice enough for us to use it much as it was rainy and windy in Kahana most of our trip. (A vendor at the arts and crafts fair told us that Kahana is the "cold" side of the island). There was a beach across the street that was nice at the Sands of Kahana. However, it did rain quite a bit in Kahana so we went down to a toddler friendly beach about a mile away by the Farmer's Market--also good for snorkeling where it suprisingly was not raining. There was also a good beach in Lahaina (about 10 miles south) where the weather was always sunny and there was a very baby and kid friendly beach and many, many shops and restaurants. The good thing about Kahana Falls is the staff. Everyone was very nice and helpful. The Concierge---CIndy- was great! She even drove my parents down the street one day when it was raining so they didn't have to walk in the rain (my husband and I had the car).