Our family of 4 arrived for a 9 day stay on a Thursday.... We received an upgrade from a garden view and got our friends, who were arriving 2 days later, an upgrade in the same building. We received a deluxe ocean view in building 5 (room 5101). We loved everything about our room and felt like we had the building to ourselves. At check-in they told us the room was larger than the others, but didn't have much of a view. The view turned out to be beautiful! Don't know what they were talking about. The walk to the pool and beach was as simple as taking the elevator down to the first floor and walking out. Depending on how booked the hotel is...you might want to get a pool chair early though. It can get busy at the pool. Parking was a piece of cake. We parked just outside the entrance to the building. No need for valet if you stay in building 5. We wouldn't recommend building 6, as it is difficult to get to anything and requires a maze of halls & elevators. The food is expensive at the resort, but you have less expensive options nearby. Our stay was quiet and relaxing and I would stay there again without hesitation. If you have a late flight out and can't get a late check-out due to a full booking, they will allow you use of the all resort facilities for the day and showers in fitness center. Overall the staff was great, the resort was beautiful and our every need was met. We couldn't help enjoying ourselves and didn't want to leave!

Stayed at the Sheraton Maui in June of 2008 for 5 nights for our honeymoon. We had an "ocean front" room and we loved it.

The Sheraton definitely has the best beach location on Kaanapali. Venturing further south, you'll realize that the other resorts have barely any beach at all. We walked (and jogged) several times as far south as the Hyatt and I was always struck on how little beach-area the other resorts had.

The pool was not huge, but not small. There are a couple of little bars poolside and it makes for an absolutely beautiful place to have a couple of drinks and watch sunset.

We only ate a couple of meals at the resort -- lunch pool side at the Sundowner Bar, and a late lunch at the Keka'a Terrace (we were given a coupon at check-in). As you would expect from a oceanside resort, the food and drinks were expensive. The only disappointing aspect of our stay was our lunch at the Keka'a Terrace. The service was terrible. It appeared that we showed up just before a shift-change, so our initial waitress took our orders, delivered our drinks, and then disappeared. After the food was delivered, I thought the place had closed -- literally no service for over 10 minutes. I had to fetch my own ketchup from an adjacent table and I really wanted another drink, but no such luck. When you're paying $20 a plate, you expect better than that.

Whaler's Village is a great place to shop and eat -- and it's only about a 5 min walk along the beach. We absolutely loved our meal at Leilani's On The Beach and the ABC Store was great for getting supplies for our hotel room (bottled water, sundries, etc).

We stayed here 7 nights in May, and we had a great time. The hotel is on a stretch of beautiful beach in the heart of the Kaanapali resort area. It's a 5-minute walk to Whaler's Village, which has cute little shops and restaurants, and it's about a 10-minute drive to the heart of Lahaina, where there are tons of great places to eat.

The resort itself is nice, although it could use a little rehab. Hallways needed new paint, and the rooms are okay, nothing spectacular. But we got a fantastic deal on our room - $179/night with the AAA rate on a garden view, and when we got there, they had upgraded us to a partial ocean view. Don't know if I'd pay extra for the partial ocean view, since the balcony is so narrow and not very functional, but it was nice to have the upgrade. Do yourself a favor and enroll in the Starwood program before you go - they give you all sorts of free stuff, and I think that's why we got the upgrade.

Hawaii is very expensive, and within the resort, you'll feel like you're getting ripped off at every turn - $4 for a small coffee? $50 for two people for a breakfast buffet? (yes it was a very nice buffet, but better to go into Lahaina and eat at the Sunrise Cafe or Pioneer Inn).

This isn't a 5-star hotel, and I wouldn't pay more than $250/night including the $20 resort fee, but for the deal we had, it was well worth the money. I'd definitely stay here again.

Other than the cockroaches in the rooms and the largely incompetent staff, this hotel has an enviable location with larger, motel feeling rooms and magnificent views. The pool is smallish but looks bigger due to the layout. That's okay because it never seemed too crowded due to the adjoining Kaanapali Beach at Black Rock and the fact that the over-chlorinated and cloudy water in the pool made many people choose the beach over the pool altogether.

Maui has for years been rated as the top island destination in the world, and it's beginning to show. The infrastructure is struggling to keep up with crowded roads, overly busy restaurants, and too much clutter. For instance, the Sheraton looks across the channel at the island of Lanai, just 8 miles away. Five years ago, when we stayed at the Marriott timeshare just down the way from the Sheraton, the view was magnificent. Now, it is cluttered with buoys, water platforms and markers for the competing parasail, boating and surfing businesses that fill the sky and the channel all day long. It's a rare time during the daylight hours when there are not at least 3-4 parasails in the air all at the same time, and the boats really clog the view. If the environmentalists could block offshore oil platforms, you'd think they'd do something about this, particularly since so many whales pass by during the migratory periods.

The Sheraton suffers from the hype, with noisy machines going many nights to support the luau on the property, as well as the other activities. As a result, instead of hearing the waves at night, we heard the machines humming with sounds not unlike an RV generator, sometimes for most of the night. What is more, the amenities have a decidedly bolted on feel rather than being integrated into the property. For instance, the thin LCD TV is not hung on the wall; it sits on a table taking up space, and all of the movies we tried to watch were very digitized and jumpy, so much so that the management readily credited our account and acknowledged that others around the hotel had raised the same complaints. In short, the place is not what it once was, the gem of Kaanapali Beach; instead, it has fallen victim to its own success. Even the grounds have a minimalist feel, not quite up to par with the Marriott or the Hyatt down the way.

The staff seemed not quite to get it either. We were there on vacation, not to work with the schedules of the maids or the exterminators. When we spoke to the manager about the inconvenience of having to leave our room for a few hours to allow an exterminator in (it was on a day when we were trying to avoid getting too much sun), he offered us a free movie. Of course, we couldn't watch it until we could re-enter our room, but that seemed lost on him. Other times, we called to speak to someone, and we got no answer or were quickly transferred and placed on hold for an extended time. I felt like I was back at the office, not on vacation in Maui.

Finally, a bit about the bugs. I killed a decent sized cockroach in the bathroom one evening. The next morning, a smaller one met his maker on the bedstand. I took the dead varmints wrapped in tissues to the front desk to prove I wasn't lying. I was promised my room would be sprayed so as to be bug free for the remainder of my stay. It was sprayed alright, but that did not keep two more of the critters from scampering across the floor that night. Not quite what one expects at Sheraton prices.

Go for the view, but be warned, this place is not up to the level of the travel brochures.