(main photo of each page provided by Sand & Sun Photography)

Hawaii 2024

On September 3, 2023 we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary with a vow renewal with family and friends. We were asked several times if and where we would go for our ‘Honeymoon’? We had been planning our trip to Disney Aulani Resort for several months at that time but hadn’t really planned on a ‘honeymoon’. Come on, we were married 40 years, who needs ‘another’ honeymoon. But the more we thought and planned it made this trip all the more exciting.

My Prince Charming ~ ALWAYS!

So we started really planning. Whenever we make plans for vacation, the first thing we have to do is make sure our pet sitter is available. She stays at our home and takes such good care of our fur-babies. Once that was confirmed we were in full planning mode.

First up, we. knew were going to Disney’s Aulani, but how were we going to get there? When we have taken longer flights we have found better flights out of New York instead of Philadelphia. There are not many non stop flights to Hawaii and we really did not want to deal with lay-overs with the worry of missing connections, luggage not getting to the next plane and just overall making the first day of travel even longer. We opted to fly Delta out of JFK directly to Honolulu. Once we decided that, we made the crazy decision to book the Delta One seats which offer full lay down seats for a very comfortable long flight with lots of luxuries that we don’t ever see on our regular trips to Florida!

Ok, so we got our flight planned, our hotel booked, our pet sitter booked. We were flying out on a Saturday morning and we didn’t want to risk driving to NY just a few hours before a more than ten hour flight. We were looking at hotels close to JFK but then the issue was we were dropping off a rental at the airport so we really needed something really close. Well there isn’t anything closer than the TWA Hotel which is located right in JFK airport at terminal five.

We arrived at TWA hotel after dropping off our rental car and hoping on the very easy to navigate AirTrain that loops to each of the terminals, the car rental area and connects to the city outside of the airport. Check in was a breeze and we made our way to our room.

This hotel is amazing! Very retro! There is an old retired TWA plane that was converted to the Connie Cocktail Lounge. Of course we made a visit to this after we got settled.

We booked the deluxe king guest room. The rooms are definitely just a one night stay as they are not large rooms like we are used to when vacationing. For a fee you could have a view of the runway at JFK, but we figured for the short time we were there, we didn’t need to do that. Hindsight, I should have. But we really were only in the room when we got ready for bed and we had to be up early to check in at the airport. The hotel has windows that are very thick, the second thickest in the world, that blocks the sounds of outside. Also blackout shades that truly did block all light.

We had dinner and drinks in the Sunken Lounge while we people watched for a little bit. This sign was constantly changing with various retro things. The food and drink were very good.

We then walked around and took some photos. They have an area that show all the different uniforms over the years. It was so neat to see how the styles changed.