Plantation Hale Suites — Attraction in Kauai

The staff is nice, people friendly, and the place is kept up well. It is probably the least expensive place in the area but at the reasonable price it barely good enough to justify the properties overall flaws. So on that note, here are the issues to know going in.  1) It is billed as updated not remodeled, that is fine. With granite countertops and newer furniture it just basically the same old unit with some lipstick.  As a remodeling contractor to consider it to be an update it should at least have a dishwasher.  They deep cleaned once for the week, which we appreciated, but did not do the dishes on that day, which we did not appreciate. There are not a lot of dishes and just enough stuff to prepare one meal for a family of 4 so we did a lot of dishes, by hand, on vacation.  2) They said that they recycled, which we appreciated, but I think it was assumed to be our responsibility to walk it half way across the complex to get rid of it and there were no containers in the room to help us with this, which we did not appreciate.  We seperated everything, provided our own containers (which they would always take), and saved it up for less trips.  They would come by when we're gone to do daily maintenance and we do not know if the stuff they picked up, in the seperate container, ever made it.  We doubted it did, so we tried to take the recycling out ourselves, eveyday, on vacation. 3) Let me start this one by saying how we got to plantation fail.  We were graciously gifted 15000 diamond resort points ($2800) which were going to use in sint maarten.  When we had to rebook, this place was the only resort in Hawaii that meshed with our schedule and it was 14000 points.  We assumed that it was on par with the other resorts right here (since it trades for the same points) and the quick scan of online reviews looked good enough.  However, the other resorts all around this place are way, way nicer. Thank God the timeshare owner wasn't with us or she would of flipped out. Ok, shame on Diamond Resorts. Seperate issue that she will have to deal with.  We weren't to bummed because this is typically what we can afford and this review talks about the property and not about what we expected.  So when we were given a "mountain view" room we were happy because the ocean view is onto a 8 ft plywood wall with 4 ft of mesh on top of that which covers the whole length of the resorts ocean access.  Seriously,  you walk out of your unit towards the ocean and when you run into plywood you turn left or right to get to the ocean. This is the only resort with a plywood view.  Our view of the sleeping giant was beautiful however the patio was about 40 ft from the highway.  The constant traffic, car stereos,  bicyclist yelling between each other,  and sirens were terrible with the screen door open.  We would of loved to keep the door open because the AC was loud and ineffective and a nice breeze would of been perfect. The pool, or no view, is the best option... and cheaper.  I found out why the area in front of them is unimproved. I researched that site was found to contain native remains and a ton of artifacts. It contains fish hooks,  spears, flint knives, a whole lot of crazy interesting stuff.  They should turn the area into a positive instead of an eye sore.  4)  This last item is up for debate.  The front desk made it clear that there is no safe swimming beach anywhere in a short walking distance.  That really sucked for us.  Try keeping small to teenage kids out of the water when we go to around the plywood wall to "just check the ocean out".  I am a strong swimmer and grew up ocean savy but no one was in the water, no one. That is a pretty good indicator.  We had to rent a car and drive every day to go to the beach.  So that is not a hotel complaint just something you should be aware going to this Kapa'a area. Since we had to rent a car we decided to make full use of it and we toured the whole island and its beaches but our favorite place we kept coming back to was...

We were excited to arrive in Kauai for the last leg of our island trips; however, came to a upsetting outcome when we arrived at Plantation Suites in Kauai. We arrived early requesting an early check-in, if possible, and were advised that we would be contacted when our room was ready. We returned at 3:00 p.m. given we had heard nothing (not that it was expected given we arrived early) and were advised that our room was still not ready and may be another 30 minutes. 1 hour 36 minutes later our room was ready. This put a damper in our holiday as we are on vacation and did not want to lose any of our vacations day sitting waiting for our room. When we were advised that our room (which is not the initial room that was allocated and paid for at the time of check in), we were given a room right beside the laundry room which we were concerned about with the noise. When we arrived in our "cleaned" and readied room, the room we entered into was disgusting. The fridge had a layer of "gunk" with dust and crumbs on the top, the mirror in the living room was smeared with handprints and looked like liquid was poured down it, all the furniture was dusty and dirty, the bowel around the toilet was disgustingly dirt like it had never been cleaned before, the tub was all cracked and looked like mold was growing in the cracks, the floors were disgustingly dirty like they had never been washed or cleaned. The lamp shades and pictures were all full with dust. We were scared to stay in the room, let alone sleep in it. We didn't even unpack our clothes for the six days we were there because we were scared to put out clothes in the dirty cupboards and drawers. One of the double beds was like sleeping in a donut because of the sunken hole in the middle. The safe didn't even have a lock on it and we had to request that this be put in so we could safely store our valuables. The light in the laundry room was even working and had to also have maintenance have this fixed. We quickly (and gladly) left the room to get groceries and ensured that we bought disinfectant wipes and wiped down to the whole room before even considering sleeping under the covers! Slept on top of the bedding the first night. I would never recommend this accomodation to anyone and they should update their rooms, renovate them in full and gut the whole thing and start over again! Will never stay...

Our Ohana love staying here at least once or twice a year. The room is very ideal for families because of the room size and the fact that the bedroom is a separate room from the kitchen and living room. If I was to only score the spacious rooms and pool I would be rating the Plantation Hale a much higher score! Sadly this past experience was nothing like our past stays. We were harassed by the security for multiple days! The security guard was very rude, giving us a hard time for parking our cars in the parking lot within visiting hours and giving us threats about taking us to court and towing our cars even though it was not yet 10PM(when visiting hours end and we needed to move our cars to a public parking area, which we did EVERY NIGHT and walked back to our room) Because they only give one free parking pass we decided to put it on my mothers car during our visit and yet he still put a warning on her car writing a not on the side saying this is her last chance to move her car or he will tow her car. My poor mother took 2 weeks vacation to enjoy a room with her family and it turned out to be a stressful stay, worrying about our cars being towed. It was never like this before. I don’t know where this security use to work but he treated us like we were in prison, rudely scolding us for things that wasn’t even against hotel policies! We’ve been loyal guests to Plantation Hale for years and we know their policies and have never caused any problems before. Because of this horrible experience with this security guard that doesn’t seem to know how to do his job with a little aloha and actually learn how to read a clock and read what the hotel policies are, we might need to find another hotel to...