Ko Olina Lagoon 4 — Attraction in Oʻahu

I would not recommend any of the Ko Olina Lagoons unless: 1) You have small children that need extremely calm waters to swim & play. 2) You’re staying at the nearby resorts. If you don’t meet either of those criteria, please spend your time exploring more of what the islands numerous gorgeous beaches have to offer.

The lagoons are pretty, but the parking is a nightmare if you don’t get there before 9am, they’re more crowded then they deserve to be, and the lagoons (#4 in particular) are below the flight path into HNL. So, if you love hearing jet noise every 15 minutes on your day at the beach….then you’re in luck!

The main reason that we had a bad experience at Ko Olina was the insistence of local security to follow arbitrary rules regarding beach umbrellas and shade tents. Basically, they drive around on golf carts and tell you to take down your umbrellas because they’re a “safety risk”. That’s a lie. They just want to control the public beaches to have a certain resort-style look that they approve of. Believe it or not they use to try and ban beach chairs AND children’s beach toys at these lagoons, but they no longer do that after significant public pushback.

On our visit last week (Aug 31st) we’d barely been at the beach for 10 minutes before security drove up in a golf cart to tell us to take down our umbrella. This happened to be the exact same security guard that was rude to us when we asked for directions at the entrance to the public parking lot. My wife reminded the guard that all beaches in Hawaii are public, and the resort has no authority over the public land. Then a random Karen stepped in for absolutely no reason and declared herself a “local” who proceeded to explain to us that these are man made lagoons and thus are “private property”. My wife called her out on not knowing, as a local should, that man made or not these beach lagoons are still beaches and still public property. The local Karen got frustrated and started to talk to my wife as if she were a child, at which point I told her that her tone was unacceptable and unappreciated. The Karen proceeded to blame my wife, at which point I cut her off and continued to talk to the guard and ignore the Karen until she walked away.

The guard was steadfast in his assertion that our umbrella needed to come down due to “safety”. I asked him what he meant by that, and he basically said that people are killed and injured by umbrellas every day and that he was just here to protect the beach goers. Just to be clear….umbrella related accidents at the beach account for around 300 injuries in the US annually. That’s nearly the same level of people injured by lightning every year in the US. So, the risk is extremely low. As I said, the main reason for their militant anti-umbrella attitude is all about having a certain look near the resorts. I guess they don’t care about putting the beach community at risk for skin cancer. That could be Ko Olina’s new catch phrase; “Come for the lagoons…stay for the cancer!”

Anyway, the west coast of Oahu has dozens of beautiful natural beaches that are rarely crowded. We went to several of these beaches during our stay in late August of this year and would recommend them all including Keawaula Beach, Mākua Beach, Makaha Beach Park, Papaoneone, Mauna Lahilahi Beach Park and Electric Beach aka “Tracks” which is only a few minutes north of the lagoons. I’m actually glad that we had this experience at Ko Olina, because it made us decide to leave and drive over to Electric Beach where we saw a Monk Seal that came to shore right in front of us. Perhaps the seal saw our lovely umbrella and wanted to come enjoy the shade...

This Beach Would have been a 5 star if this didn’t happen. A beautiful Sandy Cove for families and little kids perfect for swimming or sunbathing , we were disturbed by this local woman who was trying to regulate where people could sit. We were just visiting beaches around the island. Another family came and she said they were too close for her. Even though They were at least 15 feet away from her. They moved their chair to the other side. The woman of the visiting family said that this situation was Disgusting and I agreed.The local woman took the comment and and escalated the situation into something worse than what it was.She was cussing and yelling at the top of her lungs and she proceeded to walk towards me while I was sitting with my wife on the ground threatening that she was going to knock out my F…..ing Teeth ,her sister couldn’t control her and security came. They asked her to stop cussing and yelling and they couldn’t control her either.She Was making up stories lying saying I called her a disgusting local. I never said anything in that manner, I Said I can’t believe that this is how locals treat us tourists. She was like I’m not scared of you Mainlanders and she said this is my home. Police were called and they asked us to leave the Beach. They also made the other visiting family leave. They let the local woman remain.(Looking back on the situation,she was looking for a confrontational situation). I believe that this was not the first time and it won’t be the last time!!!!! Be aware of locals who don’t like us tourists. Other than that we thought Hawaii was a Beautiful place.We enjoyed our Honeymoon on Oahu and Maui. Someday We...

I came here because I read an article online about good snorkeling. Well, it wasn’t, though the beaches and the lagoons were beautiful and calm. They are great for a family outing. I didn’t know there were 4 lagoons, and later I found out that snorkeling was better at #2 and #3 lagoons. I walked over to #3 and only saw a few small fish. I think I needed to go outside of the cove to see sea life. Parking was difficult on a Sunday, so I waited for about 30 minutes, which was fine. When I left at around 1:30 p.m., there was a line for parking areas for each lagoon. It has clean bathroom, showers, shaded areas and even a shaved ice stand. I will definitely come back, but sans my mask and fins.

Update 3: I’ve finally checked out all 4 lagoons today. 4 is the most popular due to its parking lot (other lagoons’ parking areas appeared to be inaccessible to us non-hotel guests. 3 is quieter, but less shaded areas. 2 was nearly deserted this afternoon and even less shaded areas. 1 is both smaller than others and had far less people than 4. Each of the 4 lagoons have its own bathroom and showers. 1, 2 and 3 have some kind of food service from the hotels.

Update #2: we’ve came back for the sunset in late December and it was quite pretty. Parking can be a bit of an issue, but I got a space 10 minutes before sunset. The photos don’t do justice to its beauty.

Update: we came back here just to relax during a weekday early October. All the lagoons were very quiet with very few people as the summer season was coming to a close. Parking lots have a lot of spaces and plenty of shaded...