Resort Review: Fairmont Kea Lani Maui (+ Why We Loved It) 2024

Recently we traveled to Hawaii for the first time, visiting both Oahu and Maui. We stayed at the Fairmont Kea Lani for 6 nights on Maui. Here’s my completely honest review of our time there.

First, where is the Fairmont Kea Lani located? Fairmont Kea Lani is in Maui on the Wailea strip, next to the Four Seasons Maui. There’s a lovely beach walk (paved and stroller friendly) between the resort and the beach. You can use this to walk to the other resorts or walk on the street/sidewalk if you prefer. Early in the morning people walk or run on the beach walk, so it can get crowded, but we had a nice walk and could see lots of whales in the ocean.

The Rooms at Fairmont Maui

Each of the rooms at the Fairmont Kea Lani is suite-style, meaning you get a room with a living area plus a separate bedroom and bathroom. Both the living area and bedroom have a large flat-screen TV. The bathroom was spacious (which you can see below). The water closet was behind its own door (something we have at home that I love!). The soaking tub is large, with a separate shower area.

If you’re curious what to wear when you vacation in Hawaii, I have a full post on that here!

A few of my favorite things about our suite:

• The beds were SO comfortable. We opted for 2 double beds, because it just works better for our family. The other choice was 1 king bed, and we would have used the queen sofa bed in the living room for the other bed.
• The living room included a queen sofa bed, though we didn’t use this so I can’t comment on its comfort. It was lovely to have a separate living area so that when the kids fell asleep early, we could still watch a movie and leave the sliders open for the cool breeze.
• The toilet/water closet is separate from the rest of the bathroom, with its own door. If you’ve heard me talk about our home renovation at all, this is one of my favorite things that we did.
• The tub and shower are separate. This was helpful when the kids wanted to take a bubble bath but I wanted to shower off all of the sand and chlorine from the day.
• The bath products were top quality. Exactly what you would expect at a 5 star resort. Next time I would skip bringing my own shampoo, conditioner, body wash, etc. because the Fairmont’s stuff was just as nice!
• There is an outdoor space on each room, including outdoor dining furniture to enjoy breakfast outdoors. We sat outside at that table almost every day! There is also a lounge chair, where I read my book while my toddler napped.
• If you have a little one, you can get a crib (not pack n play but actual crib) brought to your room for them. This is wonderful for toddlers who may feel cramped in a pack n play but comfortable in a crib.

• Upgraded rooms include partial ocean view, oceanfront/full ocean view, and two-story villas that are closer to the beach. The villas are 2- or 3-bedrooms and some include a private plunge pool and BBQ grill.

Here was our partial ocean view from the 4th floor:

Compare prices at Fairmont Kea Lani, and on TripAdvisor and Booking.com

Beach and Pools

Fairmont Kea Lani is a beachfront property with 22 acres, 450 units for visitors, and three outdoor pools. One of the pools is for adults only, one has a waterslide best for the 10+ crowd, and one is a larger pool with a small wading pool next to it for younger kids. The main pool is fairly large but still feels like you have small areas to yourself because of its shape.

The wading pool was amazing for our 2 year old, who spent hours in here each day. The middle was probably only 6″ deep – up to his knees. And my 5 year old daughter didn’t mind splashing around in there with him, too, when I needed them in one place.

There is a separate pool for 18+ only, which makes it a much quieter spot to relax if you are visiting without kids. Here’s a sunset view of that pool, which had more cabanas and chairs to my right and left.

Towel service is available both at the beach and at each of the pools, and the pools are pretty much open 24/7. That was really great for us, since we were still a bit on east coast time so our kids were up with the sun each morning. You can purchase floats and toys at the little towel house next to the pool, as well as fill up your water bottle or get sunscreen!

Food service didn’t start at the pools until 11am, which was fine but not ideal for us on east coast time. It was fairly easy to get food quickly except for the two days of our trip when it was busy at the pool. Then it took about 30 minutes to even get our order in, mostly because they only had one person working pool service. I LOVED that fresh fruit came with almost every meal. There is something about the honeydew, cantaloupe, and pineapple in Hawaii- it’s just so good.

It was easy to get a seat by the pool, though not always in the shade like we wanted. Every 2 seats had an umbrella above it. There are plenty of seats near the pools. About half of the chairs at the main pool seemed to be under the cabanas which were rental-only for an additional $300 per day.

The beach at the Fairmont Kea Lani Maui had perfect sand for sand castles. Chairs and umbrellas are available for resort guests at no charge.

Fairmont Kea Lani Restaurants + Food Options

Room service is available 24/7, plus there is Makana Market on site which has breakfast pastries and breakfast sandwiches, fresh fruit, and coffee. One thing we loved about dining on site was that kids under 5 ate free when an adult was dining with them (at Ko, the Kea Lani/breakfast buffet, and AMA but not at Nick’s Fishmarket or poolside or at the market).

Kō at Fairmont Kea Lani: Asian inspired food in a partially outdoor setting. My short rib was tasty, and the Mai Tai with Pina Colada foam was *chef’s kiss*.

Kea Lani Restaurant/breakfast buffet: A great buffet with many choices. The kids loved the chocolate muffins, and I enjoyed the mango danish and fresh fruit.

Nick’s Fishmarket: For our last night we had a special dinner at Nick’s, which requires a reservation. The opakapaka fish was SO tasty (and apparently hard to find in restaurants). The bananas foster dessert was also really good!

Lounge: Live music, happy hour, and comfy spots to watch the gorgeous sunset sky. I had an incredible burger here our first night!

Poolside AMA Grill: The food was typical poolside food. Our kids enjoyed the cheeseburgers and french fries, milkshakes, and juice. My husband like the Long Paddle In drink (like a frozen Mai Tai). There was only one salad on the menu, and the dressing (Caesar) was a little spicy.

Other amenities

Each floor has a washer and dryer, so if you’re traveling with little kids who frequently spill mac and cheese on their clothes, you don’t have to wait to get home to do a load of wash. This was a plus for us, because it also meant we could pack lighter for our trip.

Each suite gets 2 reusable water bottles. On each floor there is a water filtration machine you can use to refill your bottles. I loved this because we didn’t have to keep buying bottled water (and it’s better for the environment)! I had brought our kids’ water bottles (see what else I brought for traveling with the kids here), so we refilled those daily too. I loved having these reusable water bottles provided by the hotel. We used them daily, and I felt good about reducing our plastic use! Plus they had many refill stations around the resort, so it was easy to find water.

And at the pool and beach there are pumps of mineral sunscreen, both 30 SPF and 50 SPF. That was a nice touch, which we also had a couple of years ago at Four Seasons Orlando. It’s just nice to not have to carry around bottles of sunscreen if you’re staying on property.

We walked to the Four Seasons one night for dinner and it started to rain just as we were making our way back. But not a problem at all – I just called the front desk, and they sent a shuttle SUV over to pick us up. The shuttle actually got there before we could walk from the beachside restaurant to the hotel’s front lobby!

Overall Thoughts on Fairmont Kea Lani Maui

Overall, we had a wonderful time at the Maui Fairmont Kea Lani. Would we stay there again? Yes. Next time I’d change rooms to have a full ocean view vs. just partial, though the kids loved that they could oversee the dumpster being emptied out one morning (hah!). We had planned to upgrade our room to either a full ocean view or a villa starting on the second day, but when we called back to do so it was suddenly 3X the up charge price they had quoted us. (That was kind of annoying.) We decided to just stay in our partial ocean view room at that point.

At the end of the day, our family gave it a resounding 10/10, though I took off a half point for the dumpster view. But still, I’m a tough critic so 9.5/10 as a score from my family is a win!