We spent four nights in early November 2012 at Turtle Bay in the main hotel on the 6th floor. Our room faced NE, which meant it was bright in the mornings and quieter during the evenings. If we had the opposite view, we would have seen an amazing sunset each night from the comfort of our balcony. Played three rounds of golf...would definitely recommend the Palmer course. Went surfing a couple times, drank Lava Flows by the pool, rented a car and checked out local beaches and shrimp trucks. All in all, it was a perfect home base to explore the North Shore.

A few days on from our stay and my husband and I are still stumped by the glowing reports that convinced us to stay at Turtle Bay for 2 nights of our honeymoon. We're not sure if they're from people who keep going back again and again so know what to expect or from people who haven't travelled much and don't have anything to compare it to?
We have travelled extensively throughout Europe, the US and the Pacific and would return to many of the gorgeous hotels & resorts we've stayed at, but not this one.
The rest of the time we stayed at Waikiki at the Moana Surf Rider and the hotel and service were impeccable - for less cost - we should have stayed there the whole time in hindsight. Cost was not an issue as it was our honeymoon but it's awful to feel like you've not only had a bad experience but that it's cost us more than a fantastic one.

We found the front desk and Surfer bar staff surly and the bell desk staff stood round and chatted to each other instead of helping people. At least the housekeepers in the corridor said hello!

The spa was a huge disappointment - while my massage was lovely the facilities were very dated, after a 80 minute massage I came back to shower and there were still old razors and a face washer from the previous guest on the ground in the shower and I could hear the staff through the locker room door cursing the next guest who was running late.
Once the 20% tip was dictated, the 80 minute massage was $245!!!
Actually, it felt like there was a 'hidden extra' to everything at this resort - we had a Golf package but to play on the better course you had to pay an additional $25 per round - surely they'd expect that people booking a Golf Package are reasonable golfers and would choose to play that round and include it in the package?

We took a look at the restaurant for breakfast but it was like stepping back to the 80s. The decor is horrendous and not even the view through the brown tinted windows could redeem it so we stuck with coffee.

The rooms were very large (we saw a few as moved from our first one which overlooked the roof of the kitchen by the pool and filtered greasy smells into the room when we had the balcony doors open) but dated.

The only real redeeming feature of the resort was its location on the beautiful North Shore. We've recommended to our friends travelling to Hawaii in future that they stay at Waikiki and do a day trip to Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach. We were told that there are renovations being done next year but that didn't help our stay and not sure if it will help future ones. The resort really needs to be bowled over and rebuilt!

The golf is great, and try Lei Lei's Bar and Grill connected to the pro-shop. The food there is great. However, this is the only resort that I have been to on Oahu where the bugs (flies and mosquito) seemed to be inescapable. When we were here the UNLV basketball team was there, and they were perfect gentlemen, however any team takes up a lot of food, time and staff attention.
There is only one road in and out of this toe

We stayed on the North Shore for 4 days of our honeymoon after staying 3 days in Waikiki and this was pretty much the only place to stay. The location is amazing with the beaches, pools, and views from the balcony. It is definitely a resort atmosphere with the fancy restaurants and overpriced buffets, and with a limited selection of food places outside of the resort you are stuck with paying the high resort prices. The hotel lobby is really cool being open air on one end and floor to ceiling windows facing the ocean. Once we got to our room on the 4th floor you could tell it was an older hotel with the bathroom design and the AC being noisy. Not that this was a deal breaker by any means. We had lots of activities planned outside of the resort already so it would have been nice if we could have "opted out" of some of the "included" things in the $30/day resort fee and gotten a better rate, but that is how hotels make their money...We went to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Kualoa Ranch, and the Sea Life Park. All of these are highly recommend and were amazing.

Most of the nights we kept the AC off and left the balcony door open and on our last night about 1AM the smoke detector starting going off in our room....We called down to the front desk and maintenance came to the room to "unplug" it so it wouldn't happen again that night...They said that sometimes with the pressure changes of having the balcony open it triggers the alarm! One would think that a nice resort such as this would update their fire alarm system to not have this happen, and then when we checked out the next morning and mentioned it to the front desk they just swept it under the rug.

If you are planning a getaway trip and want a resort where you can do everything, not have to drive off property, have amazing views, and just sit on the beach then I would recommend staying here. We planned our honeymoon around all of the activities like I mentioned above and if I were to do this trip again I would book our entire stay in Waikiki. I would do this since everything on the North Shore is within driving distance (around 40 miles / 1.5 hours or less) and having Waikiki as a home base gives you more variety in dinning, shopping, nightlife.