My wife and I stayed at the Grand Wailea for our Honeymoon in July 2004. The property is large and beautiful, the rooms were very nice. We were originally in a deluxe oceanview room, which was beautiful, with a HUGE bathroom. Unfortunately, the room was all the way at the end (the right, if you're facing the ocean), and was right next to a huge construction site; starting at 7am, the trucks roll in, and no more sleeping is possible. We complained, and the manager moved us to a HUGE suite with master bedroom, living room, wrap around balcony, and 1.5 baths. This was a great room.

The grounds are very nice. Wailea beach is nice, though not as perfect as we had imagined. The river pools/slides/water elevator were much fun, though there were lots of kids. However, the resort also has a separate adults only pool with its own sitting area; we sat there, and it was nice and quiet.

Here's my biggest complaint. There is virtually no shade anywhere near the pools. NONE. So if you have a fair complexion, you're in trouble. The only option that you have, which seems like a bit of a scam, is to hope that you can rent a cabana for like $140 a day. After the immense price of a room, charging for shade seemed unreasonable.

We did breakfast and lunches in the resort, but went elsewhere around Maui for our dinners. We were given a coupon for a bottle of champagne if we went to one of the restaurants for dinner, but passed it up.

Overall, I still recommend, but be careful of what room you end up in, and take LOTS of suntan lotion...

We just spent two nights here and it was everything we had heard it was: great fun-extremely crowded. My kids really enjoyed the pools and I'll admit that I did as well. The rooms are spacious and nicely decorated. The bad news is the crowds. Get to the pools early because the chairs will be gone by mid morning. The crowds on the beach are nearly as bad. Loungers and umbrellas the width of the beach and 100 yards long make a ghastly sight on such a beautiful beach. I advise getting your own umbrella and making your way to the far left side of the beach where it is less crowded and far prettier. Be prepared for the $15 a day resort fee and the $12 a day valet parking fee; there is no self parking.
Great fun and beautiful, but if you're looking for a Hawaiian experience, you may want to look elsewhere.

We stayed in Dec 03 and found it to be quite nice. There were, however, a LOT of children! The room was very nice and we were upgraded upon arrival to an oceanview room. The beach is nice, but the pool area is the star attraction here.

Because it is crowded, we had some problems - such as: waiting over 20 minutes for the valet to bring our rental car, and waiting about an hour for our room to be ready upon arrival (although to be fair, they did upgrade us for free and we were earlier than the posted check-in time).

I think I would stay at the next-door Four Seasons next time to see if the experience is different, but this hotel is definitely worth the $300 a night.

Just got back from a week at the Grand Wailea. The hotel is awesome. Our first room had a connecting door to another room which was empty the first day. The second day a young couple with a lot of friends entered the room and returned from partying at 1:30AM. It woke up my wife and I, but not my son(12). I called the front desk and security came up promptly to quite them. The next morning I requested a room without a connecting door (you can hear everything in the other room with that door). After several calls, one to the manager, we got another room. Our second room was fine, it was an upgrade with a better view.
I would recommend renting a refrig, it's $25 for the length of your stay. There is a Safeway 15 minutes away, so you can stock up on drinks and munchies. My son really enjoyed the pools/slides. We golfed at the Wailea Blue course which is $70 after 1:00PM, $50 for kids and that includes a cart. Club rental after 1:00PM is $25.
We rented the $40 - 2 chair cabannas on 3 days of our stay. Get down there by 10:00AM if interested. We met the actor that played Pedro Cerrano in the movie "Major League" at the Grand Wailea. He was real nice. The beaches are public and the Marriott is right down the road, but they don't have their own beach, so they use the one at the Grand Wailea. The grounds at this place are beautiful. We didn't notice any musty smells in our rooms. The restaurants at the Wailea are pricey. We walked to the Shops at Wailea and hit the restaurants there. This was our first trip to Hawaii. It took 9 hours on a direct flight from Chicago. Maui was beautiful, but I'll take Florida and the Caribean at half the flight time. Aloha Hawai'i.