LadyTrampScamp&Angel
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2001
Just back from our 9 night stay at WDW, including 4 nights in a savannah view studio at Kidani.
The positives: The resort itself is gorgeous, absolutely beautiful. Loved the art and the quotes around the building. I like the dark wood. We saw lots of animals from our balcony. Everything is clean and new. The pool and fitness center area are awesome - love the pool theming. DD spent quite a bit of time down there and when I was with her it never seemed too crowded.
The negatives: Our room - in fact we dubbed it "the lemon room". The internet didn't work when we arrived and after my DH who is a software engineer had a long conversation with tech support on the phone - they finally said they'd seen a tech over - but no one showed. This was important because DH was going to be on call during our last day. The TV worked intermittently, along with the toilet - which we kept fixing ourselves, the flushing mechanism kept coming apart on the inside of the tank. Also, this was a HA room and the sliding door to the bathroom had a wide gap, it didn't close all the way - so walking by you'd be looking right at the toilet - no privacy there.
When we checked in we had left Ft Wilderness cabins, gone to Tampa for the day to visit DH's grandmother and arrived about 8pm. At first we thought the room was beautiful and were focused on the giraffes outside. I didn't even realize it was a HA room until we'd hauled our stuff in. Knowing I'd already accepted the room I though it wouldn't be a big deal, until all the above started being discovered.
On our second day I went down to talk to the conceirge about all the problems and was nicely told I could move the following day for a fee of $30. I had a runner walk me down to see a regular room and there's a big difference in the bathroom area. The vanity in the HA room is small compared to a regular room, not near as much storage and the toilet is in the bathroom area in the HA room instead of in a separate room. I would have moved except the room that was available was much farther down the opposite hall, away from the pool. So I agreed to let the staff try to fix everything in our room, except the the bathroom door gap - they said they wouldn't get to that during our stay, and by later the second day the internet and tv seemed to be fixed. We hung a big beach towel lengthwise on the sliding bathroom door to fill the gap. This was July 7th, DD's birthday and we were busy, I didn't want to pack up everything to move either. This day they also tested the fire alarm system and let me tell you it seemed to work well. There are flashing lights that made me dizzy, you couldn't stay in the resort and have any peace so we went out all day.
On subsequent days the TV and toilet continued to have problems, thus us fixing the toilet ourselves and calling down to have the tv reset. DH had an air card shipped to him from work just in case and that managed to get to us but a package from Ft Wilderness was lost forever - we gave up on that. The CM's were nice and helpful but perhaps the resort being new - things just weren't working efficiently. I just have mixed feelings about Kidani after all the problems. Next time I'll request a non HA room and hope for the best. It isn't our home resort and I'd stay there again, but probably not going to rush back soon.
Like the underneath parking, really helps keep your car cooler but am hoping the landscape grows up along the outside edge so you don't see all the vents etc, really detracts from the resort's appearance.
We were in 7616 (I think that was the number) on the lobby floor (2) in the Rafiki area.
The positives: The resort itself is gorgeous, absolutely beautiful. Loved the art and the quotes around the building. I like the dark wood. We saw lots of animals from our balcony. Everything is clean and new. The pool and fitness center area are awesome - love the pool theming. DD spent quite a bit of time down there and when I was with her it never seemed too crowded.
The negatives: Our room - in fact we dubbed it "the lemon room". The internet didn't work when we arrived and after my DH who is a software engineer had a long conversation with tech support on the phone - they finally said they'd seen a tech over - but no one showed. This was important because DH was going to be on call during our last day. The TV worked intermittently, along with the toilet - which we kept fixing ourselves, the flushing mechanism kept coming apart on the inside of the tank. Also, this was a HA room and the sliding door to the bathroom had a wide gap, it didn't close all the way - so walking by you'd be looking right at the toilet - no privacy there.
When we checked in we had left Ft Wilderness cabins, gone to Tampa for the day to visit DH's grandmother and arrived about 8pm. At first we thought the room was beautiful and were focused on the giraffes outside. I didn't even realize it was a HA room until we'd hauled our stuff in. Knowing I'd already accepted the room I though it wouldn't be a big deal, until all the above started being discovered.
On our second day I went down to talk to the conceirge about all the problems and was nicely told I could move the following day for a fee of $30. I had a runner walk me down to see a regular room and there's a big difference in the bathroom area. The vanity in the HA room is small compared to a regular room, not near as much storage and the toilet is in the bathroom area in the HA room instead of in a separate room. I would have moved except the room that was available was much farther down the opposite hall, away from the pool. So I agreed to let the staff try to fix everything in our room, except the the bathroom door gap - they said they wouldn't get to that during our stay, and by later the second day the internet and tv seemed to be fixed. We hung a big beach towel lengthwise on the sliding bathroom door to fill the gap. This was July 7th, DD's birthday and we were busy, I didn't want to pack up everything to move either. This day they also tested the fire alarm system and let me tell you it seemed to work well. There are flashing lights that made me dizzy, you couldn't stay in the resort and have any peace so we went out all day.
On subsequent days the TV and toilet continued to have problems, thus us fixing the toilet ourselves and calling down to have the tv reset. DH had an air card shipped to him from work just in case and that managed to get to us but a package from Ft Wilderness was lost forever - we gave up on that. The CM's were nice and helpful but perhaps the resort being new - things just weren't working efficiently. I just have mixed feelings about Kidani after all the problems. Next time I'll request a non HA room and hope for the best. It isn't our home resort and I'd stay there again, but probably not going to rush back soon.
Like the underneath parking, really helps keep your car cooler but am hoping the landscape grows up along the outside edge so you don't see all the vents etc, really detracts from the resort's appearance.
We were in 7616 (I think that was the number) on the lobby floor (2) in the Rafiki area.
Sorry to hear you all had some problems too. florep1 - the day we checked out (Friday, July 10th) they were changing out the bed in 7618. The bed furniture itself and I was wondering why - did you have problems with it? Too bad we didn't know we had DIS'ers next door!
It's like 2 resorts in one!
