I just got back from AoA with my wife and 4 year old daughter. We stayed in the Little Mermaid area (room 8662) from 9/22-30. Here's my take on the pluses and minuses:
Pluses
1. The exterior design/artwork was fantastic. I thought Cars was the best area of the bunch, but really they're all great.
2. In my mind, this is the best Disney hotel for little kids. Obviously they all have their pluses and things that little kids will love, but AoA blows the rest of them out of the water with its theme and design. Your kids will love everything about this place.
3. It's been repeated over and over, but the food court here is better than the other values. The Surf and Surf burger was the best thing we had. The pasta bar was not worth the wait, though.
4. By and large, the bus service was really good. The only time we waited for any significant period of time was after the Not So Scary Halloween party on 9/25.
5. The pools were great. The pool in the Little Mermaid area was big enough on its own to spend an afternoon in with my 4 year old.
6. This place is much closer to the action than the All Stars. You'll save at least a few minutes going to MK, HS, and Epcot.
Minuses
1. The Little Mermaid area is a looong way from the main building. However, to be fair, it's no different than at any other value, and it's better than most of the moderates.
2. They should put in drink refill stations at the outer pools.
3. As mentioned by others, the satellite TV service was spotty. At times the picture would get pixelated. I don't know if there were atmospheric issues last week that caused it or what, but it was definitely noticeable.
4. The wifi was terrible. I feel bad complaining about it, since it's free, but my opinion is that if you offer a service (even if it's free), it needs to work. If it's not going to work, don't offer it. It wasn't an issue of signal strength in my particular room. I called the help line and they said they needed to release additional space on their modems for me, which helped for a bit, but then it largely went back to working sporadically. You'd have connectivity for a while, then none, then connectivity, then none. It was frustrating, but in the end I didn't worry about it too much because we generally are hardly at the hotel since we're iron manning the parks.
5. The beds are doubles, not queens. If you need more space to sleep, that could be a deal killer.
In the end the pluses far outweigh the minuses. If you're going to stay at a value, you really need to go here. That said, our next trip will almost certainly be a moderate, just so we can have a little more space and have queen beds.
and it had a white chocolate mickey face yay!
How is the reception there? I have Sprint. Has anyone had any issues with Sprint? TIA.
