***WARNING - VERY LONG POST/REVIEW BELOW***
We returned from a quick 3-night/4-day trip to AKL Kidani Village last week and I wanted to drop a quick review since I know people who are planning (like I was a few months ago) love to read them
This ended up much longer than I had intended, so if you don't feel like reading it and want the short version - the place is awesome you should definitely stay there.
First, I cannot say enough about the concierge staff at this resort. In fact, the entire staff from top to bottom was outstanding and the best I've ever encountered on property.
We rented points from a friend of ours and had booked a studio with savanna view. I did online check-in and requested a room near the lobby on a low floor. Our room was ready at 11am when we arrived and check-in was a breeze. We were assigned a room on the 3rd floor in the 7813-7823 block. We walked to our room and it was beautiful...with one small problem...it was a handicapped accessible room. Now, if we didn't have a 3-year-old who still took baths, this would not have been a problem. We stayed in a handicap room back in 2007, and it was fine. I am not the type of person to "complain" about rooms and ask for changes but I figured what the hell, I don't know when we'll be back and I might as well try because this is our vacation and it never hurts to ask.
I went down to the front desk and a lovely woman over at concierge called me over. Donna. My new best friend Donna. Oh how I love Donna. I explained the situation and told her that if something else was available, that would be great but if not I understand. I let her know we were on our way to the parks so if something wasn't available right away that was fine too. Donna goes into the back room for a good 5 minutes and returns with her best poker face.
"Well Mr. X, I have some good news. We're going to upgrade you to a one bedroom."
Um, what?! I've never been upgraded before, are you serious?! Am I finally getting pixie dust?! This is the type of thing I read on DISBoards and get jealous over! And getting upgraded while staying on points?! That's unheard of! I was speechless.
Donna apologized that the room wasn't ready yet, but that it was also a room on the lobby level and close to the lobby, so "I was able to meet all of your requests". Completely floored, I could barely contain my excitement. I'm pretty sure I floated back to our original room to tell my wife the news.
The Room
One bedroom villas here are unreal. We've never stayed in a room that nice and holy crap is it nice. Is it $700+/night nice? I dunno. But man is it gonna be hard to stay anywhere else after experiencing this. We were so excited that we didn't even notice the 2nd bathroom near the front door until about 15 minutes after we got in the room!
The master bath is amazing, the balcony is huuuuuge and goes from the living room to the bedroom with doors going to both rooms.
The washer and dryer was a great thing to have in the room, especially after coming home with some wet clothes thanks to the downpour on Sunday.
The bed is comfortable, and my daughter loved the sleeper-chair she used as a bed. There are plenty of outlets for all your electronics and plenty of space to put your luggage and all your clothes. I could ramble on and on about this room.
My 2 critiques about the room...I had read some people did not like the lighting they have in these rooms and I do agree it is a little low. There are plenty of lamps and overhead lights so it wasn't a big deal to me, but I do understand how it could be a problem to some. The toilet room in the master bath was especially low on light. Secondly, we found it difficult to maintain a comfortable temperature in the room. We were constantly fiddling with the thermostat. It was either a little too cold, or too hot, etc. Maybe it was just us. Not a huge deal though.
The Buses
Always a topic of conversation! We found them to be pretty good for the most part. We never waited more than 15 minutes for a park bus, and never more than 10 minutes coming back from a park. I loved being picked up before Jambo and always having a seat, which is especially nice with a little one. There were some times where the bus was completely packed. The length to get to the parks wasn't bad, but I knew it would average 20-25 minutes before going there so I was prepared. I didn't find the rides to be much longer than when we stayed anywhere else. It was nice that it only took about 5 minutes to get to AK once we left Jambo.
The Savannah View
Holy crap the view. Amazing. Simply amazing. However, I would NOT recommend spending the extra money on it if you spend all day at the parks. Animals were rarely out before 10am, and of course you can't see anything from your room at night. But when we came back during the afternoon it was awesome. Plenty of giraffes and other animals...the zebras were not on our side except for very early (7-8am) in the morning on our last day. Our daughter had a great time looking at the animals and so did we.
The Staff
Everyone was amazing. Bell services, check-in, concierge, mousekeeping, etc. I already mentioned Donna, but I also need to bring up Harold. I went down to purchase park tickets for our last day (we hadn't planned on doing anything but changed our minds last minute), and Harold over at concierge called me over to help. Everything was going just fine until he stopped and said he'd have to go talk to the manager. A few minutes later he came back out and explained that there was a systems error and he couldn't add tickets to our KTTW cards. So to apologize for the inconvenience, they were issuing us comps for the day. Excuse me? Seriously? MORE pixie dust? I never wanted to leave this place.
In conclusion, I would absolutely recommend staying at Kidani. Unfortunately, we were only there for 4 days (3 and a 1/2 after flights) and we concentrated on parks, so I did not get to see the pool area (which I regret) and we did not eat at Sanaa. I did not get a chance to roam the resort and explore.
I'd be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability, but if you're thinking about staying here, DO IT!!!
