I have divided the report into different topics, so you can read just the parts you are interested in. Of course, if there are any additional qustions, just go ahead and ask, as you see, I like writing about AKL (even though being there would be even better!!!) Here it goes:
I was staying at the AKL February 7-15 with a friend as part of our 18 day vacation in Florida. We had been to WDW in 2004 and stayed at POR. We liked that hotel a lot and thought it was very beautiful. When we were planning this trip, my friend asked how much more expensive it would be to stay at the hotel where we had eaten at the African restaurant and we found out that the non-savannah-view rooms are not so much more expensive than the moderate resorts and decided to splurge a bit and go with the hotel that we both thought was so very beautiful!
We both absolutely loved the AKL and on the flight back home to Germany we both commented on how much we would prefer to go and stay another week at AKL instead of going home. And I am usually the type to look very much forward to my own place after having been travelling around for some time.
Arrival:
We arrived at MCO at 7:10 pm. It took us some time to get out of the plane, but then we were quickly on board the ME bus. We were waiting for a bit until the bus took off and then the bus first went to Pop Century and Coronado Springs until we finally got to AKL. So all in all it was not the fastest trip to the lodge you could have, I think it took us about 90 min from landing at MCO. But it was absolutely hassel free and that is just what we wanted after arriving in a foreign country at a time that was for us well beyond bed time (7 pm Orlando time was like 1 am German time). We definitely would not have wanted to drive a car through the darkness!! So we were sitting in a comfortable bus, saw a neat video and had a really nice driver telling us things about the parks. Just perfect for us!
Check-In was very quick, there was no line and we got quickly set up with all the park maps and our Keys to the World. The cast member at check in suggested that we should go to lobby concierge to get a print out of our ADRs which I did the next morning. It was good that I did that. My
travel agent (I used a US based internet travel agent and was very pleased with her service, especially that she was able to apply a code to our reservation when it came out in November!) had made quite a few ADRs for us and for some reason, Disney had decided to misspell my name on a number of them. So when I first got the print out, there were only two ADRs listed, but the concierge cast member suspected that my name might be misspelled and was able to find all the other ones as well. So I knew how to "misspell" my name when I checked in at these restaurants! Of course I would still have had the sheet from my travel agent with the confirmation numbers...
Room:
We had booked a pool-view room with two double beds. I had only put in a request for a higher floor as I could not make up my mind, which side of the pool I would prefer. We ended up in room no. 4456 which is on Zebra trail, on the arm that goes off to the right (the room opposite us would have been overlooking Uzima Savannah). We were the third room on this arm, so far enough away from the corner, but still close to the elevator, which would take us down to an exit to the pool and to Mara.
The room was great! It was very clean, we had some tiny towel animals waiting for us in there.
We spent a lot of the time in the room on the balcony which had a great and unobstructed view of the pool area, which we thought was extremely beautiful! Our balcony was very sunny in the afternoon which was great for us as the temperatures were in the low 70's and then even getting a bit cooler, so sitting in the sun was great. It was also nice that the balcony warmed up a bit more than other places. So a great location for the cooler times of the year, but it might be too hot to be out there in the warmer months!
I liked the air conditioning that could be set to a certain temperature which was then maintained automatically. I preferred this much to the airconditioning at POR which was much noisier. The only problem we had was that we never figured out how to switch it off if we wanted to have the door to the balkony open. Depending on the temperature outside it suddenly started to heat the room immensly or turned it into a fridge... But that might just have us being stupid and not bothered enough to actually ask someone.
Housekeeping was great, we got plenty of towels and soaps. We got new toiletries nearly every day, however towards the end, we got new shampoo every day, which we did not use, but did not get any new shower gel, which we actually used. That was a bit strange. The new H2O stuff is very good, I especially loved the shower gel and the lotion. The shampoo and conditioner were good, but I have very curly hair and my own shampoo is better for my hair. But if I had forgotten my own shampoo I would have used it happily and I am very difficult with my shampoo!!!
I liked the decor of the room very much, as I am a great fan of the African look, I have a huge wall hanging that I bought on my trip to Namibia and it looks extremely like the bed spreads at AKL! So I felt like at home.
I had read that the rooms are very dark and was a bit afraid of that, however I never found the lighting insufficient. Reading in bed was no problem at all and the light over the vanity area was brilliant, I looked great in it!!! (But if you like to see evry imperfection of your skin, you would not be happy with this light) We had no noise problems at all. We heard a girl in the room next to us being very excited for a brief moment, other than that, we never heard our neighbours, even though there was a connecting door to the room next to us. Neither did we hear people talking on the hallway. We could hear people in the pool, but when the door to the balcony was closed, it was not loud at all, even though they were shouting.
We found the space to be very adequate for two adults, but we thought there was not that much drawer space.
