AKL savannahview but no animals?

[Fromeurope]

Hi everyone,
Now I really want to know. Are there a lot of people who got a savannahviewroom but didn't see any animals?
My DBF says he finds these rooms quite expensive and if we aren't sure to see any animals from our own balcony why pay for it. You can book a standard room instead and go to the special areas to see the animals.
But I am so looking forward to see the animals just standing outside on the balcony...
Who will be right? I hope it is me
Or maybe it's depending on the weather or the season, who knows?

 

[Shells9]

Not quite sure how this could happen.
We've stayed in Savannah view there twice, and had plenty of animals each time.
I do know that at certain times of the day the animals do go in.
I also think that some savannahs are more interesting than others. Call me odd, but I prefer the Sunset Savannah (I think that is the name, it's Sun something!) over the Arusha Savannah, but that was based only on my own experience.
I feel confident that you will see some sort of anmal from your balcony.

 

[currycook]

Yes it can happen. Or you will not see many animals is much more likely to happen then see none at all. It all depends on many factors. How many animals are there that day, what location they are in. Feeding. Weather. and just luck.

 

[ducklite]

We've had savannah view twice, and have seen a lot of animals both times. For about 2-3 hours each day there will be no animals on your savannah, because they bring them into the barn to check them over and clean the savannah.

I think a lot of the people who claim to have seen no animals during their stay have always looked during cleaning time, and didn' realize that was what was going on.

Anne

 

[webray]

People that say they don't see any animals, well, then they are looking in mid afternoon only..while the animals are in for their daily checkups.

There are plenty of animals..and the staff takes great care in rotating them to each savannah to make sure guests get the view they are promised. Now, not all of them are out at the same time...sometimes they are, sometimes they are a little further back..laying under shade trees. I wouldn't go to AKL, unless I paid the extra for the savannah view..it is totally amazing.

 

[Fromeurope]

Yes, now I feel confident about booking savannahview again.
Sometimes reading this discussionboard worries you, because there are allways people writing the things you don't want to read.
But no worries anymore,we are going to AKLsavannahview

 

[MsLefty]

Originally posted by webray
There are plenty of animals..and the staff takes great care in rotating them to each savannah to make sure guests get the view they are promised.

Can you please explain what you mean by rotating. I was under the impression that each savanna had specific animals. For example, only the Arusha savanna has zebras. Are you saying they rotate the animals so all of the savannas have zebras at a certain time during the day?

 

[Selket]

Seems like we could always see some animal out from our balcony. My favorite were the giraffes and those were harder to spot although I generally saw them at least once a day from my balcony. They didn't tend to stand around in one place very long. There were these brown long horned creatures that were always out in front of our room - they were there about all day it seemed and slept there at night - it must have been "their spot". I did see trucks with food drops which brought different animals around. From walking down the hallway and seeing what was on the other side of the savannah from us (behind us in other words) I always saw birds (vultures?) BIG birds (but not "big bird ).

Have fun!

 

[Atotty]

We had the Sunset Savannah view last time. We saw animals all the time...but not in large numbers like the other side of the hotel.... and of course, no zebras....there aren't any zebras on the Sunset side because of the Tommy gazelles. Zebras kill them since they compete for the same food (according to the nice animal keepers I asked at the hotel)

Also, one of the animal keepers told me to always request to **not** be on the Sunset side because the animals on that side are shyer and tend to hide for a majority of the day in the underbrush towards the back of the Savannah.

We saw giraffes just about all the time and gazelles frequently and lots of birds. We were grateful to have any view of the animals since we booked standard no view, though. My girls loved it.

 

[luvmarypoppins]

Sorry, we paid BIG and I mean BIG bucks for a deluxe savannah view room. We hardly ever saw any animals. I bought binoculars and disposable cameras for all th 3 ds and we were on the floor above the lobby level (that level is where everyone was seeing animals). We were so high up, we only saw a few animal butts. The animals were NEVER there unless the guy came around with the feed truck to bribe them. We asked for another room. The unhelpful cm said, do you know how many people complain about not seeing animals. The only room available is a downgrade for you. Gee!! Wait, we did see animals, 2 amazing giraffess, in the public viewing area, about 5:30 am when the mears guy was coming to pick us up, too bad we were too sleepy to hardly notice and that is why we have never gone back to that deluxe again. I wont even go into all the other issues we had at the akl, with food, kids activities, bugs etc. But we sure did have our next door neighbors from england laughing every day when my husband would shout and beg for ranger bob to come on out with the feed truck so we could all see some animals from our "Deluxe" balcony.It did not matter what time of the day we looked, the most we saw were like 3 cattle butts at one time.

 

[clutter]

We were there in October. I don't know what savannah, but we were one floor up from the lobby, on the main hall from the back left of the lobby, left side. (helpful, eh?) Anyway, we were right over one of the watering holes. PERFECT spot. We had giraffes and/or anakote cattle and LOTS of birds sleeping under our window just about every night. It was absolutely cool. Originally, they had us on the other side of the hall, on the main floor, but I asked for a change because I didn't want to hear the foot traffic to the elevator. But we had a bunk bed room, don't know if there's doubles or kings there or not.

We were there one other time and saw only one giraffe and a couple birds over 2 or 3 days.

 

[AmyTags]

We stayed at the AKL last April, I think we were on the 4th floor(not sure about that, I don't really remember)I do know it was a long walk from the lobby to our room even with the elevators. I would stay at this hotel again, we loved it(except for the long hike to our room)the restaurant was wonderful and the animals were outside every day. Every morning I would get up and go out on the balcony and watch the giraffe. It was wonderful. Very nice hotel. Oh and the pool is awesome!!

Hope you have fun.

 

[stinkerbelle]

Originally posted by MsLefty
Can you please explain what you mean by rotating. I was under the impression that each savanna had specific animals. For example, only the Arusha savanna has zebras. Are you saying they rotate the animals so all of the savannas have zebras at a certain time during the day?

MsLefty - no, you are correct. They do NOT rotate animals around the savannahs. you will only find Ostrich on one, and zebra on another - for example.

They have to do it this way...some animals just cannot live together...and rotating them would REALLY screw up their 'clocks'

We took the Sunset safari and learned alot about the savannahs and how and why they were set up.

did you know that all male giraffes are on one savannah and all the female on the other?

We've stayed at AKL twice and never had issues not seeing animals. It appauls me as to what some people say/do because "they didn't see any animals". It's Natahzu (not a zoo)...it's a free-roaming savannah. If you want to see animals...go to where they are caged.

And honestly, the animals are not the #1 reason hubby and I love AKL...the resort is just amazing.

 

[justhat]

We stayed at AKL twice, 1st time on the 2nd floor, Arusha and Uzima Savannahs (we had 2 rooms) and the 2nd itme on the 5th floor, Sunset Savannah. The 1st trip was between Christmas and New Years and it was awesome---we saw animals everytime we looked outside, whether it was 6am, 3pm, or 10pm. It was great and we were definitely looking forward to going back to the resort on our last trip. Well the 2nd stay there was horrible. Literally, the only time we ever saw animals (well basically only I saw them as everyone else in our party was sleeping) was after midnight. It was obviously very dark so I don't even know what some of the animals hiding in bushes were, but the ones that we'd see eating or sleeping by the watering hole were ankole cattle and giraffes. It was even hard to see them at times though since we had treetops in the way and were right over a people pen. It was great to sit out on the balcony at night since I am pregnant and was still at the tail end of my 24 hour a day morning sickness, so it was nice to be able to relax out there without waking anyone else up. Of course, there were smokers near us who smoked out on their balcony so I did have to contend with that, and being asthmatic made that a challenge. Had I known at the time that you could not smoke out there I would have done something, but I thought they were allowed. Other than 12-1 and 3-5am, we never saw more than a pelican on that savannah. This really annoyed my fiancé since he was never up at those times and therefore all he ever saw was a pelican, and being from Louisiana where it's the state bird, this was less than exciting. We did see an ostrich once around 7am way at the end of the savannah, but you really needed to strain to see him. I think our bad experience may have been because we were on the Ostrich Trail and so therefore could only see a small part of the savannah, but honestly, compared to our experiences on the Arusha and Uzima savannahs, they shouldn't be allowed to charge the same rate for the room we had on the Sunset Savannah. We still love the resort and will be going back in June, hoping to have better luck than this last trip.

 

[johnvree]

Originally posted by webray


There are plenty of animals..and the staff takes great care in rotating them to each savannah to make sure guests get the view they are promised.

I didn't know that. Are you saying that you will see different animals on different days? If so, how ofter are they rotated?

 

[johnvree]

Never mind, I saw your reply Stinkerbell

 

[georgina]

Originally posted by luvmarypoppins
Sorry, we paid BIG and I mean BIG bucks for a deluxe savannah view room. We hardly ever saw any animals. I bought binoculars and disposable cameras for all th 3 ds and we were on the floor above the lobby level (that level is where everyone was seeing animals). We were so high up, we only saw a few animal butts. The animals were NEVER there unless the guy came around with the feed truck to bribe them. We asked for another room. The unhelpful cm said, do you know how many people complain about not seeing animals. The only room available is a downgrade for you. Gee!! Wait, we did see animals, 2 amazing giraffess, in the public viewing area, about 5:30 am when the mears guy was coming to pick us up, too bad we were too sleepy to hardly notice and that is why we have never gone back to that deluxe again. I wont even go into all the other issues we had at the akl, with food, kids activities, bugs etc. But we sure did have our next door neighbors from england laughing every day when my husband would shout and beg for ranger bob to come on out with the feed truck so we could all see some animals from our "Deluxe" balcony.It did not matter what time of the day we looked, the most we saw were like 3 cattle butts at one time.

We didn't see a whole lot from our deluxe balcony also. The trees get in the way of the view. We saw a lot more by walking around the hallways on other floors. There was one feeding station below our balcony, so we saw a few cattle at that every morning, but not much else.

 

[k&a&c'smom]

Last March, DD and I had a room on Zebra Trail, Arusha Savanna, and we saw lots of animals. The wildebeast were very shy, and would lie in the grass near the watering hole, so if you had a room that was farther away from the lobby, you could probably see them. The ankole cattle stayed near our room, which was across from Arusha Rock, and the zebra roamed around and we saw them quite a lot also. The giraffe did not ever come close to our balcony, but we could still see them. However, the giraffe tended to roam towards the end of the building, except when there was browse out for them.

We felt that we definitely got our money's worth re:view - although the animals did leave the savanna during the afternoon, you could see them all night long. They keep artificial moonlight on the savannas, so it may be lower light than daylight, but you can still see them. And, the animals came a lot closer to our balcony during the night - I would look out when I got up to go to the bathroom, and zebra would be right under our balcony!!

stinkerbelle is right - they only have some of the animals on certain savannas, so that they don't harm each other.

Good luck, and have a great trip!!! We love AKL, hope you do too!!!

 

[mirlow]

We didn't see as many animals on our last trip as we did the first time we stayed. We were on the 5th floor Arusha Savannah both times. I thought maybe it was because it was colder outside on this past trip?

 

[Pig Pen]

We were in room 5315 on the Arusha Savannah (concierge). First day, we ran up to the room, flung back the drapes, ripped open the slider and saw.....nothing.

Okay, so we went to the parks.

Next morning we got up, flung back the drapes, ripped open the slider and.....nothing.

Hmmmm.

So we proceeded to EE at AKL and had the BEST safari ever. We literally could reach out and touch the animals, they were that close. Later in the afternoon we returned to our room - well, you know the routine, and lo and behold, a savannh full of animals!

From that day forward we saw zebra, big-horned things, little-horned things, birds, etc. (my animal guide is still packed away). Never saw a giraffe on this savannah, but did see several when visiting public viewing areas.

We loved it.