Today was supposed to be a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago to see the Disney exhibit. But as I am sure most of you all have gathered from the news, it is not very nice here in Chicagoland today and neither Pam nor I wanted to brave the elements. So I will sit here watching the snow from my windows and type up another installment to this trip report instead.
At least, if I have to see snow outside, I can look at beautiful warm pictures from my computer monitor!!
We left off heading to bed to prepare for our move in the morning. Everyone had a little sleep in this morning. I was awake early, as usual. So I wandered over to Landscape of Flavors for a little breakfast.
The new mugs have arrived with the RFID chips.
What should I eat?
So those waffles and fruit look really wonderful on the monitor right?! Well, here is what I got on my plate.
$6.81 and a semi satisfied tummy later, I headed back up to the room to help finish packing everything up for the move over to AKL.
We grabbed a luggage cart (it was more like a store's large item moving rack on wheels that didn't steer so well) from the bell services desk to load all our stuff on and take out to the car. We debated back and forth about just leaving everything for them to move over later or moving it ourselves.
In fact, I think our original plan for the day was to leave everything behind and just head straight to the AK for the day, then head to Sanaa for dinner later and get checked in. But after looking at the rest of our week, it was obvious that there wasn't much time for resort enjoyment in the plan. So we changed our minds.

And our dinner ADR became a lunch one instead (which we completed on our AK park day earlier in the week).
Remember, we now have the Magic Bands at our disposal, making those hard- to-get FPs much easier to have later in the day without arriving at rope drop at any certain park. So we could do what we wanted for the morning and still do something fun later in the day.
We decided to take our stuff with us, hoping our room would be ready, and headed on over to the Lodge to enjoy our day. We were on our way shortly after 11am.
I just LOVE this resort!!! This would be my third stay here, and even when we didn't stay here, we made it a point to come for a visit each time.
Bell services loaded up all our bags and took them inside. We went on in to see if our luck would hold and our room would be ready. Our only requests here were for Zebra trail, high floor near the elevators. If you are planning a stay at AKL and not planning to put out the extra money for a savannah view, (which really isn't necessary as they have so many places throughout the resort to view the animals from-even some not so obvious spots, as you will see) I highly recommend that you do spend a little extra for a pool view and make those requests. You will be a short distance from all the restaurants, the pool, and just off the lobby.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh. This lobby is magnificent!!
And one for those who love the lighting displays....
We headed over to check in, but our room wasn't ready.

They offered us another option that was ready at the time-even let us just head down to check it out first. As soon as we opened the door, though, we knew it wasn't for us. The balcony was one of those closed in balconies, so you couldn't sit down out there and be able to see anything-plus no air circulation. So we headed back to tell them we would wait. K2 got a rose at check in-a little pixie dust to celebrate her birthday!!
We received our maps of the resort and set out to have a look around.
And here is what the resort looks like all together....