Disney's ART OF ANIMATION RESORT Thread

Hi sandiwest, my name is Sandi, too! It wouldn't let me quote you, but I also think you will be fine with the beds. The bedroom has a standard queen, and the other 2 beds are bigger than they look. We got here yesterday, and I love the room! As for the rest if this place, it better get better or I don't think my family will be back. (and we are huge fans, DH and I have done 8 trips in the last 9 years and I've been here more than 30 times!) I was all for magic bands and FP+. We aren't the type to not like change, and we just go with it, but this has been a nightmare! We got to AoA at 11:20am yesterday. I had done online check in, so I got in line. Well, they lost the online checking so we had to re-check in. NBD, it went quickly. But, then they noticed we didn't have any park tickets. It took an hour, but we got that fixed and went up to our room. It was now 12:40 and we had been there 1 hour 20 minutes in line checking in. Got up there, and our MB wouldn't open the room. Back down, waited in line. They couldn't connect me or my kids to our room, just DH. 2 hours later (2:50 if you're keeping track-so far we had been here almost 3.5 hours and done nothing but fix MB issues), and 3 calls to tech support and he fixed it. Oh, and by the way, in the process he noticed we had no park tickets (again!) and relinked those, too. Well, now it was 3:00 and the kids were starving (we planned to have lunch at noon). We went down to eat, and there were huge lines even at 3:00. We waited about 15 minutes in the pizza/myo pasta line, which was the shortest line overall. Then a CM came over and explained that they were separating the line and moving MYO pasta to a new station and making 2 additional lines-1 for pizza and 1 for sandwiches. He split everyone up, and I just happened to be first in the pizza line (everyone in front of me for the "new" lines were there for pasta.). So, he directs us up the middle, where it says "exit only" and the sandwich people up the side to the other exit, and he moved the pasta people to a new station. There were still a handful of people in the "old" line, too, so one CM helped them and 2 more went to help the "new" lines. Well, since I was first, everyone started yelling at me that I was in the exit and to get in line! I explained that the CM told me to come here and the CM at the food station explained that they were separating the line, so most people were ok. But, there was this one lady muttering about how I cut in line and thought I was better than everyone else...easy to ignore...until, I went to get our beverages. She was there, too, and I had called o we my DS 7years old to help me carry them. She opened the beverage case door and knocked my son over!! So I picked him up and then I just started crying. I was so frustrated about the day! So she starts yelling, "I DID say excuse me! And I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't CUT in line!!" DH was pissed and yelled at her, which brought a manager over ASAP. He was really nice and ended up giving us our food for free, which was totally unnecessary and I told him so at least 10 times. Okay, so now it's 4:00, and we headed over to MK. We had missed our first 2 FP+ for the day but hoped to use our third. We got there...and... any guesses??? We couldn't get in because we had no tickets (keep in mind I had already "fixed" this twice!), so we were sent to guest services. Another 40 minutes of dealing with it, and voila, we got in the gates! Now it was 5:00. Our FP was at Peter Pan so we headed there. Tried to get in, and it said we didn't have FP. I pulled it up on my phone and it was there at 4:50-5:50 but only for one guest so he let us ride, but I thought I should check on it. By this time MIL, FIL, and SIL had met us there from another hotel. I left DH with the kids and headed to guest services to see what was up with the FP. It was now 5:35pm. No line, walked right up. Took the CM a minute and....long story short all of our FP were wiped out for the entire week!! She started trying to rebook what we wanted and I was trying to remember everything, but the system kept crashing (she said due to FP opening for SDMR, actually), so she was having trouble. At 7:00pm, an hour and a half later, she gave up. She wrote down which park we were going to each day and assigned us generic FP for that park. She also gave us an extra each day, which was really nice. By now, I had spent the whole day in line, though, so we missed a whole day of vacation, but it was fixed. Well, I just got up now and looked at MDE. She assigned them to the wrong park every single day!! I'm not kidding, so we have no usable FP still for the week, (we are here with family and have meals booked so it's tough to just switch parks). So now I'm headed down to see how much of day 2 I spend in line. DH and I are both ready to go home, so if things don't improve today, we will be seeing what we can do to just get out of here. I doubt we will be back, but maybe in 5 years or so after they fix their crappy system. I'm just thinking about our family riding Soarin now and how we can't be with them! Anyway, only partially related to AoA, but that's the story! Our room rocks! Cars, Luigi building, 2nd floor overlooking the lake. The buses were great to/from MK. The CM are very helpful but not very knowledgable on the new tech stuff. The food court was great (aside from our issue with a guest) but very crowded at a no meal time. Happy to answer any AoA questions if I can.
. Holy crap. That is completely miserable. I can't imagine how many times I would have been thinking "I spent $x today for this......." :(. I'm so sorry you've had such an awful start; hope you eventually get to use your FP+. I'm also really glad you took the time to write this out in detail, because it really gets the point across HOW frustrating and un-magical it is to pay full price to be included in a huge test, with really no compensation for time wasted. I really think you should send the whole account--in that level of detail--to Disney. I know they've probably got a lot of overworked employees right now, but they need to really understand the amount of people's' hard-earned vacation dollars AND time they are wasting. Glad you like AoA (we did too) and hope the good times stack up to outweigh the bad by the end :)
 
Grrr...well, it's almost 5:00 on day 2 and things are much worse than yesterday. We have been waiting in guest relations since 10:30am and have yet to do anything else today. Asking for a full refund and trying to head home. If they will reimburse us, we plan to spend the next 7 days taking a road trip (we drove here from MN) with the fam! AoA was good, though, except most if today was spent trying to cancel and rebook our vacation, and it's been 6 hours and they haven't been able to do it yet. We have no meals, no park tickets, and no room reservation at this point, so we just stand here wet (it's raining), hungry, and with no money (we can't charge to our room and didn't bring our wallets because we didn't "need" them.
 
treemi01

Did your MDE look right before arriving at WDW?

I was hoping that if all was well and sorted out before our trip, that we might avoid glitches.
 

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Grrr...well, it's almost 5:00 on day 2 and things are much worse than yesterday. We have been waiting in guest relations since 10:30am and have yet to do anything else today. Asking for a full refund and trying to head home. If they will reimburse us, we plan to spend the next 7 days taking a road trip (we drove here from MN) with the fam! AoA was good, though, except most if today was spent trying to cancel and rebook our vacation, and it's been 6 hours and they haven't been able to do it yet. We have no meals, no park tickets, and no room reservation at this point, so we just stand here wet (it's raining), hungry, and with no money (we can't charge to our room and didn't bring our wallets because we didn't "need" them.
if your route takes you thru Alabama, check out the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. Or in Tennessee, check out the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg. In Kentucky, there are lots of cool caves--including a new one inside the Corvette museum :/ plus the factory, and Kentucky Horsepark is really neat. That should cover three days anyway! Hope you have a fun adventure, and maybe when FP+ is "complete," you can head back with better results!
 
Does anyone know if we're allowed to park Rv's there? We're road tripping and want to make the drive in our RV but would rather stay at the hotel instead of the campgrounds.
 
Hi
Just wanted to say we r at aoa right now in the nemo suites (5 adults and one child), and have nothing but wonderful things to report. I did the online check in and were greeted by someone as soon as we stepped off the magical express. And at 10am we had a room ready for us!
We have 5 more days left and hope the rest really as great at the first 2
 
Well, Thursdays you can take a drawing class for free in the main building. Classes start on the hour between 10 and 6 (last I knew). There are pool games and activities directed by CM's, especially in the afternoon. There is also a lot to just look at, at the resort. Kids will like simply touring the different wings and seeing everything I imagine, especially if they are being pushed in a stroller. But 2 is pretty young for drawing classes I imagine.

The food at AoA is pretty good for counter service, but if you are looking for a nicer dinner DTD is a great option. :)

Is the drawing class for only AoA guests or can any Resort guest go? We are staying at POP now with the free dining.
 
Well, after a half hour in line at guest services to get into Epcot, and an hour inside Epcot at guest relations to reissue the fast passes (that we had already spent an hour "fixing" at AoA), we thought we were good. Then we went to our ADR at Beaches and Cream. We hadn't done anything but Soarin all morning as it was, so we were hoping to cram it into the afternoon. Well, we ate and tried to pay for our meal with DDP credits, but it said we didn't have a meal plan. So we said to charge it to our room, give us the receipt, and we would straighten it out. They couldn't charge it to our room either because we had no valid credit card. So, the manager at Beaches and Cream took us up to concierge at Beach Club. We waited there for an hour. Then, they said that we had to cancel and rebook the entire vacation and it would take 30 minutes. So, we sat in the lobby there.

Meanwhile, MIL and FIL (who ate with us) decided to go back to Epcot. When they got there, they couldn't get in. They are on a completely different reservation at a different hotel on different dates with different meal plan and tickets and had had no problems up until now. We told the Beach Club manager, and she said their whole vacation had to be rebooked too. More later...have to go talk to manager at AoA before midnight.
 
I thought I read somewhere that the suites at AoA had charging stations on the dressers. Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.
 
The dressers have various ports on them but not sure they are charging ones. we just used our chargers in the wall sockets.
 
Well, after a half hour in line at guest services to get into Epcot, and an hour inside Epcot at guest relations to reissue the fast passes (that we had already spent an hour "fixing" at AoA), we thought we were good. Then we went to our ADR at Beaches and Cream. We hadn't done anything but Soarin all morning as it was, so we were hoping to cram it into the afternoon. Well, we ate and tried to pay for our meal with DDP credits, but it said we didn't have a meal plan. So we said to charge it to our room, give us the receipt, and we would straighten it out. They couldn't charge it to our room either because we had no valid credit card. So, the manager at Beaches and Cream took us up to concierge at Beach Club. We waited there for an hour. Then, they said that we had to cancel and rebook the entire vacation and it would take 30 minutes. So, we sat in the lobby there.

Meanwhile, MIL and FIL (who ate with us) decided to go back to Epcot. When they got there, they couldn't get in. They are on a completely different reservation at a different hotel on different dates with different meal plan and tickets and had had no problems up until now. We told the Beach Club manager, and she said their whole vacation had to be rebooked too. More later...have to go talk to manager at AoA before midnight.

Sounds like an all-around nightmare. I thought you already went through the rebooking routine once...now you have to do it again?
 
Two more weeks for me! I got comped a nights stay for here after a god awful stay at POP last December. Please make me feel better by staying at AoA.
 
What drinks are offered for the refills with the mug??? We have the dinning plan and get a mug and I can't have any drinks with sugar. So I'm curious if there will be much I can drink. No coffee as I hate the stuff :)
 
Hi Just wanted to say we r at aoa right now in the nemo suites (5 adults and one child), and have nothing but wonderful things to report. I did the online check in and were greeted by someone as soon as we stepped off the magical express. And at 10am we had a room ready for us! We have 5 more days left and hope the rest really as great at the first 2

Going to AOA for the first time in Aug staying in lion king suite... Question on the buses? It looks like each park has it's own line. Does that help with it being more orderly? I'm used to the bus stop at CSR by the lobby which ends up kind of being a free for all with people always walking up and pushing their way toward the door of the bus.
 
What drinks are offered for the refills with the mug??? We have the dinning plan and get a mug and I can't have any drinks with sugar. So I'm curious if there will be much I can drink. No coffee as I hate the stuff :)

They have a variety of fountain pop/soda (coke brands) and ice tea, sweetened and unsweetened, hot tea is also available.
 













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