We stayed for three nights at AKL at the end of our trip this summer. We refer to these as Decompress Days, and we mainly spend our time in the pool and visiting the parks only at night.
I'll offer these thoughts for anyone who's considering staying CL at a Animal Kingdom Lodge. These are my thoughts, and you are free to disagree. But they reflect our experiences and impressions.
In an age when every detail of your trip is planned in advance, and any change you want to make during your trip can be accomplished with the phone in your hand, the club level CMs really serve you no purpose. Indeed, it was hard to understand why at any given moment there were at least two, and sometimes three, CMs sitting at the desk. Almost always, they weren't doing anything. And to the extent they welcomed you to the lounge, is was roughly the way I would welcome an LSU fan into my office. With an annoyed sneer. I'm only exaggerating slightly.
We did online check in (as we did at the CR earlier in our trip) and we got the room ready text as I was parking the rental car. That was pretty convenient! We headed straight to our room on Uzima Trail. More on that below.
After we checked out the room and the view, we headed up to the lounge. Only our MBs didn't work in the elevator. So we had to go to the front desk. And wait in line. Not a huge inconvenience, but not particularly club level friendly. Not only have they done away with any sort of curbside welcome, the on line check in didn't avoid standing in line.
The room location was not ideal. We were nearly at the end of the second pod, close to elevator. And of course, that elevator doesn't reach the 6th floor. The view from our room was fantastic. We thought it slightly better than when we were on the Zebra trail a few years ago. The room was super clean and we had a lot of animal activity right off our balcony. But if we were there for a week, it would have been a heck of a schlep to the lounge and the buses every day.
So here's where the Disboards truly pay off! After the first afternoon of schlepping to the lobby then around to the other side to the elevators up to 6, I decided to scan through this thread to see if there was any club level skinny I was missing. Sure enough TgrlvsPooh had posted about the stairs that go from 4 to 6. The staircase was on our side of the lobby and more convenient.
Which brings me back to the CMs, you'd think they would look at your room location and tell you that. But again, they didn't do much of anything. The day we arrived, a CM recognized we were new and came and talked to us while we were fixing glasses of Jungle Juice. It was quite literally the most awkward conversation since I asked out a girl in 6th grade. I was glad when she left us with our packet and moved on.
How about the food? It was pretty dadgummed good! We got there around afternoon snack time and we were there for appetizers, desserts and breakfast every day. The food was good and replenished frequently. The food CMs were fantastic! Supper attentive and very friendly. One of them was an Auburn fan and enjoyed messing around with me every day. But we have 16 national championships and they only have 2, so I won every one of those conversations. Also, I'm a guest, he had to relent. But there were also two Bama fan CMs who Roll Tided me every time they saw me. We were offered beer and wine multiple times a day. We don't consume, but I appreciated that they weren't hiding their most expensive offering from people. I'm almost positive the wine was out for you to pour as much as you wanted.
One evening, while enjoying some succulent desserts, we decided we needed something salty to go with it. I asked a CM if they had any chips. She was back in a minute with two bowls of popcorn, two bowls of goldfish and two bowls of house made chips. That's good service.
While breakfast was the same every morning, the appetizers varied, and they had someone serving up hot dishes.
My pre-breakfast breakfast:
One of the appetizers. It was African Stew with broccoli mashed potatoes. It was way better than the name implies.
I believe the desserts were varied as well.
Everything we ate was really good, and again, they never ran out of food. Some mornings, it could get crowded by the food bar, but it was never mobbed. I've stayed at some other resorts where people queue up about 15 minutes before the food is put out and then pounce on it like it's a $299 flat screen on Black Friday. Come to think of it, I didn't see any food hoarding either. Maybe we were there with some decent guests?
If you're staying club level for food, it was enjoyable. And the food is the only benefit. So be aware of that when you're pricing it out over a savanah view.
Now about the lounge: it's plenty big and we never had trouble finding a place to sit. But there were squatters. It appeared to us there were some people who had late flights and no where else to go. They camped on the couch and watched movies. They were there all day. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, they paid as much as I did to be there. Just seemed like an odd way to spend the day. And the napping was awkward.
Then there was the pre-teen who put her hand into the bowl of jelly beans. And manhandled several cookies. I pointed it out to a CM who promptly removed both the jelly beans and the cookies (did they come back out as is? Who knows. But we avoided them for the rest of the day just to be safe). I have no problem with people coming to the lounge in sleepy pants or swim cover ups (we live in a
Walmart world after all), but can't we all agree to keep our kids' hands out of the jellybeans?
We enjoy the atmosphere at AKL very much and it can be nice in the lounge. But here was an unwelcome change. They put up a HUGE tv right in the center of the lounge. It plays Disney movies all day. It's so loud, you cannot hear any of the AKL music wafting up from the lobby. There is no quiet. The entire atmosphere is dominated by the TV. In that way, it feels like you've wandered into someone's family room, or you're at the
Disney Store (if it also served muffins). No, it's not a deal breaker, but if you're heading to the lounge expecting to soak up some quiet, you're not going to find it there.
There was one exception, and that was at breakfast. There's an area over by the TgrLvsPooh stairs. You can't hear the TV there and you can hear some African music. Plus, families with kids tend to park over by the MASSIVE tv. But don't tell anyone else about this location, so that it remains quiet for you (or us) next time.
Other than the food service CMs, there was no kind of CM interaction that improved our trip in anyway. As far as we could tell, our room was exactly like any other room (although we had a DVD player, maybe some robes, but I won't swear to it). There was no welcome gift. No real welcome at all. Just an awkward encounter by the ice bucket. And although I could have had several bottles of beer, no water bottles were available.
We've stayed CL at AKL in the past and there was a noticeable diminution in service from the desk CMs and in general. For us, the CL experience at WDW and anywhere else we travel is almost always about the convenience of the lounge. Some occasional kiss-butt service is appreciated too. You'll not find that at AKL, although you'll enjoy the food. But it's not particularly convenient to your room, so keep that in mind.
We still enjoy the AKL but I think next time we'll rent a one bedroom at Kidani and stock the fridge with our own food. Then we won't have to schlep two football fields to share jelly beans with the hands of pre-teen.
.
.
