July 18-25
After visiting WDW for many years when our children were growing up, we visited WDW for the first time in about 8 years. We recently bought a DVC membership at AKL through resale with the idea that we can take the whole family 6 adults, 14 year-old grand daughter and almost 2 and 3 year old grandsons every three years. Here's my report and observations.
After visiting WDW for many years when our children were growing up, we visited WDW for the first time in about 8 years. We recently bought a DVC membership at AKL through resale with the idea that we can take the whole family 6 adults, 14 year-old grand daughter and almost 2 and 3 year old grandsons every three years. Here's my report and observations.
- AKL 3 BR villa's are outstanding. Perfect for our group of 9.
- We were on the dining plan but we supplemented our breakfast and kids snacks with outside food that we had shipped prior to arriving from Amazon Prime and Amazon Prime Pantry. The refrigerated food was brought to us by Garden Grocer. Not only food, but we had water shipped from Amazon as well. FYI, at the time we were able to get 3 12 count 16.9 oz. Nestle water for $2.98 and shipped in one prime pantry box for $5.99. The boxes were waiting in our room for us. I'd highly recommend this if you can buy in bulk for food and water is much cheaper $.42/bottle than you can get in the park or the hotel. Prices do change day to day. And some things like water were not available every day.
- First time to see new Fantasyland. Outstanding.
- Had 2 lunch and 1 dinner reservation at Be Our Guest. For lunch, I'd make sure you pre ordered your food if possible. We didn't for the first time and the wait was about 15 minutes longer than when we preordered.
- Grandsons loved the AKL. Animals were active after about 8 o'clock each morning and our boys spent a lot of time on the three balcony's of our room.
- Our dinner Table services restaurants were Sanaa, Chef Mickeys, Coral Reef, Garden Grill, Be Our Guest, Ohana and Whispering Canyon. Great Experiences. Also had a character breakfast at Tusker House.
- Going to dinner each night on the dining plan, was in a way a deterrent to our park activities. We'd go to the parks in the morning and back to the hotel in the early afternoon for naps. With Dinner each night we'd easily use 3 hours of time. I'm not sure with a 2 and 3 year old that we'd do that again as they got pretty tired.
- We found the parks to be crowded and of course in July, very hot.
- Used Magical express. No problems to and from the airport. However one of our bags was mis-tagged at the hotel on our return trip and wasn't at baggage claim when we arrived at our destination. Someone else's bag had our tag on it when we got to the airport. Spent about 4 hours speaking to several people before I finally was able to get to a person to help. They located my bag and was rerouted back to me. Disney uses a third party to handle the luggage but needs to step and have a quicker more precise way to resolve issues when problems occur.
- One more note, after being in the hotel for about 10 minutes, my 3 year old grandson tripped on the threshold coming in from the patio and gashed his head open. Required 5 stitches. The staff at AKL were great and got the Disney paramedics to transport him to Celebration for care. My son said the staff was great at the hospital. I'm sure they care for a lot of kids who have similar problems.
