We just returned from six nights at AoA, and I thought I'd share our thoughts in the event it can help someone else --
First of all, we were very pleasantly surprised by the size and convenient layout of the family suites. It was absolutely superior in those respects to the other suites we've stayed in (Caribe Royale, Springhill, Cabana Bay) and left our party of 6 not feeling at all cramped. My husband and I loved having a master bedroom and bath just to ourselves and the baby, and the older children loved not only not having to compete with dad (the trip bathroom hog) for a full bathroom, but also the fact that the fold-out couch bed and fold-out table bed were comparable in comfort to regular beds.
One minor annoyance of mine with many hotel mini-fridges is that they only marginally chill even a water bottle, so you really can't count on them for any sort of food preservation. The fridge in our AoA suite was *awesome*, so you could absolutely take back dinner leftovers, put them in the fridge, and then heat them up for breakfast or lunch the next day with complete confidence.
Staying in the Lion King section, we didn't have our own pool, but enjoyed exploring all three of the other sections' pools. My husband thought the walk over to the Nemo building for the food court, bus transportation, play area, etc. was minimal and found the savings of staying in Lion King to be 100% worth it.
Also, we had never stayed in a Skyliner resort, and were stunned by the efficiency and lack of stress compared to the monorail. The boarding process on the Skyliner is seamless with a stroller and we could not believe how quickly even a long line moved (and we did get stuck once when it was temporarily having problems).
Ample parking could easily be found some yards from our building, a refreshing change from the Deluxe resorts we've stayed at where we had to shark for parking whose distance from the rooms could be better measured in portions of a mile. This was a very, very nice surpise.
A few minimal quibbles were probably due to Disney's aspirations or lack thereof in the Value segment of their properties, so I'm not really complaining here. The lighting is basically on or off, particularly in the secondary sleeping/living area, so someone wanting to stay quietly awake while others sleep doesn't have much of an option other than a flashlight. As one might expect, amenities are minimal, as in, just a bar of soap and that's it
. Be sure you bring your own moisturizer! My one point of rancor had to do with the housekeeping at "Value" resorts being only every other day instead of every day. At $300-400 per night and up for a family suite, having housekeeping service that doesn't measure up to what the Super 8 can pull off isn't acceptable. And yes, staffing shortages, yada yada, but I'm pretty sure if this successful corporation would raise its Mousekeeping wages sufficiently, they would find that there really wasn't a shortage at all (and I still feel that if Super 8 can clean every day, Disney, a paragon of hospitality services, shouldn't be producing excuses here). But, all in all, this was a lovely splurge for our family and we would highly recommend it to any large traveling party.
First of all, we were very pleasantly surprised by the size and convenient layout of the family suites. It was absolutely superior in those respects to the other suites we've stayed in (Caribe Royale, Springhill, Cabana Bay) and left our party of 6 not feeling at all cramped. My husband and I loved having a master bedroom and bath just to ourselves and the baby, and the older children loved not only not having to compete with dad (the trip bathroom hog) for a full bathroom, but also the fact that the fold-out couch bed and fold-out table bed were comparable in comfort to regular beds.
One minor annoyance of mine with many hotel mini-fridges is that they only marginally chill even a water bottle, so you really can't count on them for any sort of food preservation. The fridge in our AoA suite was *awesome*, so you could absolutely take back dinner leftovers, put them in the fridge, and then heat them up for breakfast or lunch the next day with complete confidence.
Staying in the Lion King section, we didn't have our own pool, but enjoyed exploring all three of the other sections' pools. My husband thought the walk over to the Nemo building for the food court, bus transportation, play area, etc. was minimal and found the savings of staying in Lion King to be 100% worth it.
Also, we had never stayed in a Skyliner resort, and were stunned by the efficiency and lack of stress compared to the monorail. The boarding process on the Skyliner is seamless with a stroller and we could not believe how quickly even a long line moved (and we did get stuck once when it was temporarily having problems).
Ample parking could easily be found some yards from our building, a refreshing change from the Deluxe resorts we've stayed at where we had to shark for parking whose distance from the rooms could be better measured in portions of a mile. This was a very, very nice surpise.
A few minimal quibbles were probably due to Disney's aspirations or lack thereof in the Value segment of their properties, so I'm not really complaining here. The lighting is basically on or off, particularly in the secondary sleeping/living area, so someone wanting to stay quietly awake while others sleep doesn't have much of an option other than a flashlight. As one might expect, amenities are minimal, as in, just a bar of soap and that's it
. Be sure you bring your own moisturizer! My one point of rancor had to do with the housekeeping at "Value" resorts being only every other day instead of every day. At $300-400 per night and up for a family suite, having housekeeping service that doesn't measure up to what the Super 8 can pull off isn't acceptable. And yes, staffing shortages, yada yada, but I'm pretty sure if this successful corporation would raise its Mousekeeping wages sufficiently, they would find that there really wasn't a shortage at all (and I still feel that if Super 8 can clean every day, Disney, a paragon of hospitality services, shouldn't be producing excuses here). But, all in all, this was a lovely splurge for our family and we would highly recommend it to any large traveling party.
