knoxt said:
How was your view and what was your location at AKL?
Pros and Cons of the AKL?
THANKS!
Our view at the AKL was AMAZING! We were one of the lucky folks who had a feeding area literally right outside of our room, so at all hours of the day and night when the animals were not being checked by veterinarians we had Eland, Giraffes, Zebra, and Pink Backed Pelicans by us. Ill post some pictures of the balcony view from our room soon as well. We wound up on the Kudo trail on the 3rd floor in room 3235. It was a hop and a skip from the main lobby, and you did not need to go up and down any elevators or stairs when first checking in b/c it's on the same level as the lobby. The walk from our room to Boma, Jiko, and the Pool was literally less than 5 minutes. The walk to the front desk was about 40 seconds tops, though b/c of all the animals we saw on our way to the lobby it always wound up being like 10 minutes!
Basically if you can, request the Kudo trail. We really explored the lodge a lot, and literally spent ALL 4 days we were there JUST at the lodge b/c it was so incredible. We still have our park passes b/c we didn't use them for that part of the trip!!! But try to get Kudo trail b/c while we were there we explored, and found the best views, at least of Arush savannah, to be from the Kudo trail. If you get an end room on Kudo it's not a long walk either. I had heard horror stories of 20 minute walks back and forth and that's very inflated. To go back and forth to the end of Kudo trail at least, it was only about 10 minutes, 5 each way, and that was at a walk. At the end of the trails the animals often hide out when people start getting a bit loud on the balconies. A guide told us that b/c we were honeymooners so we wound up spending a LOT of time at the end of the Kudo trail on the fire escape watching the Zebras who really hide out back there a lot!
Pros and Cons?
Mara needs a LOT of work. They were very difficult to work with as far as my food allergies were concerned, whereas the other resorts had my allergy stuff sorted out within a minute, here it took 20!
Jiko sorta was overrated. We ate there, and while it's a nice atmosphere, it's overpriced and the food was alright, of course were of the plain food variety so that might be why we weren't too impressed ya know.
Boma looked great, smelled great, but we didn't eat there, but be prepared to smell their cooking at all hours! It's wonderful smelling!
The pool is SOOOOO Warm! We went swimming every night while we were there, and always went to the hot tub by the flamingos b/c that was the least crowded one. We never had a problem finding chairs and the like either during the day. The slide looked great for kids, too bad the lifeguards wouldn't let us on it!
As far as darkness goes, I didn't find it dark at all, except in the room a bit at night when the curtains were drawn. The bathroom lighting was fine though.
Asides from that, this is the HANDS DOWN best resort I have ever been to. That and the CBR are tied for our favorite. They by far surpassed the WL, GF, Poly, etc. and I did NOT expect that at all! The lobby is amazing.... There is no other way to describe it. The guides were amazing, the night vision goggle viewing was great, and we spent a LOT of time talking to the different animal guides majoring in conservation in Africa and in the U.S. and learned a lot from them.
Basically if you love animals, you'll love staying here. DH and I are planning another stay already, but this time were not planning any park time, just hotel time b/c thats how wonderful this resort was. It's literally one that you can play at ALL day.
Would I do it without a savannah view room? Yes, but the savannah view made a HUGE difference for us b/c we spent a lot of time zooming in with our video camera and filming from our balcony. We had dinner on our balcony almost every night, breakfast, etc. We just kept bringing our food back to our room b/c of the great views.
Also, I had heard concerns of bugs, and we did not have a single bug problem the whole time. Not one bite, not even mosquitos!!! I'm sure they were there but they left us alone and we were outside in shorts every night!
This is a great place, I coudln't rave about it enough.
