Hi there. We checked into AKL yesterday morning, just thought I'd share our experjence...
First of all, our check-in CM was the most unfriendly person I have run into so far at AKL or WDW, everyone else has been wonderful. She was grouchy and curt and interrupted me when I talked.
Anyway. First thing she said was that we could not have our requested King bed because they had many rooms closed down for refurbishments. I (jokingly) asked if that meant there were any view upgrades available (we had standard view reserved). She said they are not upgrading anyone this week because they have so many rooms closed down... But then grudgingly admitted she'd had to "comp" us a pool view room because that was the only non-handicapped room she could find. Or something. I'd been expecting the standard view so the pool view was a nice surprise.
So! We get to our third floor pool view room and the sitting table and chairs are in a weird position. The usual check-in paperwork and guides are piled on the bed, not on the table. We shrugged, put the furniture back into a normal spot, and put our laptop in the safe, and headed back out for a few hours of shopping. Our luggage was still in bell services.
We got back to the room several hours later and the room was warm and humid - and then we see that the balcony door has been left WIDE open, and the furniture has been dragged back into the odd position (one chair dragged over next to the bed).
So we called the front desk to find out what was going on. They said they're in the middle of stripping & re-varnishing the wood furniture and they must have accidentally put us in a room that was being worked on. We hadn't really noticed a smell of varnish or anything, so they said they would tell the workers to leave our room alone. So that was that.
Our luggage arrived and we unpacked.
That afternoon as we were relaxing in the room, we kept getting phone calls from the front desk... Verifying who was in the room, that sort of thing. Then they called and said the table in our room had already been stripped, and they wanted to send the workers in to take that table and bring us a new one. At that point I was getting semi-annoyed and said we would just move rooms if that would be easier for them, if, ha-ha, they happened to have a Savannah view room available?
Sure they did! No problem!
So the room assigner called us back a few minutes later, and we found out we were being moved to a (Kudu trail? I think?) room facing the Arusha savannah! Needless to say, we were pretty happy.
We're waaay out on the trail but we don't mind, we have a nice view of zebras and giraffes and ankole cattle.
Other info: The weather here has actually been much nicer than I expected, being from south Florida. The humidity has dropped and the nights have been pleasantly cool. We haven't done any of the main parks, but the resort feels almost deserted at times - we were two of only three people heading to Downtown Disney from the bus stop at AKL this afternoon. DisneyQuest was pretty empty, little or no wait for any games. Five people on the bus back to AKL later on. Oh, and the CM at check-in said only 63 people were checking in yesterday.
They are also re-painting the bus stops outside AKL.
I'm starting to wonder if Disney intentionally did not release September AP rates so they could keep crowds low for ride and resort refurbishments.
First of all, our check-in CM was the most unfriendly person I have run into so far at AKL or WDW, everyone else has been wonderful. She was grouchy and curt and interrupted me when I talked.
Anyway. First thing she said was that we could not have our requested King bed because they had many rooms closed down for refurbishments. I (jokingly) asked if that meant there were any view upgrades available (we had standard view reserved). She said they are not upgrading anyone this week because they have so many rooms closed down... But then grudgingly admitted she'd had to "comp" us a pool view room because that was the only non-handicapped room she could find. Or something. I'd been expecting the standard view so the pool view was a nice surprise.
So! We get to our third floor pool view room and the sitting table and chairs are in a weird position. The usual check-in paperwork and guides are piled on the bed, not on the table. We shrugged, put the furniture back into a normal spot, and put our laptop in the safe, and headed back out for a few hours of shopping. Our luggage was still in bell services.
We got back to the room several hours later and the room was warm and humid - and then we see that the balcony door has been left WIDE open, and the furniture has been dragged back into the odd position (one chair dragged over next to the bed).
So we called the front desk to find out what was going on. They said they're in the middle of stripping & re-varnishing the wood furniture and they must have accidentally put us in a room that was being worked on. We hadn't really noticed a smell of varnish or anything, so they said they would tell the workers to leave our room alone. So that was that.
Our luggage arrived and we unpacked.
That afternoon as we were relaxing in the room, we kept getting phone calls from the front desk... Verifying who was in the room, that sort of thing. Then they called and said the table in our room had already been stripped, and they wanted to send the workers in to take that table and bring us a new one. At that point I was getting semi-annoyed and said we would just move rooms if that would be easier for them, if, ha-ha, they happened to have a Savannah view room available?
Sure they did! No problem!
So the room assigner called us back a few minutes later, and we found out we were being moved to a (Kudu trail? I think?) room facing the Arusha savannah! Needless to say, we were pretty happy.
We're waaay out on the trail but we don't mind, we have a nice view of zebras and giraffes and ankole cattle.
Other info: The weather here has actually been much nicer than I expected, being from south Florida. The humidity has dropped and the nights have been pleasantly cool. We haven't done any of the main parks, but the resort feels almost deserted at times - we were two of only three people heading to Downtown Disney from the bus stop at AKL this afternoon. DisneyQuest was pretty empty, little or no wait for any games. Five people on the bus back to AKL later on. Oh, and the CM at check-in said only 63 people were checking in yesterday.
They are also re-painting the bus stops outside AKL.
I'm starting to wonder if Disney intentionally did not release September AP rates so they could keep crowds low for ride and resort refurbishments.
).
No fun running into unpleasant people on your vacation. Interesting theory on the AP rates ... very good thinking! 
