My take on AKL

[curan69]

Just got back from AKL Jambo house on Wednesday night. We spent 4 nights in a Sunset Savanah view Studio. The view was nice, I suspect its called the Sunset Savanah because we saw WAY more activity at night then during the day. The novelty of seeing the animals from our balcony seemed to wear off faster for my two sons than me.

I have two son's 4 and 8 who are fish and LOVE to swim. I was eager to use the Kidani pool based on the reviews but we ended up liking the Jambo pool better, it is WAY, WAY bigger. The slide at Kidani may be longer but we found two negatives with it.
1. The line is a lot slower to move. Obviously it takes longer for someone to go down a longer slide, and I find the green/red light system slow. the slide at jambo, while shorter, is quicker.( I mean faster in speed and less wait time) it uses the "go when the person in front enters the pool" system.
2. The slide at Kidani had rough joints!! My son and I ended up with red shoulders.

For whatever reason my son's were amused with the water play area at Kidani for all of 20 mintues, then they wanted to swim, swim, swim.

Mara was convenient but we found the food quality hit and miss.

We go to Disney at least 2 times a year and because of this we usually only spend one day in a park and maybe a water park. We LOVE to go to Downtown Disney ( I own half the Lego store) We found AKL to be a little far out and the bus rides anywhere seemed long.

All in all, we enjoyed our stay at AKL, and If i had to do it over I would stay there again. But now that we have experienced it i don't see us returning there in the near future.

Of course many of us are biased towards our home resorts, but my 8 year said it best when I asked him how he liked AKL. He replied "Pretty cool, but next time can we just go back to Old Key West"

 

[Simba's Mom]

What a coincidence! I was in a studio overlooking the Sunset savannah until Tuesday. #5122. Where were you?
The main problem I noticed at Mara was that at prime dinner time, it was overwhelmed-there were long lines of people waiting to order. After waiting a few minutes, I gave up and went over and got a sandwich out of the cooler.
I thought there was lots of activity on the savannah-I didn't go to the parks at all on Monday because I was having too much fun watching the animals from my balcony.
Did you see this guy who was going to take on the truck from the Wanyama Safari? Must have been quite a sight for them-

 

[DisneyStarWisher]

I totally agree about the slide. It is very rough. Even though I'm 39, I love water slides, so I thought I would try it. Ouch!!!

I have to say we LOVED AKV!!! We liked the out of the way feel it had. We will probably try out some other resorts, but I'm so glad we own at AKV.

 

[curan69]

Our Studio was #5257. From your picture I think we were right accross from you.

We just booked three nights at BCV for Feb 8,9,10. It will be our first time. I've tried to get in there before but never had any luck. We love the water, we even dressed up as Lifeguards for MNSSHP.

 

[gkrykewy]

Agree that the Jambo pool beats the kidani pool.

 

[yapper79]

DH and I will second your reviews of the Mara. We were not impressed. We found the quality of food to be poor and the selection to be small. It's the first time I've had a trip to Dis where I went to bed hungry!

 

[culli]

I totally agree about the slide. It is very rough. Even though I'm 39, I love water slides, so I thought I would try it. Ouch!!!

I have to say we LOVED AKV!!! We liked the out of the way feel it had. We will probably try out some other resorts, but I'm so glad we own at AKV.

Nothing to do with AKV but I had to laugh when you said that about the rough slide. We are here at BCV now and when I go down the Pirate slide at SAB it hurts my back and I find it very annoying. You have to lay down on your back and the "slits" I felt every one of them!