We are staying at AKL. Any tips?

[mommie2angels]

Ya'll this is our first time staying at the AKL thanks to Sue Ellen's help from Dreams. We are so excited!!! Do ya'll have any tips for us? We have two daughters in wheelchairs. Is there any place at the resort we should avoid? Any special place or site we shouldn't miss? Ya'll always give such great tips. Thanks so much!!!

 

[SueM in MN]

We haven't stayed there, but we have made several afternoon - late evening trips there. It is an awesome resort. The Mara food court has good food and the music they play gets you in a good mood.
The one piece of advice I have is to be aware that even if all you can see are stairs to get somewhere, there is a ramp hidden someplace. There are also a number of animal viewing porches and rooms - hunt for them, it's really nice to sit there in the rocking chairs (although, depending on how high your girls sit in their wheelchairs, the rail might be in their viewing range). The trail that goes out toward the viewing area is really nice around dusk.

 

[HugsForEeyore]

I stayed ay AKL right after it opened in May 2001, with a friend who uses a power wheelchair. The lodge was nicely accessible, and she could get around with her service dog pretty well. The only place she had trouble was trying to get outside to Mara and the pool area. To get there from the inside of the lodge, there are two automatic doors, a few feet apart. Pushing the blue "open door" button would open both doors. My friend got stuck in the area between the doors, since she wasn't fast enough to get through both doors after she hit the button to open them. In the area between the doors, there was not another button to push so she was stuck since she could not manually open the doors. Hard to explain, I know! She had to wait until someone came along and opened the doors. I hope they fixed this by now!

I don't know if your girls get about by themselves or how old they are, but this was our only accessible-related problem - the rest of the lodge was great!

The buses were the best, since AKL does not share with other resorts. So when a bus pulls up at the lodge, in theory everyone on the bus should get off - then there is plenty of room for the wheelchair since the bus is empty. This is a BIG plus (unless it's changed recently!) for AKL!

The only other issue we had were that the standard rooms are TINY!!! But the bathroom is HUGE!!

Have fun!!!

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