Just ‘ok’
I wanted to love animal kingdom lodge but honestly it was just ‘ok’. For the price I just wanted more. First the good..it’s a nice hotel, spacious and the staff are so nice and helpful. It’s clean and fairly quiet for a Disney hotel. We stayed in Jambo and I know it’s about to get refurbished and boy does it need it! We had a room with a kitchen due to our kids food allergy. The kitchen was poorly equipped. Who needs 20 glasses but only 2 pans? No kettle. No k cup coffee machine. And things in the cupboards were put away dirty. This is mainly because the dishwasher doesn’t work well at all, it’s old and full of lime scale .It all needs a complete overhaul. We had a pool view room and it was nice, except there is really loud music going all day long. It does stop at about 8pm but if you have little kids who need to nap this wouldn’t work well. Also the lobby is huge but the hotel is lit so dimly everywhere. I’m not sure who decided this would be the vibe but it’s odd. Trying to check in when you can barely see the paperwork is weird to me. The Mara and the restaurants and bar all have similar lighting. It’s giving depressing date night rather than vibrant Disney hotel. The bed is comfy but the sofa bed..what in the world! The mattress is so thin the springs poke out it’s absolutely awful. My kid slept on it and he complained it was uncomfortable. I cannot imagine any adult being ok on this. The other chair that turns into a single bed was much better. The thermostat in the bedroom needs work. If you set it at 66 it alternates between freezing cold air and heat which was so uncomfortable and not how ac should work! You don’t need the heat to come on to regulate the temp in any ac system I’ve ever seen. So every night you’d get 30 mins of cold air and then 30 mins of hot air. No way to turn it off. Just unpleasant all around. This was just in the bedroom section it seemed to work ok in the living room. This ruined my sleep most nights. There’s a couple of giraffes and a few other animals and birds which is nice. It is pretty far from the parks although the buses are fairly efficient. You definitely miss the monorail if you’re used to that. It took a good 30 minutes to get to magic kingdom after waiting 20 minutes for the bus. Coming back from Disney Springs we had to wait nearly an hour for a bus in the evening. Frustrating. We have stayed at various other Disney properties and this one was disappointing when all these little annoyances added up. Having just been to Aulani in Hawaii which was beyond fantastic this was just not comparable and it cost the same. Let’s hope the refurb addresses some of these issues. I’m my opinion there are many other better hotels on the Disney property.
