My wife and I just got back from our honeymoon at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We both were very impressed with the service and friendly staff we encountered. We were even sent a complimentary bottle of Champagne and toasting flutes to our room compliments of Disney. Many of the comments I have heard concerning this hotel is concerning it’s outside appearance which is supposed to mimic African building styles, which it does. Also the pool is meant to resemble a watering hole with a zero entry end to the pool which allows you to simply walk right into the water without using stairs. The hotel rooms are very large and well appointed. Each room includes a mini fridge, hair dryer, in room safe, ironing board & iron, internet service for a charge, sofa, dining table with two chairs and so on. The restaurants inside the hotel are very good but they can be expensive unless you choose the Disney dining plan which we did. I have never used the dining plan before but I can honestly say we definitely saved quite a bit of money and we did not have to worry about how much the trip was costing us since everything was already paid for. The only issue we had with the hotel was that we were in our room at the time the maid came by to clean our room and she asked us to call housekeeping when we left so that she could clean our room. I called about 4:30pm as we were leaving and when we returned at 11:30pm the maid had not cleaned the room. I called housekeeping and within ten minutes a maid was at our door and she cleaned the entire room within 25 minutes while we were having drinks. I have noticed that most of the bad reviews come from the United Kingdom and I understand completely why that is. The rudest people I encountered during our entire stay were from the UK so please take into account who is rating the hotel.

The Animal Kingdom Lodge sets itself to be a beautiful oasis overlooking an animal filled Savannah. The room we had was overlooking a car park (as were a very large number of rooms) the front desk staff were extremely unhelpfull and ill advised (some would say doltish) they did not seem to understand English at all - It was a struggle to get them to understand anything withount enunciating it loudly and slowly. C a n w e h a v e a n o t h e r r o o m k e y p l e a s e ??? seemed to phase them greatly "Er... what does that mean ?".
The rooms were adequate and tidy, but the hotel exterior - though adequate and we know it was supposed to look slightly lodge like - just looked a bit, well, shabby really.

The receptionist made a mistak on checking in and said she would make a comment on the computer system and that if we returned the following morning it would be corrected, we went back and she had made a comment not that SHE had made a mistake, but that WE had and it was all our problem, and lo and behold she wasn't there for comment thereafter.

The animals are penned in smallish enclosures so they are trapped to be close to the rooms by electrified barbs stuck in the ground - you will be horrified when you see them... they look barbaric and probably are. The reserve guides knew beggar all about the animals and said the electrified barbs were to keep the animals safe from feeding by the guests and to keep them from being too close to the hotel balconies. But they looked ugly and a bit barbaric - this is a hotel in a zoo and nothing more 'different' than just that.

All in all, we would definately NOT recommend this one, please think of elsewhere - other disney or the good quality and much lower priced I-Drive hotels as it is very high cost and pretty low quality - you have been advised !!

Rick & Paula Manchester UK

We just came back from AKL. Stayed July6-12 in a savanna view room. Check in was easy, no line (we did get there after 7pm). I had read some reviews saying that even though you have booked a savanna view room you rarely see animals. So first thing I did was go out on the balcony and right in front of me was a giraffe, so that was nice. We actually had giraffes outside our window almost the entire stay! That was a real treat for the kids. We were on the 4th floor not far from the lobby, room 4236.
The only thing that needs improvement is housekeeping. I have to agree with a previous post in that we would split our day in half and go back to the hotel after 2 or 3pm and our room still wasn't done, our houskeeper sometimes wouldn't get to our room until about 4pm! All the other staff was great.
We requested a refrigerator in the room, which we did get. I have an 18 month old and she drinks whole milk. We took ice packs to keep the milk cool while at the parks. FYI: these refrigerators do not have a freezer. When I asked at the front desk if they had fridges with freezer I was told no, but the front desk agent said that they have a freezer in the back and they would keep our ice packs overinight every night of our stay. I really liked that detail. So every night after we'd get back from the parks we would hand over or packs and pick them up in the morining. It is not an uncommon thing.
We liked the pool. The only time we found it closed was when it was raining. The pool is open 24 hours, weather permitting, of course. Because of the rain on some afternoons the kids didn't get to use the playground (wet slides after the rain).
The Mara is their quick service restaurant, I really liked it because of the convinience and their quick service. For breakfast they have an $8 breakfast platter, waffles, cereals, bagels ect. For lunch they have chicken strips, burgers, and you can get a large pepperoni pizza for $18, pretty good.
Boma offers buffet for breakfast and dinner. Tried both and both were good. Reservations recomended.
Tried Jiko once for dinner, I enyoyed the Hallibut bot not the appetizer or salad. You have to really be open to those different flavors. Again, reservations are recommended.
Did the character breakfast at the Beach club, good buffet.
And the highlight of the trip was dinner at Cinderella's Royal Table. Dinner is pre-paid with a 24hr cancel policy. Included is a 3 course meal and icludes soft drinks. You get your picture taken with Cinderella before dinner. The photographs are complimentary! 4 people plus an infant was $174.
Everyone really had a good time. I would definitely recommend this hotel. Never waited long for any bus to any of the parks.
Also, for those interested, We used Disneys Magical Express and it was the best! Our bags got to our room about 2 hours after we did. Then on our last day our plane wasn't leaving 'till 730pm, so we checked our bags at 10am and got our boarding passes, went to magic kingdom with our carry-ons and got back to the hotel at 5pm to get our transfer back to the airport. This is a really good idea if you're flying on a participating carrier,we otherwise would have wasted our last day.

This was our first holiday together, and our first 'disney' experience, and after months of excitement we finally arrived at AKL from the UK, at around 9pm on Saturday night. Being tired and hungry, though in a feverpitch state of excitement to explore the lush surroundings we thought we'd tour the hotel and get some food. Spotting one zebra and then queuing KFC style for deep fried food amongst screaming youngsters was not what we imagined on a romantic getaway, but as there was an hour delay for a table at Boma (the normal food buffet), and similar for Jiko (very nice food that we tried later in the week, but very expensive), our options were Mara, or in room dining. Opting not to be hermits on our first night, left us feeling very disappointed with the place, the food and service was quite frankly awful. The hotel whilst not small, in terms of public space is much smaller than expected from the brochures, and the bar area whilst not essential to a great holiday is very small indeed. In general the staff whilst polite, were not helpful, leaving almost all the discovering of useful information to ourselves -- even trying to organise some surprise flowers for my girlfriends birthday later in the week was beyond the capabilities of the front desk - in a supposedly deluxe hotel I was very disappointed, It seemed even beyond them to supply me with the numbers for a florist. As it happened, they would have struggled to help, as the disney florist is closed on the 4th July -- the number for central disney guest services (who were helpful) was on the in-room telephone (which had no manual, as did so little else!)
Apart from that, we encountered exceptionally grumpy security men on the front gate, a total lack of instructions on pretty much all facilities, buses that seem to turn up when they feel like it, and then are crowded and not guaranteed to go exactly where you intended - for example - again on my girlfriends birthday we'd booked a restaurant at MGM, and started queueing for a bus a good 1hr15 mins before we needed to arrive -- needless to save we were 20 minutes late, after a few no show buses, and then a bus that decided rather helpfully to go via animal kingdom on the off-chance there were some stragglers there. Fortunately, the restaurant were good enough to understand, though we had to literally sprint from the main car park to the other end of mgm studios to make it, meaning that despite being really hot, sweaty and stressed we did not have time to grab a birthday badge from guest services, and to be honest the food when we got there was cold and disappointing (sci fi diner) -- mama melroses later in the week was worlds beter! The 4th July fireworks were really good.
Other room niggles, it took 2 days to get more clothes-hangers for the wardrobe area, there was no pay per view tv, a missed opportunity when you have the entire disney back catalog that could be picked from. Towels were not collected from the bathroom floor when they needed refreshing, and the bed itself was considerably less comfortable on one side than the other. As a further note, for some reason the bar person in the waiting area for Jiko ignore us for a good 20 minutes whilst we watched one gent try his way through samples of at least 10 different wines to take back to his room!! In the end we decided to not drink wine, as it would have meant having to tip such awful service.
Despite all that we've had a really amazing holiday, the imagination in the parks is amazing, though we both would not recommend this hotel to others. Overall, for the money we paid, we'd rather have stayed at the Gaylord Palms (where we had a fabulous lunch on the way back to the airport, and encountered far better service fom restaurant staff and concierges), or at some other luxury hotel than this supposedly 'Deluxe' disney resort, it is not worth the premium, and as one other person on here put so succinctly, it felt as if we were staying at a souped up holiday inn.