Animal Kingdom Lodge

One of our most recent trips was to Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge (AKL). Since we live about 2 hours away from Disney World we visit it almost every other month. Thanks to my hubby we are a camping family and usually stay at Ft. Wilderness Campground, but we decided to stray! Since we have 3 animal loving children we have always wanted to take them to AKL. We stayed for 1 night on the concierge level, and absolutely fell in love! For those fellow Floridians out there Disney does offer some awesome discounts for hotels in off-peak season and also for the parks. Since we went during the off season we were able to save 32% and they decided to be nice and include the concierge benefits for a mere $12!! Who could resist concierge for that price??!! It was worth every penny!



The Hotel -

First let me say this hotel is massive! The setup of the hotel seems to make sense, since afterall most people are there to see the animals. I have read some complaints that the walk to the rooms is rather long, but once you see the views you will see why. Step out to your balcony and see the many species of animals roaming about freely on one of the savannahs. We stayed in a room overlooking the Arusha Savannah and could see zebras, giraffes, red hogs, anklote cattle, wildebeast, eland and tons of different birds. The views are amazing!!

Things to do -

Since we didn't leave AKL while we were there we took advantage of the many planned activities they have planned daily. They have things like cookie decorating, medallion imprinting, African stories, animal encounters, viewing the savannah with night vision(my kids still talk about how neat this was!), poolside games, arts & crafts and basically a little bit of everything you can imagine! A nice sized arcade is located by the pool with enough games to satisfy and child (or adult!!)


If planned activities aren't your thing and you'd rather soak up the Florida sun, then there's plenty of space to do that as well! The pool at AKL is huge! I've never seen a pool as big as this one. There are hundreds of chairs and lounge chairs hanging out poolside. There is also a poolside bar where you can load up on snacks and any drink you have a craving for. One thing I liked were the towel stations located on most sides of the pool. Forget about lugging towels around the hotel, they had plenty waiting to be used


Concierge - Kilimanjaro Club -
The special concierge lounge had drinks and food from 6:00am to 10:00pm everyday. We only went for 1 night so we took advantage of this perk! We only had to buy drinks 1 time while we were there because we just couldn't see the point of running upstairs (it's on the 6th floor) while at dinner. For our family though if we had to pay the normal $130 a night I do not think it would have been worth it. Another benefit of staying concierge is a special safari that is only offered to those guests. The Wanyama Safari is an upclose encounter with the animals at AKL followed by dinner at Jiko. It can be a little pricey but I'm sure it's very worth it. The safari and dinner should last about 3 hours.


This is only a small snippet of the greatness that is Animal Kingdom Lodge. We are so happy we decided to stay at AKL and we will definitely be back in the future! If anyone has specific questions please feel free to comment and I will try my hardest to help you!