Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge

They finally located a renovated room for us overlooking the pool. We noticed the patio door covered in bugs. The bugs were also inside on the floor and hanging on the drapes. I called my travel agent to get us moved to a different resort. The Disney rep called me she said that it was Love bug season and the bugs are to be expected. She said they could have Pest Control and housekeeping come and clean our room again. We did not want to open our suitcases in there let alone stay there. Customer service called me directly and told me no other Disney World Deluxe properties available, except a club level room at Grand Floridan. She said it would cost me an additional $1700 for a four night stay even after I paid my deluxe room charge. This was outrageous especially since the room was unacceptable for anyone to stay in. We negotiated a price of $895 additional that I had to pay to stay. She did say to me that you will probably see bugs at the Grand Floridian rooms also. I said I'll take my chances! I've never had them there before. We ended up loving the club level room at the Floridian and will never stay anywhere else in Disney. I am very disappointed in how they charged us so much more for something that was out of our control. This was not very Disney like. I would not recommend Animal Kingdom Lodge unless you are very comfortable camping and can tolerate bugs, I am not! I gave this a two star rating because the front desk clerk was very helpful to us when we first arrived.

I stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge with my wife and son in mid September 2019. On arrival at Jambo house we entered a very impressive lobby area and made our way to reception. Slightly disappointing experience with the cast member who appeared fairly underwhelmed to deal with us. Our previous experience at a Disney Hotel was in Disneyland Paris where the first impression from the staff was excellent. Our room was a standard view looking onto the car park. The room was clean but a little on the small side with not a great deal of storage space for our luggage. We ate in the Mara restaurant shortly afterwards where we redeemed our resort drinking cups and used our first entitlement on our Dining plan. We encountered a slight problem here as I couldn't remember the PIN I had set up on our Magic Magic bands, however the staff were excellent and explained how everything worked and to go back to reception to sort the magic band issue. Back at reception we encountered a different cast member who was first class. She really took time to make us feel welcome and asked my son if this was his first time at Walt Disney World in Florida. When she found out it was she went into overdrive! Really making a fuss of him and giving him stickers and badges. This was a total contrast to our initial impression on arrival and I now felt that I was in Disney! I think the cast member's name was Nicole and she was a real credit to the Hotel and WDW. After this our experiences in the Hotel were all positive. The staff at the pool, restaurants, buses, reception and shops were lovely. The facilities at the hotel were good and my son enjoyed the pool, his favourite pool was at Kidani village as he enjoyed the slides there. The fact that you can pop out of the pool and walk a few yards to see the animals in the savannah was a real treat too. We used the bus transport to and from the parks and they were fairly regular and reliable but we found if you needed to be somewhere at a specific time (Dining reservation etc) then it was probably best to get an earlier bus just to allow for any potential delays. We ate at The Mara, (quick service) Boma, (buffet) and San'aa (a la carte) during our stay and they were all very good. In summary we had a great time staying at the Animal Kingdom Lodge during our Florida vacation and it was a great location for the WDW parks.