Upcoming Trip Plans

For this post I thought I’d do something a little different and talk about what I have planned for our upcoming trip next week. My family and I are taking a quick weekend trip down to the Walt Disney World Resort May 19-21. The travel party consists of 6 adults (age range 55 to 22) and 2 kids (ages 10 & 8).

Friday
The 8 us going are flying down Friday afternoon, arriving in Orlando around 4 PM. We are staying at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort in Theme Park View rooms. This first night we will mainly chill around the hotel and maybe go swimming until it is time for dinner. For dinner, we will be taking the highway in the sky aka the WDW Monorail to Disney’s Polynesian Resort to eat at ‘Ohana. Our reservation is at 8:25 PM, so hopefully we will be seated by a window and we can see the new Happily Ever After firework display at 9 PM. After dinner, my sister and I are planning on going to The California Grill Lounge at the Contemporary Resort for a drink or two. If there’s no seating available in the lounge, we will probably go back to the Polynesian to the Tambu lounge for a Lapu Lapu.

Saturday
Breakfast will be each man for himself. My father usually heads to the Grand Floridian Cafe at 7:30 AM when they open. My mother normally orders room service. While my sister and I have a granola bar and coffee and head straight to the parks for rope drop. Our first morning we will head to EPCOT since it is the only day we will have any real free time. I normally rope drop ride Test Track, single rider, and can usually get 2 or 3 rides in with almost no wait. At 11:00 AM, once World Showcase opens, we will spend the hour eating lunch at various kiosks. At 12:30 PM my family will all be meeting at the Land Pavilion, where we will meet our Private VIP Guide for the day. We have the same guide requested that we always use and she is fantastic. We will start our VIP tour in EPCOT with Soarin’ Around the World, Frozen Ever After, and Test Track. Then we will head over to the Magic Kingdom where we will start off by watching the Festival of Fantasy Parade, then hit all the major rides across the park. At 7:30 PM we will say goodbye to our guide till tomorrow. We will have a quick service dinner then check in for our Firework Dessert Party at 8:00 PM. Once the fireworks are complete, everyone except my sister and I will head back to the hotel. I have 3 FastPass+ Reservations for that evening for Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Big Thunder Mountain from 8:30-9:30 PM, 9:30-10:30 PM, and 10:30-11 PM, respectively. I also already have paper FastPasses for Dumbo, Journey of the Little Mermaid, and Monster’s Inc Laugh Floor.

Sunday
Today we will have a character breakfast at 1900 Park Fare. At 9:00 AM our VIP Guide will be meeting us in the lobby at the Grand Floridian before whisking us away to Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Here we will go straight to Kilimanjaro Safaris followed by Expedition Everest, Dinosaur, and Adventurer’s Outpost. After Animal Kingdom, we will head to Hollywood Studios for Tower of Terror, Rockin’ Roller Coaster, and Toy Story Midway Mania. Depending on how we’re doing on time, we may head back to Magic Kingdom. We’re required to have our guide until 4:00 PM due to a 7 -hour minimum. Then we will head back to the hotel, grab our luggage, and make our way to the airport for an evening flight.

Resort Review: Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas Kidani Village – 1 Bedroom Suite

My last trip to Walt Disney World in Florida was in February of 2013. I had time off from school so my parents, sister, and I decided to take a trip to the magical land of Disney (or should I say world). We decided to book this trip kind of late (Mid-December) and it was Presidents’ Day weekend. My parents let me decide where to stay since we usually stay where they want to (usually Disney’s Beach Club resort). However, I was talking to one of my friends who goes to Disney World about 3 times a year and she said they always stay at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. She talked about how the giraffes were always right outside their window and how this one gazelle kept trying to jump over the electric fence. So we book a 1-bedroom suite in the Kidani Village with a savanna view.

If you aren’t aware. Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge is separated into 2 separate villages: Jambo (the main village) and Kidani (villas). Jambo House does have some villas on the higher floors, these are Disney Vacation Club (DCV) properties for DCV members. The Kidani villas are actually DCV properties, but are available to non-DCV members by cash reservations. The villas at Kidani are also slightly larger compared to Jambo, also Kidani has a slightly better bathroom situation in my opinion. In Jambo House there is one master bathroom vs in Kidani Village there is a master bathroom and second bathroom with shower in the living room (for suites).

Anyway, back to our experience. The room was very nice and much bigger than we expected. The master bathroom was huge and featured a tiled Lion King panorama. The full kitchen was nice and big, but we never really used it. The beds were normal, nothing extraordinary for a hotel bed, but not bad in any way. What I thought would be the coolest part, turned out to be not so great — the view. I don’t remember the name of the savanna we were on, but we basically got a good long look at some long-horned cattle.  Now if you just love long-horned cattle, this might be the best place for you; however, I’m from the southwest, I see long-horned cattle on my way to work every day. We did see a zebra for like a good 5 minutes one day, but that was about the only other thing we saw. Another aspect that I didn’t like was the only form of transportation to and from the parks was via Disney buses. Now I don’t mind the bus system; however, the transportation time from AKL to one of the parks takes forever (except Animal Kingdom).

Let’s get to everyone’s favorite topic — FOOD! If it’s not your favorite topic, well it is mine so I’m gonna talk about it. We had dinner our first night at Sanaa, which is the only unique/themes dining experience at Kidani Village. Jambo House has a Fine/Signature dining restaurant called Jiko – The Cooking Place, as well as another unique/themed dining experience called Boma – Flavors of Africa. Sanaa was delicious to say the least. I definitely recommend the Indian Bread Service, which comes with 3 kinds of bread made en restaurant as well as 3 accompaniments. For the main course most of us ordered the Potjie. Which consisted of rice served 2 meats of your choosing (there were at least 5 options). We each ordered 2 different meats which allowed us all to have a little taste of all of the options. The butter chicken seemed to be the favorite between the 4 of us. For dessert we had a custom cake ordered from the Disney Cake Hotline prior to our arrival. The cake was a red velvet heart shaped cake (it was also valentines weekend). What was really nice was that once we were finished with the cake they boxed it up while the check was being signed and had it sent up to the room. The cake actually got to the room faster than we did.

The room was fairly priced for the type, size, and dates of travel. It averaged about $780/night for 4 nights. Depending on the savanna view this could be deemed worth it or overpriced. I’ve read that Jambo house is cheaper most of the time compared to Kidani; however, at peak parts of the year this might not necessarily be true.

OVERVIEW

• In my opinion: 3.75 Mickey heads (that’s my star rating system). 
• Would recommend to friend with precautions
• Would stay again
• PROS
  Room and bathroom size
  Decoration of room
  Dining within resort
  View (could be con)
• CONS
  Location from parks
  Transportation options
  View (could be pro)