Addicted to Disney
Caz is addicted to anything Disney, Wayne is her husband aka Mr Disney gets dragged along to all the Parks and shows and doesn't like to admit he is a Stitch Fan.
Join us as we share our experiences and thoughts on anything related to Disney from Disney Parks, and Disney Cruises, to Collectables and anything else made by the Mouse.
Addicted to Disney
Dining, Wildlife, and Luxury at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
Ever wondered what it’s like to wake up to the sight of giraffes right outside your window? Our latest episode takes you on an enchanting journey through Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge at Walt Disney World in Orlando. We share our unforgettable experiences staying at Kidani Village, the exclusive haven for Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members, and why booking a Savannah view room is a game-changer. From the lush African-themed decor to the refreshing pool in 37-degree weather, we compare Kidani Village to other Disney resorts, including our home resort, the Riviera. Plus, we tackle the logistics of relying on bus transportation for park visits, ensuring you’re fully prepared for your magical stay.
Join us as we recount our stay in a deluxe studio using DVC points, making it both luxurious and affordable. We delve into the room’s features, address common concerns about animal smells and noise, and give you the lowdown on dining options like Sanaa, Boma, and Jiko. And of course, we couldn’t forget Gerald the giraffe, who made our visit truly special. Wrapping up, we reflect on our five-night adventure, share future plans, and emphasize the importance of your support and engagement. Don’t miss this chance to discover why Animal Kingdom Lodge is the perfect retreat for animal lovers and Disney enthusiasts alike!
Caz and Wayne are Addicted to Disney, a podcast about the ups and downs of Disney trips, from Parts to Cruises we will try it all.
Caz collects Disney Ears, Characters and Loungefly bags. Wayne likes cameras.
Whilst I do the podcast, you have the list. No, whilst you do the podcast, I have the list. I don't know, I'm confused. Anyway, where are we today?
Speaker 2:Welcome to Addicted to Disney. We're actually on the road again. This time we're in America.
Speaker 1:Ah America.
Speaker 2:Yes, we're in America. We're actually in Orlando. We flew out a few days ago and we're staying in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, kidani Village at Walt Disney World.
Speaker 1:Ooh.
Speaker 2:It's rather posh here, I must say.
Speaker 1:It's rather posh and I'm sitting here in the Lodge Villa room whatever you want to call it with all my podcasting stuff all over the place, and I can look out the window and see a bird.
Speaker 2:We did have giraffes earlier but I just can't see them from here. I can see a giraffe. You can see a giraffe. You can see a giraffe. I can see a giraffe.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, so we are in Animal Kingdom Lodge. We are in Kidani Village, which is a section of Animal Kingdom Lodge which is for DVC only. So if you're a DVC member and we will get around to doing a podcast about DVC at some point then you can come stay here. If you're not a DVC member, then you can go to Animal Kingdom Lodge and Jambo House, which is the main complex at Animal Kingdom. It's bigger and a lot noisier from what we've seen briefly passing it. Kidani is a lot quieter, it's a lot smaller.
Speaker 1:It's a lot smaller. The facilities aren't, I would say, as great as some of the other places we've stayed.
Speaker 1:We still compare everything to Riviera because that's our home resort and we love riviera and we'll do a podcast on riviera soon and we will do a podcast from riviera soon, despite the fact we were actually in riviera a couple of days ago, because that's where we started our breakout here, and then we decided to move to animal kingdom lodge because kaz wanted to see the giraffes yeah, I wanted to see the giraffes, and the whole point of us coming to Animal Kingdom was we would only do it if we could have a Savannah view.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a Savannah view basically means you face into where all the animals are roaming around. So for me this is nice. I like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't consider doing Animal Kingdom, particularly Kidani. We haven't really looked at Jambo House, but I think they're very similar. The Kadanu we haven't really looked at Jambo house, but I think they're very similar. They're sort of built around a semi-circular or almost circular area which they call the savannah, which is where some of the animals are, and the animals are free to roam so you might not see anything, but generally they feed them out here as well. So you tend to see some animals, mostly in morning and mostly later in the evening they're a little bit more active. But the other part of the rooms face outwards and they face into what appears to be the car park.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't like that at all so, yeah, if I was doing animal kingdom lodge again, I would make sure it was a savannah room, which is a very nice balcony. We're actually on the fourth floor, so we're slightly higher than a giraffe, which is probably quite useful, because they can't come along and eat whatever we leave on the balcony. You should not leave things on the balcony overnight and you certainly shouldn't throw things over the balcony, because that's really bad and they don't want you doing that.
Speaker 2:We've seen quite a range of animals. We've seen giraffes, which are my favourite. If you've seen on the channel, there is a video from 2021.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can see it.
Speaker 2:There is a video from 2021 where I went and actually fed some giraffes. So if you get a chance on the channel, go and have a look on that on the YouTube channel. So yeah, so my advice would be, if you are going to look at staying in Animal Kingdom, if it's Jambo or Kidani, your DVC, then I would say, yeah, have a Savannah view, because the car park is not the best view, so first impressions actually yeah if you like animals and I think that's how this is really set up it's if you like animals, this is perfect.
Speaker 2:And now we've got a big ball thing with big horns animal kingdom lodge, as you might guess by the name, is the closest accommodation to the animal kingdom theme park, which is the smallest of the four parks at disney but if you like animals, it's the place to go exactly, and we're talking real animals here.
Speaker 1:We're not talking about that mouse person, mickey mouse or whatever his name is the first impressions I think the first impressions are we liked it. We're sort of finding finding some of the niggles. I would say one of the niggles is the fact that, because it is furthest away from the major parks, everything has to go on a bus and not massive public transport. Although it's not public transport, it's private transport technically.
Speaker 2:You do have to use the buses to get to and from the parks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one of the problems with Animal Kingdom Lodge is the fact that it is further out and the only transport system is the buses, which means you've got all the rigmarole of waiting for a bus, although they do run like 15 minutes, so they're not too bad. But anyway, if you like animals, yeah, it's perfect for if you like animals, we have been in the pool. Yes, we've been in the pool. There was a very nice pool and at the moment it's around about 37 degrees over here.
Speaker 2:According to the hey Mickey Alexia sitting next to me on the table, it's 101 degrees Fahrenheit, so it is hot out here at the moment.
Speaker 1:If you want to know what that is in Celsius, find yourself an American, they'll explain it to you. But yes, it is hot and in fact we were talking to the bus driver today and he was saying that they're currently in a mini drought and they could do with about 10 days worth of rain. We did have a bit of rain yesterday we had to do the poncho walk, yes, and a bit of rain, so it was quite a lot of rain and thunderstorms and things. But yeah, we got a little bit wet, but it wasn't too bad. Anyway, why did we come here?
Speaker 2:why did we come to animal kingdom?
Speaker 1:why did we choose it?
Speaker 2:why did I choose it? Animal kingdom's one of those back back before we did DVC, when we were looking at coming out to the States for a holiday. I wanted to come and stay in, but obviously the price range was a little bit higher than a more moderate value resort.
Speaker 1:It's expensive.
Speaker 2:It is expensive and, having now got our DVC points, I just thought, well, let's have a look, go and visit it, and we've got the opportunity. So that's why I decided to pick this one for a few days.
Speaker 1:So what accommodation do we have here? This is a studio.
Speaker 2:We've got a deluxe studio with a savannah view. So it's the same accommodation that we'd have in Riviera, which is a deluxe studio. So we've got a little kitchenette area, bathroom, bedroom area, room. It's got air conditioning. We've got a nice rotary ceiling fan. That's quite nice, so that helps keep the room cool. The room itself is nicely decorated and themed around africa. Well, you'd expect to be an animal kingdom, it's gonna be africa I think it sleeps.
Speaker 1:Four, is that pull down the bed thing over?
Speaker 2:there. Yeah, we've got a dump. We've got one queen size double bed and then we've got a settee, which also is a pull out bed, so this room actually sleeps four people, whereas the rooms we have in riviera sleep five.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't believe it looking at all our junk spread everywhere yeah, we have taken over just a little bit but who cares?
Speaker 2:but yeah, why did we pick out? I've wanted to come and stay here for a while, so, um, the opportunity arose, it's okay, so why not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're here so questions that I've been perusing Facebook Because we like to do our research before we come out. I've come up with some questions, okay, and some of them are actually quite funny and quite interesting. So the first question is Does it smell?
Speaker 2:Does it smell as in? Can you smell the animals? No, you can't actually. Funny enough, even though you are in an animal environment, you don't actually smell the animals. Good, doesn't smell a doo-doo, it doesn't. You can't actually smell the animals. It's actually quite nice. I thought it might have been a little bit smelly, but it's not.
Speaker 1:She thought it might smell of poo, but it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Is it too noisy? I mean animals screech and groan and do all that lion-y stuff.
Speaker 2:Firstly, there are no lions in the savannah, the only lions that Well, that's not strictly true.
Speaker 1:There's no lions in the savannah areas that we overlook, but there's plenty of lions in the savannah. Just ask everyone. Yeah, in the savannah areas that we overlook, but there's plenty of lions in the savannah, just ask everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the savannah outside Amalkin's Lodge there are no lions or tigers or bears, so you don't have anything like roaring at you. However, there are a few birds that can be a little bit vocal.
Speaker 1:The African cranes.
Speaker 2:The African cranes. They are a little bit vocal, but apart from that it's actually really quiet, even overnight. Bit vocal, but apart from that it's actually really quiet, even overnight. It's very quiet. Room wise no, but if you come in the summer it's going to be hot in florida.
Speaker 1:Luckily, all the rooms have air conditioning yeah, we have air conditioning and we have a fan and it certainly works and it's not too bad, actually, once you've got everything switched on and things like that. But outside completely different story it's hot, so drink lots of water. Keep your cool. Buy yourself cooling towels, which we discovered today. Fans everything. Keep out the sun, otherwise you'll turn into an english prune and don't push it next question is the food like american or is it like african?
Speaker 2:I don't eat weird okay, food in food in Animal Kingdom Lodge. Now there's actually four places to eat. You've got Sana, which is a sit-down restaurant which also does a quick service type breakfast in the morning, which is quite nice. You've got Boma, which is the buffet which we're going to be experiencing, so there'll be a review of that coming, no doubt. You've got Gicoco, which is the fine dining option, and then all disney resorts do have what they call a quick service, where you can get things like chicken tenders, chips, burgers, pizza, mickey waffles all your usual quick service unlike riviera, they don't have cookies no, they have cookies.
Speaker 1:And the other thing that we've noticed, particularly places like Riviera they have freestyle Coke machines, so you get Coke with all sorts of interesting flavours. I think there's about 300 different flavour combinations that you can do. In places like Kidani you get like six.
Speaker 3:So you get.
Speaker 1:Coke and.
Speaker 2:Fanta and the.
Speaker 1:Fanta's like paint stripper.
Speaker 2:It's American Fanta. It's a very bright yellow.
Speaker 1:American Fanta is bright yellow and when you use it in the resort cups it turns the plastic orange. It's almost like the stuff that we used to have as kids, and everyone used to tell us how bad it was. Well, the Americans are still using it. Oh, oh, oh, look, look, look at the window, here's a giraffe.
Speaker 2:It's Gerald the draft. He's come back to say hello. Yeah, that's Gerald, yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's the thing about doing stuff at Animal Kingdom Lodge. You get to see the animals walk past, assuming of course you've got Savannah View.
Speaker 3:Could you tell me what the facilities are like? I mean, I don't just want to stay in a room all day and look at those animals. I want to know what other things I can, other things you can do, both or other things I can Other things you can do.
Speaker 2:Both Kidani and Jambo have got a swimming pool. Both of the pools have got slides. Kidani's also got a splash pad, children's play area, which is quite nice, and you have lifeguards. You have some entertainment going on at both pools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the entertainment was quite entertaining yesterday because she was trying to get all the kids to do. It was almost like water aerobics to music and two-thirds all the kids to do. It was almost like water aerobics to music and two-thirds of the kids were like no, I just want to play. I think she just gave up in the end a negative on the pools.
Speaker 2:Now, this is my negative on the pools. Is the pool negative on the pools? There is a negative. Yes, the pool at kidani. You actually have to go out of the main building and down almost to the front, past the car park, to get to the pool, whereas the pool at Jambo is quite nicely located closer to the main building and next to the quick service.
Speaker 1:It's more like they sort of went okay, we'll build this here and then we'll oh poo, we need a pool. Where are we going to put it? The only space we've got is 200 yards away in the car park. That'll do Nobody will notice. There is actually also a leisure facility which is basically a small gym which is beside the pool, and there's also a bar there.
Speaker 2:Both pools have got bars.
Speaker 1:Both pools have got bars.
Speaker 2:We've only done one pool so, and the bars aren't too bad, not too badly priced, and they do snacks as well, although the pool by jambo is right next to the quick service one of the things we've already mentioned is animal kingdom lodge is a little bit far away from the parks, but equally kadani is a little bit far away from the main jambo house.
Speaker 1:So they do run a little minibus service between the two or you can walk, and I think it took us about 15 minutes yesterday to walk.
Speaker 2:Yeah about that, but then I'm not a very fast walker.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't too bad. There wasn't 30 plus degrees heat, but, yeah, you can walk between the two. So that could be an issue if you've got kids and you've got prams and you've got to pack everything up, because the minibus that you get going to the parks they're the standard Disney big coach things and in fact the one yesterday actually was their backup because they didn't have the main one.
Speaker 3:No, they've got the main one. Somebody broke it Are there any characters? There.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, I haven't seen any characters in Kidani. I believe they do come round to the resorts in the minibus and do come to Jamba House, but I haven't actually seen a timetable to say characters will be in the building or on the resort at this time.
Speaker 1:No, we're going to Jamba House later, so we might actually find out.
Speaker 2:Both buildings do have shops, although the one in Cardiff is small. I can do that. I'll be questions, okay.
Speaker 3:Can I get room service?
Speaker 2:No, you can't. There's no room service here.
Speaker 3:What's the shops?
Speaker 2:like the shops. There are a shop. There is a shop in both buildings. Kidani, obviously, as we keep mentioning, is a lot smaller than Jambo, so there is a small selection of merchandise and there's some fridges with some grab-and-go bits and pieces.
Speaker 1:Grab-and-go.
Speaker 2:Grab-and-go bits and pieces. And the grab and grow, grab and go bits and pieces, because some of the rooms here do actually have a full-size kitchen, depending on what grade dvc you're in if you like frozen pizza, of course yeah, obviously, and there is also. The fountain beverage station is in jambo. The shop is a lot bigger. The shop down at jambo house is the main animal kingdom lodge shop and we're going to go and explore it later.
Speaker 1:My credit card is already groaning.
Speaker 2:Anyway.
Speaker 1:I think that's nearly it.
Speaker 2:Would we stay here again?
Speaker 1:Would we stay here again? I'm going to be honest not for a while, because I think the only plus point for me is there's some animals and I'm not a massive animal lover. I mean, we have cats and that makes me an animal lover, but I don't enthuse every time I see a giraffe, because I've seen quite a few giraffes. In fact, we've even fed a few giraffes. If you visit our YouTube channel, you can go and see the video of Kaz feeding the giraffes. That was quite entertaining. But I think the only thing it really has going for it is the animals, which is obvious because it's called Animal Kingdom Lodge. I still prefer Riviera.
Speaker 2:I think if we did stay here again, we'd only do a couple of nights, not a longer stay. This time we're here for five nights. I think next time, if we did do it again, it'd only be a short stay. Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I think that's about it, and now we're going to have to edit this and get it published, etc. Etc. Etc. Anyway, thanks for listening. Don't forget you can leave a review on if you're listening to this on all of the major podcasting channels and if you're listening to this on youtube, which is really bizarre because youtube also has video and we're not actually recording a video on this, but we might do at some point in the future. Please consider leaving some comments and the old thumbs up and that stuff, and I believe also there might be a link below that allows you now to send us a little message. We we can't actually reply back to any of these messages, but if you do send us something, we do see the messages and we might address anything you bring up in a later podcast. But that's about it. So thanks for listening. So it's goodbye from me.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm going. There's a draft. See you later.
Speaker 1:There's another draft. Anyway, that's the end of the podcast, so don't forget be.
