AKL-Kidani 5/17-24

[belle10]

Sorry, I'm horrible at creative titles. This is my trip report for staying at AKL- Kidani, surviving 2 separate Star Wars Weekends, Rocking our Disney side at the 24 hour party, eating gluten free on property, and my bf's first Disney World trip.

First, about our Ohana

ME!! Hi I'm Rachelle, former MK Cast Member and current Disney enthusiast who has difficulty completing anything I start (hint: this May be a work in progress for a while). I am also a graduate student so forgive me if this takes a while. I am a DVC member at AKL (my fave) and My favorite character is Belle.

Virginia (aka Mom): (yes I'm 25 and still vacation with my mommy and daddy ) My mom first went to Disney with my sister's softball team 5 years ago and keeps coming back. She (and my dad) are DVC members at Saratoga Springs and Grand Floridian. Her favorite character is Mickey!

Dean (AKA Dad): He went to Disney as a kid and then with my sister'a softball team and same story as above! He doesn't really have a favorite character, but loves Soarin!

Dee: she's my little sister and is the comic relief on the trip. She comes on vacation to "get her tan on". Her favorite character is Mater

Scot: Is my darling BF who this was his first WDW trip. I took him to DLR for my birthday in October last year. His favorite characters are Mulan and Hercules.

So that's us in a nutshell. More to come soon

 

[belle10]

So this trip was multi-purposed. We were celebrating A LOT of big stuff.

Dee: she just graduated from college with her Bachelors in Business with a minor in accounting.

Dad: ITS HIS BIRTHDAY!

Scot: first trip!'

Me: I just got a big promotion at work 2 months ago.

Mom: It's her unbirthday?

Now we typically vacation in October when it's cooler, crowds are lower, Food and Wine is here, it's the Halloween Party, and it's mine and my Mom's bdays, but for the above reasons, we decided not to wait. There are awesome things that happen in spring that are important too. We needed to diversify our Disney experience, so about 2 months ago, we decided we were going. We got a 2 br villa at OKW, booked Southwest air tickets ( mine was free! Yay rewards points ), and put in for vacation time at work.

Coincidentally, a bunch of awesome things fell on the trip. We didn't plan it around SWW, rock your Disney side, or Flower and Garden. We just needed a vacation. And as Dee says, When your gnome goes Ding, you gotta get away.

 

[MommaPeel]

I hope you see your trip report through! Sounds like a fun time to be there for so long! You all had a lot to celebrate! I can't wait to hear more!

Oh and by the way, "When your gnome goes Ding, you gotta get away" would be an AMAZING title for your TR!

 

[belle10]

Thanks, MommaPeel. I love that idea. Now to figure out how to change it haha. Any help with that one?

Anyways so about 3 weeks before we left, our first set of MagicBands and Magical Express tickets and tags arrived. We logged on and did online checkin and were getting excited.

About 3 days later, we were on the DVC website and OKW wasn't anywhere on our reservation page. When we booked we wait listed AKL and without any notice, it appeared on our page! *squeel* I love AKL.

So new Magical Express tickets and Magic Bands arrived. However, Scot's name was spelled wrong. Turns out, because my parents didn't know how to spell his last name, they used ours for him (this is VERY important later on). So he now had 2 names on my Disney Experience. His tickets and fast passes were all hooked though the correct spelling, but the hotel was under the wrong name. We didn't think anything of it! BIG MISTAKE!!!!

Our big day was almost here. We flew down AirTran, home Southwest (also a big mistake). We do not pay extra for prepicking seats or EarlyBird Checkin so we were worried that our AirTran seats wouldn't be near each other. Fortunately, all 5 of us were in a row. The flight was uneventful.

Got to MCO, waited a half hour for a ME bus. Got to the hotel and had our first problem. Scot's wrist band with the correct name wasn't registered to the room. It took a little time, but the front desk SAID they fixed it.