We're going to Disneyworld for vacation and never leaving!

[disneydaddy610]

My self, DW, DS and DD currently live in South Louisiana. DW Has been the 'The world' over 40 times since she was born. I am working on trip number 11 in march, so the travel too and from has been an adventure unto itself!
We Planned to move to Tampa this coming June but due to some horrible issues that occurred over the holiday period we decided to change our moving plans to March 1st, which happens to coincide with our next family trip.

The past 4 weeks have been hectic to say the least. In addition to the normal trip planning, which I think DW loves almost as much as the trip itself, we have been packing up our lives into cardboard boxes.

DD has been telling her whole Kindergarten class that she is moving to Disney world. We keep trying to tell her that we are not going to be living in the magic kingdom but we are only going to be an hour away instead of 12 hours.

We also have ran into a problem with the new My magic+ stuff. DD and DS have annual passes that expire sometime later this year, however DW and I have passes that expire about two weeks before our reservation so we go to make FP+ reservations and it tells us we don't have valid park admission. Now if it wasn't for the fact we were moving at the same time we would have renewed our annuals and booked our FP+ with the rest of our extend family (who are going at the same time) but we decided to just wing it and book our FP+ the night before and see how it works out, so it should be interesting to see how the system works if you don't want to book 60 days ahead of time. Regardless of how it works i know we are going to have a good time, we always do. We decided not to let the downsides of the new system get us down

Well Stay tuned, I will post updates and when we get there I will let ya'll know how the trip works out for us

 

[RDawn]

How wonderful! And I love your positive attitude about MB &FP+. I look forward to your future updates.

 

[wiigirl]

Following along!

 

[disneydaddy610]

First of all apologies for the long gap in posting, between work and the move I haven’t been able to get on to my computer at all. Well here I am on my 4th day of vacation.(edit. Although I was able to get on my computer I was unable to actually get onto the internet until I got to work. No idea what was going wrong with my computer. Isn’t technology wonderful!)
Ill start the trip report 2 days before I arrive

D (Disney) Minus Two days
My last day in Louisiana, We are all packed apart from the beds and a TV. I packed the kids off for their last day at school.
We finally pack the last of the things into the truck. Pull the shutter down and lock the truck up. I start it up put it in gear and........ absolutely nothing. Well this is great I think to myself. This is at about 9am. DW is at the airport picking her brother up, so he can drive my car to Florida with me. She gets back and she is not happy. By this time I am waiting on hold with the rental company. My call is important to them. I am the next caller. Please stay on the line......
They send out a mechanic and he looks under the hood. Attached a computer to the truck and 45 minutes later Im told Its broke! Of course it couldn’t break before we put everything in!
The truck company sends out another truck with the promise of a crew to help me transfer everything from one truck to the other.
Fast forward about 90 minutes, the new truck shows up but the moving crew does not. Its now about 4pm and im supposed to be with my Wife’s family in an hour for a good bye dinner. I call the truck company and they said that the crews truck broke down! Oh will the happy joys of this day never end!
DW and I decided not to wait for the moving crew and the tow truck driver manages to get the trucks back to back and we proceed to move stuff from one truck to the other.
So that was the beginning of my vacation i guess. We got to y mother in laws house and the we left Louisiana on time! Im hoping this is not an omen of things to come.

The journney down to Tampa was actually relatively easy and pain free, if a little loud in that truck!
No accidents or real issues occurred and we got to my new house about 6pm on the Friday (Disney -1day) The kids are excited and immietly begin arguing amongst themselves as to who gets what bedroom! My sons poor cat is completely freaked out though. We had to confine him to the bathroom with food and water so we could corral him in the morning. DW and DS decided that it would be cruel to just leave him on his own in strange house with no one there except the occasional visit by a family memmber to feed him. We decided to take him to Best Friends Pet care facility on Disney Property.
Let me just say they were excellent. They took great care of him and it eased my sons mind being able to go and visit him any time he wanted to (which we did on multiple occasions). I cannot praise the staff enough for the care and service DS's cat received

Disney day! (yeay!)
A new experience for me. We leave for Disney in the late morning and our travel time is only 1 hour not 12! DW drives while I sit in the back with DS and DD. I actually saw something that, by virtue of the route we always took before, I had never seen before. Just outside Disney property as you approach on I4 I saw the Electricity Pylon that was in the shape of a Mickey Head. I know its not new and that a lot of people have seen it before but it was entirely new to me. Thought it was kinda cool!

Anyway on with the trip report. Let me start with my observations of the hotel
We stayed at AKL Jambo house. As we check in im immediately taken by how dark the lobby seems to be. Maybee this is because I came in from the daylight and it took me a while for my eyes to adjust but it just seemed very gloomy to me. The room was adequate. As we were DVC members we were on the 5th foor. We had a standard view so unfortuatly we did not have a view of the animals. Allthough this wasn’t truly an issue maybe that “wow” factor of seeing animals out of my bedroom window would have offset my negative feelings about AKL. Although there was nothing really wrong with the hotel or the room I was left feeling that It was nothing special. A few things stuck out at me.
In the studio we were in there was no privacy in the bathroom/sink area. In the actual bathroom there was very little room to undress or change. And the alcove with the two sinks which was outside the bathroom had no privacy screen. There were multiple shouts from DD “Brother don’t come over here I'm changing!” A simple curtain across this alcove would have solved this problem!
Another issue I saw was that if you take the main elevator bank down to the pool area , to get outside you have to walk through the lobby for Jiko and Bomma. Maybe Its just me but I didn’t like walking through crowds of people who were waiting to be seated for dinner, while I and DD and DS were in their bathing suits to get to and from the pool.
My last negative comment was on the game room. It was the smallest of all the hotels I've stayed at. IT was un -attended so any of the games that would usually have issues tickets to exchange for prizes were pretty much pointless. Add to that that at least half of the games DS and I played were broken. Screens were not functioning.. some of the controls on the games would not work and the air hockey game (which is almost a tradition for us when we come to Disney) was only blowing air on one side of the table! I know its not much but its another little niggle!
Now the Positive. The staff were everything id expect of Disney employees and more. One particular cashier at The Mara was excellent. I got food for DW, DS, DD and I and I went to go scan my band and. Uh oh. I left it in the room. I apologized profusely and put my tray with the food on the shelf in front of the cashier and told her id be right back. After sprinting up to the room and all the way back I expected to be waiting in line again. Nope! This cashier, Rose I think her name was, put up the sign that her register was temporally closed.. she had waited for me to run to get my band.

My overall opinion of the hotel. Id say if I was an animal person and I was in a savannah view room it would have been higher but I was not wowed by the hotel in ways that I've been wowed by other hotels on Disney property.

Id give the hotel a Grade of a B-

Well I appear to have lost the rest of my report . For some reason it did not save so I'm going to retype it all from scratch..

Stay tuned