Keeping my fingers crossed. About This Page:

[mommapants]

We had finally arrived at the Art of Animation and I wish I could say all went well but that is not the case.

We arrived and went to check in. We were in the Little Mermaid rooms and I had requested building 9, ground floor, close to the bus stop. When we arrived a room was ready but it was on the 4th floor. I asked Evan if he wanted to wait for a ground floor or just get the room and he wanted to get the room now so we got our room assignment, had our dining plan activated and then went into the food court for some lunch.

This was my first time using the dining plan and I have realized it just isn’t for us. Now we were both hungry and it was hot and I’m tired from the stress of the morning and the drive and really looking forward to getting something to eat and getting unpacked and having a swim. We had a dinner ADR at 7pm so we didn’t need a big lunch so the food court was perfect.

Here is where the problems began. Being new to the DDP, I wasn’t totally sure what to do and what was included. I have read many things about the meal plan and the various restaurants and table service verses quick service and so on but had never used the plan before so nothing was committed to memory or put into practice.

We grabbed our refillable mugs and walked around looking at the various options. I kept skimming the brochure to see if I could verify what we got in our meal (Drink? Did it have to a certain size/type? Side items? Dessert? What was included and what would be extra? Was a candy bar included but not cake or was it a dollar amount?) I kept skimming but just couldn’t easily find what I was looking for. Plus I was hungry, Evan was asking me a bunch of questions, it was noisy and I could just feel the stress level rising.

Food courts are not my favorite when it is just me and Evan because he will always want something different than me so I either have to go to where he wants or I have to wait in 2 lines and then leave him alone at the table – none of which I wanted to do. It was a little later for lunch but the food court was still pretty crowded. Evan decided on a hamburger and I grabbed a pepperoni pizza and we sat and had our lunch. After we sat I was able to read the brochure better and found the info I was looking for but for the life of me couldn’t find it while I was standing there in the middle of the food court with a total look of confusion on my face.

After our bellies were happy I went to the store to try and return some items. Last year when we were supposed to take our big trip a coworker went to Disney in May and I asked him to get me 2 autograph books, 2 pens and 2 Epcot passports, one for Evan and the other for my nephew Eric who was supposed to join us. Then the trip got canceled but I still had all the stuff. Because it had been over the time period I couldn’t return them. I found everyone to be rather unhelpful. The sales girl didn’t know so went to find a manager and then came back and said no. The manager never came over. I was a bit put-off. This is Disney and I just expected a little more. I had the receipt and none of the items had a date on them and I could see they were still selling the exact same products. I didn’t want to have to carry the items with me into the theme park and try to return them there and get the same answer so I just did nothing further and now STILL have the items at my house for our next return trip. Hopefully I will be able to “gift” them to someone in the future.

At this point Evan and I walked back to the car and drove over to check out our room. I parked and tell Evan to grab something and carry it up and I’ll come back for the suitcases and everything else. We walk up 4 flights of stairs as we found those before the elevator and I got bitter complaints from my 8 year old. Oh the horror or having to walk up “ALL THESE STAIRS!” I am sure glad no one called DYFS on me because of the torture he was suffering.

The excitement was building as we touched our magic bands to the door and see the little light glow green…we opened the door and …wah wah! I look and see suitcases in the room. What the? Huh? What is going on? Thank goodness we didn’t walk in on anyone. I quick shut the door and now I’m like “Really? We have to go all the way back to the check in desk? Now I’m just totally over the entire day. I just feel aggravated and disgusted and annoyed . We march back to the sweltering car throw our stuff back into the trunk, drive back to the parking lot at Animation Hall and then schlep back to the registration desk.

Fortunately there was no wait and we explained what happened and the CM told us they must have put the wrong luggage in the wrong room. That made me feel a little better because I actually thought that maybe a guest was trying to sneak in an extended check-out. He was searching for a room for us and the desk manager is talking with us and apologizing. I was thinking to myself maybe we might get a little surprise or fast pass or free snack credit or something – but no joy – we got nothing.

After searching (and remember my original requests, ground floor, build 9, close to buses) He got me a ground floor in building 8 was that OK? At this point I didn’t even care; just give me a room for crying out load. Now if you ever look at a map of AOA resort you have the main check-in and off to the right is Cars, at check-in is Nemo, to the left is Lion King and past Lion King is Little Mermaid. The buildings are all shaped like the letter “T”. Building 8 is like an upside down T and we were in the tail end. We were the 2nd to last room. What this means is that I think we were about as far away from the buses as you could possibly get. But we at least had the ground floor.

Finally, at what felt like an eternity, we were entering OUR room.

Since this update has run a bit long I’ll give my review of AOA in the next update.

Coming up next: Review of the Art of Animation resort – promise.

[PhilsEagles08]

Oh god was a hassle with the room!!! I can't believe they didn't give you the slightest bit of magic as an apology. The food plan can be very confusing!!! I completely agree with you on that. It has taken me awhile to get the hang of it. I hope the rest of your trip gets better!

[DMA]

Oh my! What a hassle trying to get settled!
It's frustrating when you arrive and are expectingto feel the magic and things go wrong. Glad you finally made it to your room.

[cattailmarsh]

Wow. I can't get over the lack of magic there. Im so sorry this trip has had such a rough start. Here's hoping it gets much better for all of you (mom in GA too).

[Jambo]

Oh my goodness! What a rough day. I hope you were able to relax and enjoy your evening after such a rough start.

[lauriep]

What a shame things didn't go smoothly for you once you were in the bubble! I know that's what we all believe will happen.

[Cam22]

Good grief! So sorry this day was not improving for you two.

[benchley]

what a pain. it would be useful if they acknowledged your request when you booked in and explained what they had, or had not, got for you - at least it would have managed your expectations.

[mommapants]

I don’t want to give you all the impression that our trip was bad, we had a nice time overall. It is just right now things were not going well and part of that is just that total feeling of everything was going wrong. I was hot, tired, aggravated and just wanted to throw the towel in.

As promised, here is my review of the Art of Animation resort. Overall I would say it was fine. Certainly nothing special and perhaps if we had stayed for longer than 3 nights my opinion may have been swayed one way or the other.

Rooms:
The rooms are small. For Evan and me they were totally fine but if I was there with 4 people and 4 suitcases and a stroller or wheelchair it would be way too cramped. One of my biggest pet peeves was the fact that they only had 3 dresser drawers, small drawers at that. I’m sorry but if the room is designed for 4 people then there should at least be one drawer for each person. The dresser really had no counter space as the TV took up most of the top. There is absolutely NO WAY you could fit a week’s worth clothing in the drawer. So I would imagine you would constantly be in and out of your suitcase and never really be able to unpack.

The bathroom has the energy efficient light bulbs which come on really weak and then take some time to brighten. I personally hate these. I know they are good for the environment and all but when I turn on the light I actually want to be able to see, and right away. Because the bathroom is all dark blue in the Little Mermaid rooms the bathroom was, to me, always exceptionally dark. Plus when taking a shower I was constantly standing in my own shadow.

My other biggest complaint about the room was the temperature. Again they have the energy efficient AC units. Once again I know it is better for the environment but what happens is it kicks off when no one is in the room and then comes back on after you enter your room and begin to move around. So here is the flaw. It is like a million degrees out, when I come into the hotel room I want it to actually be cool and not have to wait for it to cool down. Plus we were not in the room much, except to sleep, so even when in the room there was not enough “movement” to make the AC come on and stay on. I kept turning the thermostat down to try and get the AC to kick on for one cycle. I had it down to 64 and I would say the average temperature was 75 degrees. I actually thought the unit was broken and called the front desk and was told the “efficiency” reason I discussed above.

The room was clean. Housekeeping was efficient and the beds comfy. We were so far away from everything it was very quiet too.

Building Lay Out:
As I noted we were in the Little Mermaid section. My son would have LOVED to stay in the Cars section but they were all suites so more money. I know they built this resort in stages and the LM rooms were the vacant POP rooms but why didn’t they just make some of each type of room in each section? Each section (Little Mermaid, Lion King, Nemo and Cars) should have both suites and regular rooms available. That is just my 2 cents.

I reviewed lots of pictures of the resort before we arrived and most of the photos were when the resort first opened and the vegetation was fairly small. That is not the case now. I loved the look and feel of The Lion King section. With all the large plants grown up, you felt like you were in the plains of Africa at the very heart of Pride Rock. Evan and I only got to walk the resort once and I would have loved to explored more and been able to check things out at night too.

Pools:
The pools were all salt water and very warm. Too warm. I don’t think there had been any rain in the last few days to cool them off. They were so warm they were not even refreshing. We visited all 3. The Little Mermaid pool we liked. The Nemo pool (main pool) was really crowded and I couldn’t hear any underwater noises but Evan said he heard some. The Cars pool was nice because the umbrella from the life guard stand made a nice shadow into the pool which is where I hung out.

All three pools have gated entrances but only the main pool did you need your magic band to enter (unlock) the gate.

The cement at all 3 pools was SUPER hot and you would burn your feet if you took your flip flops off and walked more than about 3 steps to the pool.

I saw towel drop off bins at all 3 pools but only saw pick at the main pool. The other 2 were either out of towels or I couldn’t find them – not to worry we had our own beach towels.

Buses:
Again Evan and I only stayed for 3 nights and I had a car so we really only took the bus a couple of times. We had waits of about 15-20 minutes every time. However my biggest beef was the bus stops themselves. I applaud Disney for creating queue lines for the buses as it used to be kill-the-man to get on the buses (it has been awhile since I stayed on site). At AOA the MK bus stop is not covered. The other 3 (Epcot, Studios, AK) are however so I don’t know why the Magic Kingdom folks are the lucky ones to stand out in the elements.

When at the Magic Kingdom we were the last bus stop #34 – typical. We walked past 33 other bus stops to get to ours. It is my understanding that the bus stops can be changed around as needed so one day you may be 34 and another 29. I don’t know how we got so lucky as to be dead last?

Again this is my observation. I totally understand that the deluxe resorts get the closest bus stops, if was spending $400 a night I would expect a little more pampering than the budget paying guests. But in keeping with that idea, the AOA resort is the most expensive value property. Therefore I feel it should be the first bus stop in the value “island” of bus stops. What is even more annoying is after we walked past the AllStar resorts stops and then the POP’s stop, we walked past 3 empty bus stops not even being used. GRRRRR!! As if walking 8 miles a day in the park isn’t enough now I can do an extra one to the bus. I don’t know I guess for my extra $15-$20 per night room stay I thought should at least give me a better bus stop then POP and AllStar. This sort of stuff just drives me crazy as it is pointless.

Hotel odds and ends:
This hotel is large and spread out and as noted we were pretty far away from everything. I was super happy I had a car as I would not have wanted to walk to/from our room. We would hop in the car, drive over to Animation Hall, park there and then catch the bus to the theme parks.

The other thing I noticed – not good or bad, just an observation, when you arrive back at the resort in your car and you go through the gate you have to take this winding path then basically make a U-Turn going back past the gate and then head to the LM section of rooms. I just found this silly. I didn’t see the purpose in it.

On that note the other thing I observed (and this was true of our last hotel stay at Shades of Green). All the walkways around the resort are these beautiful winding walkways. They are very pretty but at the end of a long day and I now have to walk from the bus stop back to my room, I don’t care how pretty it is, I want the shortest, straightest walk way to get me from point A to point B.

I really don’t want to make it sound like the resort or the vacation was all bad. I promise next update will show we did have fun. This is just my review of the resort and some observations. Perhaps they will help a future traveler.

Overall I don’t think I would stay at a value resort again in Disney. If I had to, I have no problem with AOA. But given a choice I think I would just rather try moderate or something off site. As a matter of fact I have been trying to come up with a budget for my next trip and was trying to price out hotel expenses and when I looked at the prices for off-site I was shocked. I have become so jaded by Disney prices I didn’t realize just how much cheaper an off-site property can be. For the same cost as the values you can get an all-suite/deluxe resort. For the cost of the moderates you can get a private townhouse with plunge pool. I am SEROUSLY going to do more comparative shopping before booking our next trip.

Coming up next: Things get better, enjoying the night

[Colexis Mom]

Sorry for the rough start at AoA! thanks for the review!!

[OhToodles!]

I think Marnie said it well!
Looking forward to the fun part!

[Cam22]

I genuinely appreciate your review of AoA as it helps me when some of my younger friends ask for resort advice.

[lfredsbo]

Such a bummer to have such a rough start to your vacation.

[wheezie]

Wow, what a rough start. I can't wait to read how it got better!

[rosanna]

We have stayed at AoA a couple of times. I totally feel you about the distance to the bus stop. We usually have a car, so we quickly figured out that if we were taking the bus, we would drive to the bus stop. Walking there in the morning when you are rested and excited is fine, but walking back after closing down MK with EMH? No way Jose. We werenever so happy to drive half a mile