AK Villas

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
Animal Kingdom Lodge (AKL) is really 2 separate large buildings. The main building is called Jambo House. If you are staying at the hotel, this is where you normally stay. Jambo House has 2 floors devoted to Disney Vacation Club (DVC), which also occupies the entire second building, Kidani Village. Collectively, the DVC rooms are known as Animal Kingdom Villas (AKV).

AKL is located on the southwest corner of WDW. To reach it, you need to drive past Disney's Animal Kingdom (DAK). There will be a guard at the entrance to AKL who will direct you where to go to check-in.

The main lobby is a lot like the Wilderness Lodge. It's a long, tall, grand lobby with exotic African art in the middle. Check-in is on the left-hand side of the lobby. They will provide directions to your room. The restaurants, food court, and pool are on the first floor (I believe the lobby is either on the second or third floor) and can be reached by elevators on the ride-hand side of the main lobby. (There also are stairs near the elevators.) The layout is rather confusing for someone who has never been there and takes some getting used to.

There are several areas from which to view the animals. One is at the far end of the lobby, opposite from the entrance. Another is by the pool.

AKL is absolutely beautiful, a "spared no expense" resort with lots of details in the best tradition of Disney. It gets a bad rap because of location but as the newest Deluxe Resort it represents some of WDW's finest attributes having opened just before they started to "value engineer" everything.
 

Hobnail Boot

Well-Known Member
I've stayed in a studio at the AKL Villas in Jambo house a few times. It's just an awesome resort, and we really liked the studio villas. It's been a few years since our last time at AKLV as we've been making the rounds at other deluxes, but I definitely will be making my way back to AKLV one day.
 

willtravel

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I've stayed in a studio at the AKL Villas in Jambo house a few times. It's just an awesome resort, and we really liked the studio villas. It's been a few years since our last time at AKLV as we've been making the rounds at other deluxes, but I definitely will be making my way back to AKLV one day.
So if I do rental points and request a AK studio value that will get me into the Jambo house? I have stayed at Wilderness Lodge in the past and loved it but this last time we were at WDW we explored AK and enjoyed walking around. We were at the pool and I just wanted to sit down and stay....I assume it will be parking lot or maybe roof view?
 

Hobnail Boot

Well-Known Member
I've never used rental points so I can't answer that question. If I had to guess, I would assume that both Kidani and Jambo have value studios. On my most recent stay at AKLV we had a pool view and our room was above Jiko. I took these pictures of our view:

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Disneykidder

Well-Known Member
I don't think it matters whether you rent points or are direct owners. As mentioned above, there are studios in both Jambo and Kidani. It's what's available. If you find an owner of AKV, you will have 11 months to book and may even get a choice of Jambo or Kidani. If you rent from a non-AKV owner, you will have 7 months to book and may be limited as to which one you receive. You never know. We are staying in Kidani in August. There are great amenities in both buildings. Some people prefer one over the other but we are just over the moon to be staying there!!:)
 

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