Category — d. Where to Stay at Walt Disney World
Review: Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Jambo House, Continued
This is the second page of this review. For the first page of this material, click here.
MORE ON JAMBO HOUSE AT DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM VILLAS
There are currently 8 official Disney Vacation Club resorts at Walt Disney World.
However, I have come to count them as ten, because two of the resorts–Saratoga Springs and the Animal Kingdom Villas–have two very different areas.
In order of their appropriateness for first time family visitors to Walt Disney World, they are:
- The Villas at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Jambo House
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Kidani Village
- Bay Lake Tower at Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- The Villas at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa
- Disney’s Beach Club Villas
- Disney’s Boardwalk Villas
- Disney’s Old Key West Resort
- Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa, main resort
- Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort, Treehouse Villas area.
These resorts are available to anyone to reserve through the regular Walt Disney World website or the resort reservations phone number at 407-939-7675.
They also are available to the general public at great discounts through renting points from a Disney Vacation Club member.
All Disney Vacation Club resorts have studio rooms, One-Bedroom Villas, and Two-Bedroom Villas.
Most have Grand Villas as well.
Jambo House has all room types, and floor plans of all its standard room types except Grand Villas are on this page. Grand Villas will be covered on the next page.
Jambo House has an addition two unique types of villas–concierge villas and value villas. Concierge and value villas are not covered by this review.
STUDIOS AT JAMBO HOUSE VILLAS
At Jambo House, Studios sleep four and have a microwave and mini fridge.
The microwave is one of several ways Studios are different from regular rooms at Jambo House.
A second distinction is that the second bed is a fold-out couch.
This increases the livability and flexibility of the space.
Finally, these rooms are longer than regular Jambo House rooms.
Since regular Jambo rooms are tied with the Wilderness Lodge as the smallest deluxe rooms at Disney World, these extra few feet do make the space feel more comfortable and luxurious.
These studios go for 10-20% more than regular rooms, and I don’t see that the above features create enough extra value to be worth it.
ONE-BEDROOM VILLAS AT JAMBO HOUSE
One-Bedroom Villas have a master bedroom with a king.
They have as well a full kitchen/dining/living space, and sleep 5 in about twice the space of a studio.
The three additional sleeping spots are on fold-out furniture in the living room space.
The bath is shared, with access to it from both sleeping spaces through the small hall between the master bedroom and the bath. Kids don’t need to enter the master bedroom to get to this bath.
Unlike most DVC One-Bedroom Villas, these rooms have a full-width balcony accessible from either space.
One-Bedroom Villas are among the most comfortable ways to stay at Walt Disney World.
The additional space, full kitchens, and living and dining furniture are hard to beat, even though if you are following one of this site’s itineraries you won’t be in your room much to enjoy them!
At 50-60% more expensive than a regular Jambo House room, they aren’t for everyone…but the value is there if you can afford it.
Of the Animal Kingdom Lodge One-Bedroom options, Kidani Village is the better choice, as it offers a second bath and even more space, for just a few dollars more a night.
TWO-BEDROOM VILLAS AT JAMBO HOUSE
Two-Bedroom Villas add a second bedroom with a queen and a full sleeper sofa, and another balcony, to the amenities of a One-Bedroom, and sleep 9.
Two-Bedroom Villas can be either cramped or comfortable, depending both on how you use them and what you are comparing them to.
Like almost all DVC Two-Bedroom Villas, in Jambo House Two-Bedrooms there isn’t enough seating space in either the living room or in the dining spaces for all the people these rooms will fit. (Old Key West Resort and the Treehouse Villas are exceptions.)
The living room chairs will seat three to five people, with two more chairs available at the dining table, and the dining table will seat four to six, with the range depending on the width and friendliness of those seated.
So if you are filling a two bedroom with 8 or 9 people, things can get awkward compared to the ease with which One-Bedroom Villas fit the people they can sleep. (And if you have this many people, Kidani Village is the better Animal Kingdom Lodge choice anyway…)
This is part of the reason why these rooms are only about 40-50% more expensive than One Bedroom Villas, even though they have more than double the sleeping capacity.
On the other hand, depending on the price season, a Two-Bedroom is only ~$100 more expensive than two regular Jambo House rooms, but provides 50% more space, and, compared to those rooms, all that extra kitchen/dining/living space and furniture.
If your family’s sleeping needs will fit in the bedrooms–that is, you have six or fewer people, and don’t need to use the fold-out beds in the living space–Two-Bedrooms are a particularly comfortable option.
In this case the Jambo House Villas are a better Animal Kingdom Lodge choice than Kidani.
GRAND VILLAS AT JAMBO HOUSE
This review continues here.
August 29, 2011 2 Comments
Review: Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Jambo House
OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S ANIMAL KINGDOM VILLAS–JAMBO HOUSE FOR FIRST TIME VISITORS
Most room options at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Jambo House (a Disney Vacation Club resort) are wonderful places for returning visitors to Walt Disney World to stay.
For typical first-time visitors, I don’t recommend the Disney Vacation Club resorts.
That said, these “DVC” resorts can be a great choice for first time visitors with large families, needing extra sleeping spaces, or looking for a more comfortable place to stay.
Among the Disney Vacation Club resorts, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas–Jambo House ranks second overall for first-time visitors, but specifics vary a little for by room type.
THE DISNEY VACATION CLUB RESORTS
August 24, 2011 No Comments
Family Suite Floor Plans for Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
INTERIOR PHOTOS OF ART OF ANIMATION RESORT PUBLISHED
Update: there’s an official 3-D drawing at about 1.14 of the Disney video that’s linked to on this page: http://wdwnewstoday.com/archives/8058. Thanks to Barberella for the link!
Disney recently published here the first available interior photographs of its new Art of Animation Resort (which I’ve written about previously here).
From Disney’s photos you can see
- The kitchen and main living room
- The convertible dining room table
- This table converted into a bed
- The relationship of this cool bed to the master bedroom
- The master bedroom itself; and
- A bit of the master bath.
It seems–as previously speculated–that the entry is indeed from an interior hallway, and I saw no evidence of a balcony–although there could possibly be one off the master bedroom.
BUILDING A FLOOR PLAN OF THE ART OF ANIMATION RESORT FROM THESE IMAGES
What you can’t see from the photos is the entry itself, the kids’ bath, the closet, or the layout of either bath.
That’s not enough to stop me, so I built a rough floor plan tying together what I could see and speculating about what I couldn’t.
I’m sure it will be at best only moderately accurate–but it’s more accurate than the first set of speculative floor plans published here.
MORE ON WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD
- For where to stay, see this
- For your next best choices, in order, see this
- For picking your resort based on appeal to kids, see this
- For picking your resort based on convenience, see this
- For where not to stay, see this
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- For what you get in each resort price category, see this
- For Walt Disney World resort price seasons, see this
- For resort reviews, see this
- For the value resorts, see this
- For the moderate resorts, see this
- For the deluxe resorts, see this
- For suites at the deluxe resorts, see this
- For the Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) Resorts, see this
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- For a (geeky) overview of comparative room size, see this
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- Military/DOD families should look at this
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- Families seeking the most comfortable place to stay should see this
August 21, 2011 No Comments
Review: Disney’s Contemporary Resort, p3
This is the third page of this review. For the first page click here, and for the second, click here.
THE THEMING OF DISNEY’S CONTEMPORARY RESORT
Disney’s Contemporary Resort opened in October 1971, and its last–very nice–renovation was completed in 2007. It is officially described on Walt Disney World’s website as
“…an ultra-modern Disney Deluxe Resort, made up of a towering A-frame high-rise building—the iconic Contemporary Tower—and complemented by one garden wing annex. This lakeside Resort is the only hotel in Walt Disney World Resort to have the Walt Disney World Monorail System pass through the main lobby.”
The Contemporary Resort was designed collaboratively by the US Steel Corporation, Disney, and the under-rated Welton Becket, friend and neighbor of Walt Disney. (This same group also designed the Polynesian.)
Becket is under-rated not as an architect, but rather because, in a sense, he created Imagineering.
According to John Hench, when Disney was looking for help is designing Disneyland, “Becket said [to Walt Disney] ‘You’ve got to use your own people. We can’t help you. We don’t have any kind of a background for this. Just use your own guys.'”
As a result, Walt Disney started bringing artists and craftspeople over from his and other studios to work on the park, and Imagineering was born.
(Quoted in Jeff Kurtti’s Walt Disney’s Imagineering Legends and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park
.)
The original concepts for the Contemporary were that it was to be a high rise, and that the monorail was to run through it.
This led to the internal atrium, and to the length of the building, which was designed to shelter two monorail trains on each track in case of hurricanes.
(Hurricane doors are at either end of the atrium, where the monorail tracks enter.)
At some point the total number of rooms were defined–I’ve seen no source on why the particular number was picked–and the design result was the long, monolithic, and dull facade that we’ve known ever since.
Although the building has no kid appeal other than the monorail itself, a family that stayed only there, and never saw one of the value resorts, or the Polynesian, Wilderness Lodge, or Animal Kingdom Lodge, could be forgiven for thinking they were staying in the perfect Walt Disney World hotel!
It has two of Disney World’s signature restaurants.
On the rooftop is the California Grill, almost as iconic as the Contemporary itself.
Joe Fowler notes (quoted in Didier Ghez’s section of Chad Emerson’s Four Decades of Magic: Celebrating the First Forty Years of Disney World
) that Walt Disney asked to see how Disney World would look from the California Grill (then with a different name) location.
“So we got the biggest damned utility crane in Florida…and they hoisted us straight up to where the lounge at the top of the Contemporary would be…he was so enthusiastic: ‘Oh Joe look at this! This is going to be great!'”
Walt was right…not just about Disney World, but also the view from what would later become the California Grill.
At the monorail level is Chef Mickey’s, one of the most-loved character meals at all of Walt Disney World.
The Wave, on the ground floor level, is another sit-down restaurant with its fans.
The main dining options are completed by the Contempo Cafe, the Contemporary’s great counter-service option.
Other dining options are easily accessible via the monorail to the Grand Floridian and Polynesian, and boats to Fort Wilderness Resort and the Wilderness Lodge.
The Contemporary has a fine, though uninteresting, pool, accompanied with a pool snack bar and a pool bar–though these (especially the bar!) closed too early on my May visit.
In addition to the main pool, there’s also a smaller circular pool more attended by adults, and a great kid water play area.
There’s also a large lovely beach–but, as at all other Disney resort beaches, no swimming is allowed (see the top of the page for a photo of the beach).
My annoying sister and I, in the 70s, came to this beach every year to work on our tans in between visits to the Magic Kingdom and to my grandparents on my dad’s side. (Happy Father’s Day, pop!)
The convenience of the Contemporary is hard to beat…being able to walk to and from the Magic Kingdom is quite a luxury.
All in, though, the comparative lack of kid appeal puts it fourth among the deluxe resorts for first-time visitors. It is well worth a visit by returning visitors!
While the Contemporary served as Disney World’s flagship resort until the Grand Floridian opened in 1988, such was not Disney’s original intention.
In its pre-opening master plan, the never-built Venetian Resort (to be built between the Contemporary and the TTC) was to become the resort’s flagship hotel.
Also planned but never built were the Asian Resort, planned for the current site of the Grand Floridian, and the Persian Resort, to have been built on Bay Lake, between the Contemporary and Tomorrowland.
The Venetian site was revisited in the 90s for the Mediterranean Resort, but the site was found to be too expensive to build on at that time.
Another planned early resort was Buffalo Junction, to have been built between Fort Wilderness Resort and the Wilderness Lodge. Rumors emerged last year of this site as a potential Disney Vacation Club resort location.
Disney World’s master planning is influenced (though not shaped, it’s a long story, see this, though there are some lies in it…) by the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s long term plan.
The latest version, a 2020 plan released in 2008, includes all of these spots as potentially buildable.
Land suitable for further development is marked on the map in red; marginally suitable land is in light yellow-green. (Unsuitable land is in dark green.)
So maybe we’ll see more Magic Kingdom deluxe resorts one of these days…
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MORE ON WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD
- For where to stay, see this
- For your next best choices, in order, see this
- For picking your resort based on appeal to kids, see this
- For picking your resort based on convenience, see this
- For where not to stay, see this
- For what you get in each resort price category, see this
- For Walt Disney World resort price seasons, see this
- For resort reviews, see this
- For the value resorts, see this
- For the moderate resorts, see this
- For the deluxe resorts, see this
- For suites at the deluxe resorts, see this
- For the Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) Resorts, see this
- For a (geeky) overview of comparative room size, see this
- Military/DOD families should look at this
- Families seeking the most comfortable place to stay should see this
June 20, 2011 No Comments
Review: Disney’s Contemporary Resort, Continued
For the first page of this review, click here.
MORE ON DISNEY’S CONTEMPORARY RESORT
There are currently 8 official Disney owned and operated deluxe resorts at Walt Disney World.
In their recommended order for first time family visitors, they are
Many of these also offer Disney Vacation Club (“DVC”) studios and villas, all for rent to the general public–see this for more on the Disney Vacation Club resorts.
For more on the Contemporary’s DVC offering, Bay Lake Tower, click here.
ROOMS AT DISNEY’S CONTEMPORARY RESORT
June 13, 2011 No Comments
Review: Disney’s Contemporary Resort
OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S CONTEMPORARY RESORT
Our most recent stay confirms that Disney’s Contemporary Resort is the fourth best deluxe resort at Walt Disney World for first time family visitors.
June 6, 2011 2 Comments
