Hey friends!! I hope y’all are having the happiest start to summer! For the first weekend of my summer break, my family and I took a little staycation at Disney’s Animal kingdom lodge! My family and I are big Disney fans so we take the opportunity to get out there whenever we can!! We have annual passes and sometimes I swear we live there. Anyways, we decided to book a special room to celebrate the end of the school year. My dad surprised my sisters and I with a Savannah view room, meaning from the balcony of our hotel room we could see zebras, giraffes, gazelles, pelicans, crazy kinds of birds, and many other African animals. This was such a treat and a once in a lifetime thing for us and we were blown away by the craziness of the situation. I mean where else in Florida or anywhere in the US really can you look out your hotel window and see giraffes! We obviously fell in love with the room and the hotel its self. I’d have to say Animal kingdom lodge, the grand Floridian, and the beach club all tie for 1st place of my absolute favorite Disney resorts.
I would highly recommend staying at any of these hotels but especially Animal Kingdom Lodge for a staycation, vacation, or even just a day trip. Even if you don’t opt for the savannah view room, you can find the animals all over the resort with plenty of viewing opportunities and sweet cast members who would love to tell you everything they know about the animals!! AKL also has so many dining options. I’ve only tried Boma, which is their buffet style restaurant featuring American and African courses. I went for breakfast and mostly enjoyed the Mickey waffles but either way enjoyed it thoroughly and would go back! They also have a restaurant called Sanaa in which you dine with a view of the African animals! It’s on my must try list for sure! For this trip though we spent most of our meals at the Mara which is their quick service location where we happily snacked on flatbread pizzas, cupcakes, and pretzels and hummus. What a combo I know. I’ll include a picture of the rose gold cupcake my sister Karleigh and I tried below!
Rose Gold cupcake from the Mara at Animal Kingdom Lodge featuring Karleigh
We stayed two nights and went to 3 out of the 4 Disney parks at night because the Summer Florida heat is not an ideal situation. So during the day we enjoyed all the incredible things the resort had to offer or hung out on our balcony which was my personal favorite and I am most definitely still having withdrawals. Below I’ll include the animals we saw from our balcony that I am very much still in awe over.
A griaffe right outside of the hotel window- so crazy
This is my favorite giraffe photo I took because if you look closely you can see a duck flying directly over the giraffes head!
I personally enjoyed the Zebras the best because their honestly the cutest and this picture of him looking at the camera is my favorite picture I got all weekend!
I couldn’t tell you what animal this is but either way I think he looks pretty cool. There was a guide to all the animals in the room, I just got distracted with the zebras oops!
Love this one of three very different types of animals getting along and living happily together at Disney! Peep the Ostrich on the left!
While my mom, dad, and sister Kathryn enjoyed the pool, my sister Karleigh and I strolled around AKL’s main building Jambo house, to learn more about the animals, shop, and of course take some pictures that I’ll include below! Shoutout to Karleigh for being my model for the weekend!
This is one of the fire pits on the decks outside where all guests can hang out with the animals! We found this to be a great place to hang out!
The back of the Jambo house/ animal viewing area is a real stunner!
Here’s Karleigh with some Giraffes in the all guest animal viewing deck!!
Low quality picture of a high quality Jambo house lobby! Theres a bridge at the top that you can see towards the back that makes it extra fun!
While waiting for the bus to head off to the parks we caught this amazing Florida sunset and it was a perfect end to the stay!
And that pretty much recaps our stay at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge. Y’all given any opportunity to stay or visit here please take it. If you’re a Florida local make a reservation at one of the fun restaurants for a summer treat and then hangout with giraffes and zebras that are just a few feet away from you for as long as you want. I would also love to answer any Disney questions to the best that I can if you ever have any. Just leave a comment or send me an email and let me know. It really is my happiest place on Earth and if you can’t tell I love it a whole lot!
See ya real soon, Sweet Disney!
All the Love, Annie