Disney By the Numbers

I found this on Pinterest a while back and thought that it was something really cool to share.

(click to enlarge)

A Message

Thank you to all of my readers! I love writing this blog, even if I'm not as consistent as I would like. 

I hope everyone has a safe, happy and healthy Thanksgiving!

If you are in Disney for the holiday, say hi to Mickey for me! ;-)

Hotel Review: Animal Kingdom Lodge Kidani Village

My family became Disney Vacation Club (DVC) members in 2011. We were able to use our points, in our home resort, this past June. Our resort is the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We stayed at the regular version back in 2008. This was when Kidani Village was still being built. 

This hotel is tied for first (along with the Polynesian), in my top hotels list. I love the atmosphere and I love being able to see animals outside my balcony.

Below are some photos and more details about the hotel.

Below is the lobby. The decorations are authentic pieces from different parts of Africa. It always amazes me how detailed Disney is in everything that they do.

This is the view from our balcony. Since we had a DVC villa, we had two balconies. Our hotel consisted of a master bedroom/bathroom, a kitchenette, couch bed, dining table and a second bathroom. It was huge! For 5 people it was just perfect. 

This is what we saw everyday. All of the animals came around here throughout the day.

I love towel animals!

Everything was themed to the Lion King. This is the master bed's headboard. 

The massive master bath.

This Lion King scene was around the shower.

Even the curtains were themed!

Animals around the lodge.

Kidani Village has a lot of things to offer. There is one restaurant, called Sanaa. We did not eat there, so I can't give you a review on that. The pool was really nice, we don't spend much time swimming on our vacations anymore though. 

There is easy transportation to the other half of the lodge, Jambo House. You just have to get on the bus and ride it over to the other lobby. That way you can access the other restaurants and pool. 

This hotel is fairly expensive (even more if you want a Savannah view room to get better views of the animals). I believe that it is well worth it. It is such a unique experience to wake up and see such exotic animals. It is something only Disney can do and they do it so well.

Disney's PhotoPass Review

    This is strictly my opinion about the Photo Pass options. I will not be going into every single detail about the packages and all that. If you want all of the logistics, here is the website.

http://www.disneyphotopass.com/

    Disney's Photopass is a photo system that you use throughout the parks. You are given a card from the Photopass photographer.

  The photographer scans this card after every picture that they take. This is only used with characters and the iconic photos in front of the castle.... You do not have to use the card, the photographers will still use your personal camera.

  There are also things called magic photos, which incorporates a character into the photos.

  This is my photo with Tinkerbell. The photographer poses you and you see the final outcome on the computer. 

   Once you get home, you register on the Photopass website to see your photos. They also add extra ones in there of the characters by themselves. A big issue with the website is that your photos only stay on the website for a limited amount of time. Once that time is up, your photos are gone. 

     Now, my big issue and the reason why I will never by my professional photos are the prices. For a photo cd of all of your pictures, it costs $169.95!!!  Not going to happen, when the photographers will use my own camera to take the pictures. 

     The picture above, I print screened on my computer. Doing this, means that my photos will come out a little blurry and smaller than if I bought the real picture. I am aware that it is essentially cheating, but I am not paying an insane amount of money to buy my photos. I meet all of the princesses and the photos taken with my camera came out the exact same ways as they did on PhotoPass. 

     The pictures are beautiful and the extra characters are awesome, but not worth so much money. I will stick to printing my own pictures at home. 

Below are comparisons between my photos and a PhotoPass photo.

Above: This is the photo taken with my camera

Above: This is the PhotoPass picture. Remember, I took this from print screen so it is blurrier than it would be. But still, the same picture.