Images of Animal Kingdom Lodge

Alaina and I both love discovering the details of beautiful things so we really enjoyed exploring and showing each other the amazing detail and work that went into creating this extraordinary lodge.  Some of these are her pictures and some of them are mine. 

This is the roof of the Great Lobby. 

The craftsmanship in here is truly a work of art. 

There is a suspension bridge that connects the fifth floor across the lobby.  We had a birds eye view of the lobby and were at eye level with the beautiful light fixtures.  We were also able to look out onto the main savanna overlook and patio area from the bridge.

Aren't these stunning?

Here we are standing on the bridge looking out to the main patio area and the surrounding savanna.  They had storytelling every evening around the fire pit and I think they even offered s'mores.  I was intrigued by how they created the sense of a vine growing up the window.  It was a nice way to tie the large expanse of glass into the theme of the lodge and to tie the inside together with the outside.

Inside the lobby they had a lot of beautiful displays of African Art, including various Masks that are used in Tribal Ceremonies.  I wish I'd had more time to explore and enjoy this part of Animal Kingdom Lodge.  It's literally a museum right in the middle of the hotel lobby.  This particular mask is the Igbo Ijele created by the Igbo tribe from Nigeria.  They choose the strongest man in the village to carry this during special events and ceremonies.  This is the only Ijele known to exist outside of Africa.

I was trying to show the detail of the exterior in this picture ... the colors of the balconies, the amazing thatchwork on the roofs, the open air outlook (complete with rocking chairs which just invite you to come and sit a spell) 

This is considered a pool view (I cropped the pool out of the picture because you couldn't really see it through the trees anyway).  I'm sure that if someone paid for a view of the pool they might not be too happy to be right above the roof of the restaurant, but I got a kick out of the zebra striping.  Everything, apparently, gets themed!

There is so much more to show, so much more that we didn't even get to see.  You could practically spend a couple of days just exploring the lodge and participating in the planned activities that are arranged for guests.

Alaina was thrilled that we decided to stay here.  It was the icing on her cake.  The biggest con of staying at Animal Kingdom Lodge is the time it takes to travel anywhere else in Disney World.  It takes about ten minutes to get to Animal Kingdom Park and that is the closest.  The longest bus ride was to the Magic Kingdom and that took about 25 minutes. 

We were very lucky on this trip and didn't have to wait for the buses at all.  In fact, everytime we went out, the bus we were hoping to catch was either just pulling in or just pulling out and the driver was happy to open the doors for us to get on.  Coming from the parks was about the same.  We definitely had our share of Pixie Dust when it came to transportation.