In October my husband and I will be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary. We came to Disney for our honeymoon, and we've been a few times since. Last year we rented DVC points and stayed at AKL and fell in love, but we didn't have a whole lot of time to use the room, as we were there for Star Wars Celebration and Parks!
This year, after much painstaking saving $$ and realizing yes, we can do this, we booked AKL Jambo House through Disney, with a main goal of 5 full days of relaxing at the resort, by the pools, at the bars, enjoying Disney Springs and the Boardwalk and Monorail loop, one day at the parks (I have a cast member who is gifting us tickets for our anniversary!), the Halloween party (our first time!), but always having AKL Jambo House to come back to and just unwind.
It sounded like heaven for us, as we've had a really hard year (my husband lost his job, his father is terminally ill and in another state, my grandmother passed, just a tough one on us).
THEN WE GOT THAT DARNED EMAIL
Uzami Springs pool is closed while we are there!
We are open to adjusting dates in the fall, but it's closed from 9/4 - 12/4! I called to ask if there would be any compensation, but they said no (this is fine, I didn't expect any).
We really aren't happy about cramming into Kidani Village's pool (half the size for 2 full resorts) for 5 days - that does not sound relaxing!
But AKL was the only real Deluxe we could afford, after saving (it was only $361 a night, and I'm sure a discount would have come out and helped!).
So we said... ok... let's see about a moderate.
CBR is under MAJOR renovations and has minimal dining available...
CSR's pool will also be closed from September - December...
We've been to POFQ and POR and love them, but we really wanted a more relaxing vacation and since POFQ put in the large play area, it's not quite what we want, and POR is a lot of walking to get from room to food to room to pool to room, etc etc etc
So now, I'm stumped! I tried to rent DVC again but everything is full (of course, it's only a 5 month window).
Any other Deluxe is out of our price range.
I talked with an agent who suggested... the Poly (it's $892 a night for the weeks we were looking). Not quite comparable.
We just want an (affordable) resort to lounge at that isn't a value (we've stayed before and loved them, but it's just not the vacation we planned for this year). We could go back to POFQ or POR, as they're lovely, but... the closing of Uzima Springs really broke my heart.
Does anyone have any suggestions? We were looking at October 21-27, but would be open to the week before or the week after... we may just scrap this trip altogether and do something else, but because we honeymooned at Disney, this was really what our hearts desired.