Split stay between Gran Destino Tower and AKL

[Hertsontour]

Hi all

Not a full trip report and I seem completely incapable of sharing the photos without lots of error messages, so just a quick note in case it helps others with split stays.

We initially booked a free dining package at AKL Jambo House for the October half term. We then found out that the girls school had created extra INSET days before half term, we tried to extend the package but there was no availability. So, we ended up adding on an additional three night stay at Coronado Springs (no tickets and no dining).

A few months before we were due to travel, we upgraded our Coronado Springs stay to a water view room in the Gran Destino Tower.

Coronado Springs is wonderful. The new rooms are spotless, the beds are lovely and there is absolutely no noise from the corridors at all. The pool area was not crowded when we used it and you could actually swim in it which was fab. We didn't eat much in the resort but we did have nachos from the pool restaurant one night and they were good.

On the very first night, I went to Epcot and we queued at Guest Relations to see if we could start our tickets (associated with AKL stay) earlier. It took about 20 minutes and we needed to provide photo ID, hand over a magic band from the Coronado Springs check in and give them the confirmation number from AKL but it is possible. We entered the park that night to check they worked and they did. Thank you Guest Relations!

On the day we needed to transfer across to AKL, we took our bags to Bell Services in CS who were excellent and they labelled them up and off we went to the parks.

At about 4pm we then checked into AKL ( for each leg, the my disney app never gave us a room number until after we had checked in). The bags had not arrived from Coronado Springs (they aren't guaranteed to arrive until 5pm) so we went straight to the room and saw it was not refurbished and it looked very old. I went back to reception to ask if we could possibly move to a refurbished room and luckily they had one so we moved rooms to a newly refurbed room.

At about 4.45pm we were told that the bags had arrived from Coronado Springs but we had to go and get them from bell services. The bag transfer process was a bit of a pain to be honest and service in AKL proved to be poor the whole time we were there. Though our room was refurbished and clean, the resort is undergoing very noticeable refurbishment. Both the central lookout areas in Jambo and Kidani village had cherry pickers and scaffolding, one of the floors in the lobby was taped off for refurbishment work and the level of dirt in the corridors was very noticeable.

I completed the guest survey to ask for extra cleaning in the corridor as there had been a fire alarm that had been adjusted and all the dirt from drilling into the wall was on the floor. I regretted completing the survey as the duty manager called our room at 10.46pm that night to apologise for the cleanliness and letting me know he would send the Director of Housekeeping round to sort it out. With children in the room, I felt this was too late to be calling. The dirt stayed there for days so giving feedback was not worth it.

The pool areas whilst nice is very crowded, the other hotels we have stayed at have quiet pools which seems to spread the load a little and I will be factoring this into any future hotel selection.

My advice would be to avoid AKL Jambo House until after the refurbishment - Kidani Village looked much better and well kept. Save your money and stay at Coronado Springs! Every time we went past it we missed our old room and the location so much.

Hope this helps people interested in having split stays.

[Hertsontour]

The Pool

The view from the room