Picolo recommends · Hotel in Orlando, Florida
Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
You open the balcony door and a giraffe is grazing below: the hotel is built around its own savanna, with zebras and antelope too.
The first thing children do here is run to the balcony. Below, giraffes, zebras and antelope move across a grassy savanna that the whole lodge is wrapped around, and they are there before breakfast and after dinner.
After dark the hotel's guides hand out night-vision gear so you can keep watching. The building itself borrows from African safari lodges, with dark wood and a tall, open lobby.
Picolo’s verdict
Why we chose Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
This is the Disney hotel children talk about afterwards. The animals give quiet mornings and evenings a focus that no ride can match, and it turns the hotel into part of the trip rather than a place to sleep.
It sits further from Magic Kingdom than most Disney hotels, so plan on longer bus rides. Without a savanna-view room you lose the main reason to stay, so pay for one or choose elsewhere.
What you get
- Rooms overlooking the savanna
- Guided night-vision viewing
- Pool
- Buses to the Disney parks
- Restaurants on site
A day at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Morning
- Giraffes from the balcony before the buses start.
- Midday
- Animal Kingdom park while the queues are short.
- Afternoon
- The pool in the worst of the heat.
- Evening
- Night-vision viewing on the savanna with the guides.
Location
Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA
Open in MapsQuestions about Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge
Can you see animals from the rooms at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge?
Yes, if you book a savanna-view room. Giraffes, zebras and antelope roam the land right below the balconies.
Is Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge far from Magic Kingdom?
It is one of the more distant Disney hotels from Magic Kingdom, and you travel by bus. Allow extra time on park mornings.
What can you do in the evening at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge?
The hotel runs night-vision viewings with its own guides, so you can keep watching the savanna after the sun has gone down.
Other hotels nearby
Updated 6 Nov 2026All articles
How Picolo chooses
Our editors pick every hotel themselves, and most of them we have stayed at. No hotel can pay to be included or ranked higher. When you book through our links, Hotels.com pays Picolo a small commission. It never changes the price you pay, and it never decides what we write.
