AOA Question and Free Dining

[miss1180]

i've never stayed at AOA, but went there to walk around with my 4 year old... its SO SO cute there!! your toddler will love all the big characters to look at, and the pool looked neat, too. i had friends that stayed in a Cars suite there last year and really liked the extra space and enjoyed it. (although- your DH sounds like mine-- he likes staying at the "nicer" places :-) )

Free dining--- during certain weeks in the fall and i think even into December, you can get the dining plan included in your stay-- BUT it has to be a certain number of nights, AND has to include park hopper tickets (or the water park option i think). and only a certain number of rooms are available for it, so it can be tough to get. AOA is a "value" resort, so if you get free dining there, it would be the "quick service" meal plan.... you would get 2 quick service meals a day (anywhere in the parks or hotels) AND one snack (per person). you can pay a little more to upgrade to the regular dining plan, which is one "quick service" and one "sit down" meal a day per person, plus one snack.
if your toddler is under 3, it might not make sense to worry about the free dining, since he will eat for free at the table service restaurants anyway (like the character buffets or whatever) and can probably just pick at whatever you guys get at the quick service places. You might be better off doing one of the other discounts, like 15% off the room or whatever...

[dcrunnergirl52]

I've never done free dining so no experience there.

The suites at AoA are awesome. It was plenty of space for our family of 5. Large, very nice, plush bathrooms, and your LO will LOVE it. The hotel does have screaming kids running around, particularly in the food court, lobby, and at the pools, but it's Disney--it's to be expected. Your kid is going to be one of them too! And, it never bothered me. It was wonderful to see so many kids enjoying themselves, families with other tantrum throwers, etc.

The only thing that got a bit old after a few days at AoA is that we weren't crazy about the food options at the food court, so we got tired of them. We ate dinner from there most nights b/c it was easier to get takeout on our way back to our room at the end of the day than brave a restaurant with tired, tired kids. We ended up being at AoA for 10 nights (got stuck in Disney for 3 extra days b/c of a snowstorm at home that cancelled all flights for days...I know, poor us and toward the end, we got some meals over at the food court at Pop Century.

Also, if you can, try to request a room closer to the Animation Hall end of things, just to cut down on walking.

[Mrs. ChanandlerBong]

There will be screaming kids at every hotel., even the deluxes. I've not heard one bad thing about the AOA or the ASM family suites.

[littlemermaid]

We stayed at AoA last June. It was so much fun. We were in the Finding Nemo Suites. Very spacious, and I loved that it had 2 full baths. We never had any noise in the hotel for the whole week we were there. It was actually quiet in the hotel.

We bought the dining plan and we used it to pay for character meals, breakfast at the hotel(considered a counter service meal), snacks throughout the day. sit down dinners, counter service lunches. I think out of pocket we only paid for breakfast on our last day because we had used up the whole plan.

The big pool was a lot of fun. They showed a movie on the pool deck in the early evening, sang songs with the kids.