The first model rooms for Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas opened to the public last week. The models are located at Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Spa in the building that formerly housed the performance theater.
Allearsnet.com has posted a series of photographs of the model rooms. Visit Allearsnet.com for the full photo gallery.
It is important to note that these model rooms are still considered a work-in-progress and are likely to undergo some changes before the design is finalized. The models represent the units that will eventually be built in the new Kidani Village facility scheduled to open in late-2008 or early-2009. The rooms in the current Animal Kingdom Lodge facility—now known as Jambo House—are existing units being converted from cash guest rooms to DVC villas. Structural limitations will necessitate some changes to the floorplans and room sizes in the Jambo House units.
DVCMember.com also added new AKV information within the past week. Among the newly-released items is a brief resort preview video. The video features stock footage of the existing Animal Kingdom Lodge mixed with concept artwork for the Villas.
Also published for the first time is a development plan for the new resort. The entire document can be found HERE in Adobe PDF format. However, a portion of the document appears below showing the planned opening dates for converted rooms in Jambo House.
In the above photo, the section of the resort surrounded by white dots is scheduled to open sometime in July 2007. The rooms surrounded by blue dots will open in September 2007. The wing surrounded by white dashes will open in December 2007. And finally the section surrounded by red dashes has an estimated opening of May 2008. It is believed that the limited number of concierge rooms which are part of AKV are located in the final phase of the conversion with the May ’08 opening date. Aside from that, it is unknown exactly which room classes / views will be available in each phase of the resort’s completion.
