I stayed at AKL in a studio in Jambo House last August on rented points, and just got back from a week-of-Christmas stay in a Standard Studio at Saratoga Springs resort using our own points as we are new DVC members. Comparing the two resorts, I would say that AKL actually won in the Transportation dept! We had much better luck making it to our destinations on time with AKL than we did with SSR.
The problem with SSR is that resort (along with OKW, and some of the moderates like CBR and CSR) has individual bus stops within the resort, one for each section. Ours was the second stop, which means once we got on the bus, we had to wait while the bus stopped at each of the other bus stops before it was on it's way to the park. Our first morning, we got to our bus stop at 8:45am to make a 9:35am reservation at in Epcot, and we didn't even leave SSR grounds until 9:25
. We adjusted our expectations after that, but still were annoyed at how much park time we wasted waiting on buses in the morning.
AKL was much better. We never waited that long on a bus there, and while it did occasionally stopped at the other building (Kandi) it didn't take nearly as long to get on the road to our destination as it did at SSR. Even though it took a little longer drive to get to some parks (MK namely) as it did once we left SSR, I really didn't feel like it was as long of a bus ride all together as it was at SSR. To be fair, I am comparing summer crowds for AKL and holiday crowds at SSR, but I don't feel like the buses were more crowded one time than the other.
Resort-wise, I can't speak for SSR that much, since we really only used it for a room--we didn't even see the quick-service location and shop at SSR until we were waiting on ME to take us to the airport. The separate rotunda-like area of the check-in desk was all I really saw of the common area of the resort. But it looked like a good pool area and the resort grounds were nice. We got a ground floor studio, and I liked the little patio area we had, we overlooked both a small lake and a large pond on our almost-corner room.
At AKL, walking through that giant lobby every day was nice! If we wanted to, we could stop and soak it all in on our way back to our room, especially if our little guy was asleep in the stroller. They had a big balcony with rocking chairs for looking over the savannah, as well as the big overlook rock area outside to check out the animals. Being right there close to all the restaurants and amenities was great. The pool area was nice, I checked it out even though we didn't swim. We booked a standard view room, but ended up on one of the small wings that come off the big horseshoe shape and had a little alcove of savannah view! We saw animals every day from our 5th floor balcony, and one night, 3 giraffes slept right there off our balcony!
All in all, I think I prefer the hotel-style layout of places like AKL, Poly, GF and Wilderness Lodge vs a big spread-out resort like SSR and OKW.
Also, to answer your questions regarding renting points, you get the same resort-guest advantages as people paying cash rooms, like booking fast passes at 60 days out, ordering magic bands, etc. Because you are not booking a package though (you essentially have a room only reservation), you don't get the cute little plastic luggage tags that match the color of your bands. You can choose to purchase your park tickets direct from Disney, or use a ticket broker like
Undercover Tourist. Be sure to load your tickets to your
MDE account before 60 days to take advantage of your 60 day fast pass window! If you like using the Dining Plan, you can still purchase it, you just have to pay for it when you book the plan through the DVC member/broker you are renting your points through. You cannot call and add it yourself, the DVC member or broker must do it for you. As others have said, renting points is a final transaction, once you book you cannot modify your dates or cancel your trip. We had a great experience renting points direct from a member we found here in the DVC rent/trade board. They were offering points for $13 per point, so we were able to do 9 nights at an AKL studio for just $1976. That's much cheaper than staying 9 nights in a cash room at AKL!
That's just my two cents. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask, I'll try to answer the best I can!
