We love WL - when we walk into the lobby it just feels like "home". But this past December we stayed at AKL in a Jambo hotel room [standard view; we ended up in a room with a partial savanna view] and absolutely loved it - we will stay there again some time, probably for a largely resort or resort-only stay because the resort was just amazing and we loved spending so much time there.
Since you will first book hotel rooms when they become available, know that the Jambo hotel rooms were renovated last year and are really nice. Here are some links to a blog and video about those newly redone rooms:
https://www.disneytouristblog.com/new-rooms-animal-kingdom-lodge-jambo-house-review/
We really liked the carpetless flooring and other features [and are therefore looking forward to WL's hotel refurbishment
].
As part of booking our stay we also looked at booking a DVC villa through Disney. So in preparation we stalked the WDW website for months before to get an idea of when they release the rooms, the pattern of release, what availability is like etc.
Now, we were looking at Jambo and Copper Creek [pre and post stays bracketing our cruise] but also glanced at Kidani, BRV and noticed the other DVC resorts when doing searches.
The following info was correct pre-covid but some or all of it may longer valid in the covid environment: while normal hotel rooms are available to book over 400 days in advance, that is not the case for DVC rooms being made available for the public to book "for cash" directly from Disey (or via your
travel agent). The DVC rooms are released the rooms to the public for booking at the 10-11 month mark, or sometimes in the 9-10 month window. This makes sense, since DVC members can book at their home resort at 11 month out. I have found that not all resorts will load their rooms in the same day, and for a single resort, not all their rooms will all load in on the same day, sometimes it takes a few days [so the 1 bedrooms may load one day and the others on a later day; keep checking if you don't see what you want !!!]. After the initial release of DVC rooms, availability will come and go in subsequent months -- whether that is more being added or people changing their mind is not entirely clear.
Regardless, if they don't initially have what you want, check back as availability changes. However, your best option is took book early if you can as that is when there is the most availability; but note that at that point you will be booking at rack rate. If a promo comes out later you may or may not be able to change your rate [it depends if there are any of your room type at your resort availabile for that promo rate -- we have had trips where our resort was part of the promo but not our room type and the room types that were were with the promo more expensive than our rack rate room so we still ended up with rack rate; and other trips where we lucked out and were able to get the promo].
Doing a quick check suggests that at least for the DVC rooms the above seems to still hold true.
I suggest to get a feel for yourself you spend some time over the coming months putting in dates in that 10+to11 month window and seeing what availability is like, how they load up the rooms, etc.
I picked 08/16/2021 - 08/20/2021 as an example and for Kidani there is availability for everything except the Grand Villas.
As for walking distance, FYI, the walking distance from the lobby door to the far end of one of the wings the rooms are on is about 500 m. The two redeeming qualities is that unlike say Beach Club with lots of twisty turns, it is one long [curving] hallway, and there are lots of spots along it you can peer out onto the savannah and possibly view animals [or at least a view]. So depending where you room is it can be a long walk if headed to/from the lobby, but it is straightforward. And there are elevators regularly along the way. Others have commented re: the parking situation.
SW