I will be staying at the Art of Animation Cars suite. I have three questions:
Is there a freezer portion of the refrigerator in the Cars suites?
I check-in to the hotel already online. I was hoping to ask for room located closest to Animation Hall/bus stops. Can this be done?
Do the hotels (Art of Animation in particular) have physical paper maps of the different parks at the front desk? I’d love to get myself familiar with the maps before the day of. I’ll have a smart phone too, but my kids will want to navigate, too. Is there an app to recommend that does step-by-step directions inside the park to get from attraction to attraction?
I can answer #3! You will find maps of all of the parks at your resort, in the lobby. They will also have daily entertainment schedules for each park which will tell you about things like character meeting times and locations, parades, music, etc. Unfortunately, I do not know of any app that does step-by-step directions, but I have always found Disney’s maps pretty easy to read.
I can answer #1 (if my memory serves) the fridges do not have a freezer portion. there may have been one of thos small ice box top shelf things, but I wouldn’t trust it to keep things frozen, but I don’t think they had those.
And another addendum to @theredhead 's info: the maps you get at the hotel (and everywhere else) are the same as what you can download now on the WDW site. Go to the main page for a given park, such as MK, and just below the main photo is a link to “Download Printable Map.” They do update the maps occasionally, so make sure you grab the latest versions when you are there. Enjoy!
If you have the Unofficial Guide 2017, there are excellent plans in there for touring each of the parks. You can even customize them if you like with access to touringplans.com. I don’t know how step by step they are in terms of mapping (we will be trying one in December), but the Disney app on our phones last fall did an amazing job guiding us where we needed to be.
I would suggest getting an extra battery charger for your cell phone as the GPS mapping program really uses the power, and frankly I don’t want to try to do it without the Disney app.
you should be able to make specific room request by looking at the touring plans Resort layout page and putting in walk times to buses etc. From the drop down menus. If you are not sure about using the fax feature you can always try to call Disney directly after you pinpoint your desired room location. It’s a great feature to see exactly what your view and estimated walk times from room to main hall /buses will be !