The Mara Goes Mobile Order Only This Week as Animal Kingdom Lodge Stacks Up Projects Into 2027
Walt Disney World added a five-day maintenance closure at The Mara to the calendar the day it started, sending the Animal Kingdom Lodge food court to mobile order only through September 25. It lands on top of a phased Kidani Village lobby refurbishment that closes the main entrance until October 9 and a Jambo House guest room gut renovation running through January 2027, the first hard goods refurbishment the Animal Kingdom Villas have had since they opened.
Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge is carrying more construction right now than any other Deluxe resort at Walt Disney World, and Disney added one more project to the pile on Monday with no notice at all. The Mara, the quick-service food court at Jambo House, went mobile order only the same day the notice appeared, and it joins a phased lobby refurbishment at Kidani Village and a guest room gut renovation that runs into January 2027.
The Mara Is Mobile Order Only Through September 25
Disney's own notice on The Mara's page is dated to a window that started the day it was posted, which is usually the signature of urgent maintenance rather than planned work:
From September 21 to 25, 2026, The Mara at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge will transition to mobile-order service only while the food court and dining room close for maintenance. Guests may place food orders through the My Disney Experience app during this time. Guests may also see or hear maintenance activity in the area during daytime hours.
Read the wording closely and it rules some things out. The kitchen is still cooking, because mobile order service continues, so this is not a kitchen repair. Five days is also far too short a window for anything that would change how the room looks. What it fits is a fault in the seating area or the services behind it that had to be dealt with immediately.
The practical effect for anyone staying at Jambo House this week: order in My Disney Experience, collect at the window, and eat somewhere else. That means the pool deck, the lobby seating that is still open, the outdoor tables, or your own room. And treat the September 25 reopening as provisional. Closures added to the calendar this abruptly have a habit of moving in both directions.
Key Details: Kidani Village Lobby Phases
- Now through October 9, 2026: the main lobby and the primary entrance are closed, and check-in moves to the Palace Library
- Now through late September 2026: Johari Treasures is closed
- September 28 to October 9, 2026: the north side lobby corridor closes, taking the second-floor north elevators and the outdoor terrace observation deck with it
- October 26 to November 6, 2026: the south side lobby corridor closes, along with Community Hall, the Safari So Good Arcade, the laundry room, the Palace Library, the lobby restrooms and the observation deck
- Expected completion: early November 2026
- Noise: Disney warns of construction activity in the lobby area during daytime hours until the work is done
Kidani Village Loses Its Lobby and Its Front Door Until October 9
This is the project with real guest impact. Walls are up around the Kidani Village lobby, the thatched ceiling treatment has come out, and the refurbishment runs in phases through the autumn. During the first phase the main lobby and the primary entrance are both closed, which is unusual: Walt Disney World has done a run of resort lobby projects in recent years, and most of them left the entrance and the check-in desk where they were. Relocating check-in to the Palace Library and shutting the front door suggests something structural underneath rather than a cosmetic refresh.
The scope reinforces that. After the main lobby comes out of the rotation, each corridor radiating off it closes in turn, and the second phase takes the arcade, Community Hall, the laundry room and the lobby restrooms with it. That is the pattern of work that follows a utility run, not a redecoration.
One early warning sign is already on the board: the Johari Treasures closure has been extended by roughly a month. That does not automatically mean the whole project slips, but a phased schedule this tight has no slack in it. The November 6 completion date looks deliberate, landing the weekend before Veterans Day and the start of one of the busiest stretches of the year.
Guests with a Kidani Village stay booked between now and mid November should know what is and is not affected. The villas themselves are fine. Sanaa is listed separately and is not named in the closure notice. What you lose is the lobby as a place to sit, the direct walk in through the front, the arcade, Community Hall and the observation deck, on the phase schedule above. If you drive and park under the building, the practical effect is smaller than the notice makes it sound.
The Room Project Is the First Gut Renovation These Villas Have Ever Had
Underneath the lobby work sits a much bigger job. Guest rooms at Jambo House are under refurbishment from May 2026 through January 2027, with most amenities remaining available. That is the second phase of a two-part project; Kidani Village's rooms ran from October 2025 through May 2026 and are finished.
This is a hard goods refurbishment, which is the industry term for a gut job: furniture, flooring, fixtures and fittings all replaced, rather than the lighter soft goods refresh that swaps linens, wall coverings and decor to extend a design's life. The Animal Kingdom Villas opened between 2007 and 2009 and have never had one. By the time this finishes they will be pushing two decades on their original rooms, which makes them among the oldest accommodations on property.
The upside of having waited is that these villas skipped the beige era. Walt Disney World's room redesigns from roughly 2014 onward stripped a lot of theming out of its hotels, and the villas missed that wave entirely. They are catching the current one instead. The completed Kidani Village rooms bring Inova pull-down beds, a great deal more power and USB charging, laminate flooring with an area rug in place of carpet, The Lion King artwork, brighter interiors with more colour, and a good amount of the original distinctive furniture retained rather than binned.
One open question worth flagging: the Jambo House notice does not say whether it covers the hotel rooms as well as the DVC villas. The hotel side was refurbished in 2018 and 2019, which would normally put it a few years away from its next turn.
The Buzz
Animal Kingdom Lodge is a resort people book a year ahead specifically for the savanna views and the lobby, and Disney Vacation Club members who reserved Kidani Village at their eleven month window did it partly to be among the first into the finished rooms. Finding out weeks beforehand that the lobby, the front entrance and the arcade go with the deal is why this one spread quickly among DVC owners rather than staying a construction footnote.
What Is Affected and What Is Not, Between Now and November 6
The concrete list. Affected: The Mara's seating and dining room through September 25; the Kidani Village main lobby and primary entrance through October 9; the north corridor, second-floor north elevators and observation deck from September 28 to October 9; the south corridor, Community Hall, Safari So Good Arcade, laundry, Palace Library and lobby restrooms from October 26 to November 6; Johari Treasures through late September; and guest rooms at Jambo House through January 2027.
Not affected, on the published notices: Sanaa, the pools, the savannas and the villas themselves, including the finished Kidani Village rooms.
What Disney has not said is what any of this work actually is. There is no description of the Kidani lobby project beyond its phases, no explanation for The Mara's five-day maintenance, and no confirmation of whether the Jambo House room bulletin reaches the hotel side of the building. If you are travelling inside these windows, Jambo House is the less disrupted of the two buildings right now, and a room request away from the second and fifth floors is a reasonable ask at check-in.