We are booked at AoA next August in a Lion King suite. My kids thought both LK and Nemo rooms were cool, but LK edged out. We have only stayed at POFQ before. Are we better off getting a Nemo suite since it has the pool and is central for dining/buses?
It really depends on what is important to you and your family. Our family has stayed in both LK (3 times, plus we were supposed to be in one last week and are booked in one next June) and Nemo (once). Both areas are good locations for us but we actually give the edge to LK for several reasons (which may or may not apply to your family).
1. We use the refillable mugs a lot and also eat a few meals and grab lots of snacks at the resort so we like to be close to the food court. The food court is at the end of the building closest to the LK section and Nemo bldg. 5. We had a great room location in Nemo (building 5, first floor, the wing that juts out towards LK bldg. 6) but 2 of our 3 locations in LK were closer to the food court than our Nemo room. And the 3rd location in LK was about the same distance as our Nemo room. If we had been in Nemo building 4, we would almost definitely have been further away from the food court than all of our LK locations.
2. The same thing applied for getting to the bus stops -- most of our LK locations were closer to the bus stops than our Nemo room. Nemo does win out for being closer to the Skyliner but LK is still very close and not a long walk.
3. Our Nemo room was definitely closer to the pool than LK -- we could get from our room to the pool in probably a minute. But the Nemo pool is only about a 2-3 minute walk from LK. And we actually prefer to go to the Little Mermaid pool as it's much emptier and definitely quieter. It's also a quick 3-4 minute walk. I've been at the LM pool in the middle of the afternoon in June and only had about 20 other people there. Meanwhile, the Nemo pool was always packed. We only swim maybe 3 or 4 times during the entire 7 or 8 days we're there, so being close to a pool is not high on our priority list. We're much more concerned about being close to the food court and buses.
4. The Nemo buildings are almost always booked to capacity so it's much more difficult to get a discount there as they only offer a few discounted rooms. We were only able to get a discounted Nemo room that one time. And now that we've stayed in a Nemo room, we don't feel the need to go back. Especially since those rooms are more expensive than LK or Cars. We aren't opposed to staying in a Nemo suite, but don't feel it's worth the extra $30-40/night when LK suites are very close to transportation and the food court as well.
For our trip that was supposed to happen last week, I had requested Room #6501 which is Bldg. 6, first floor, right next to the main entrance of the building. We were in that location the last time we stayed there and found it to be great for us. And Skyliner wasn't open yet on that trip but we could easily have walked out the back door of the building and had a quick walk along the lake to get to the Skyliner station. I will probably request a room in that general area for our trip next year.
All that being said, I'd stick with your LK room unless you plan to do a ton of swimming while you're there and are ok with paying the extra ~$40/night to be closer to the Nemo pool. My kids are all teens/young adults so I don't need to go to the pool with them anymore. If they were still little and I would need to be with them and lug all of their "stuff" with me *AND* we did a lot of swimming, I might be tempted to switch to Nemo. But we spend most of our time in the parks so the pool location doesn't really factor in to our room location requests.
Oh, and one more thing. Be sure to take a walk over to the Cars section one night. While our family has no desire to stay in that section, we do feel like the outdoor area of Cars has the best theming of the entire resort...especially at night. We make sure to walk over there at least one night during our stay.