The Themed Areas at Disney’s All-Star Music Resort

For the first page of this review of Disney’s All-Star Music Resort, click here.

THE THEMED AREAS AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR MUSIC RESORT

Disney’s All-Star Music Resort is one of 5 value resorts at Walt Disney World:

• Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort, opened in April 1994
• Disney’s All-Star Music Resort, opened in November 1994
• Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort, opened in January 1999
• Disney’s Pop Century Resort, opened in December 2003
• Disney’s Art of Animation Resort, opened in May 2012

Each of these five has four-person full bed standard rooms, and for standard rooms, for most families Art of Animation is the best choice, followed by Pop Century.

Two value resorts also have six-person family suites–

• The Family Suites at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort
• The Family Suites at All-Star Music

–and for family suites, too, for most families, Art of Animation is the best choice, although in some circumstances those at Music are the better choice.

See this for a detailed review of the Music family suites and a comparison with those at Art of Animation.

Disney’s All-Star Music Resort officially pays homage to “classic music genres—including Broadway show tunes, calypso, country, jazz and rock n’ roll…Guest rooms are divided into 5 pairs of 3-story buildings—each bright, whimsical pair is themed after one of the featured music genres and decorated with massive musical instruments.”

Disney’s All-Star Music Resort has 1604 rooms in ten identical three-story buildings, all with elevators.

These buildings are in five areas, each themed with external decorations and structures about a different musical genre:

• Buildings 1 and 10, Calypso
• Buildings 2 and 9, the Jazz Inn
• Buildings 3 and 4, the Rock Inn
• Buildings 5 and 6, Country Fair
• Buildings 7 and 8, Broadway Hotel

The buildings don’t distinctly draw fans of their genres.  Line dancing does not spontaneously break out at Country Fair, nor is there the equivalent of the Notting Hill Carnival at Calypso.

Rather, the distinction among these areas is the tradeoff of distance from the main services at Melody Hall versus peace and serenity.

Calypso is closest to the main services, and is thus sold as “preferred” rooms.

It offers both standard rooms and family suites. I don’t recommend Calypso for two reasons:

1. Unless your family has mobility issues, the nearness to Melody Hall isn’t worth the extra money
2. About a third of the rooms in each building face the main pool, and hence suffer from noise issues

All-Star Music (and the other values) is often dinged for being “too large and spread-out.” This is an inaccurate criticism, as each of the values fits into a much smaller footprint than any of the three larger moderates, leading to much less walking than at the moderates.

Moreover, All-Star Music has a particularly compact and charming layout.

The Country Fair area is the most distant from Melody Hall–see the map. It and the rest of the building areas other than Calypso are symmetrically built around the lovely walkway from Melody Hall to Country Fair, and equally surround the smaller Piano Pool.

This design leads to a more understandable layout, and also yields a strong central axis to the resort that makes it feel more coherent than the other All-Stars.

The Jazz Inn is the first set of buildings along this axis after Calypso.

The combination of the loveliness of its courtyard, its nearness to Melody Hall, and its distance from pool noise makes it, by far, the best choice for most families at All-Star Music. Like Calypso, you’ll find both standard rooms and family suites here.

After the Jazz Inn, you’ll see the Rock Inn on your right…

…the Broadway Hotel on your left, with a charming little garden right at the edge of the parking lot…

…and Country Fair ahead…

…with a large cactus-garden area separating its two buildings.

The symmetry of these three sets of buildings around the Piano Pool makes them about equally preferable. Country Inn feels more remote–particularly its woods-facing rooms in the back–but the rooms in Rock Inn and Broadway Hotel nearest to the parking lots are only a little bit closer to Melody Hall.

Because of the family suites, All-Star Music can hold a slightly smaller number of people than the other two All-Stars.  This can make it a tad less crowded.

Moreover, its lower kid-appeal, and higher adult-appeal, can make it a tiny bit less noisy and boisterous than the other All-Stars.

Among the All-Stars, Music’s strength for first time family visitors is the availability of family suites.

Its negatives compared to the other values include less broadly interesting theming and sometimes inconvenient transportation.

AMENITIES AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR MUSIC RESORT

This review continues here.

TOPICS IN THIS REVIEW OF DISNEY’S ALL-STAR MUSIC RESORT

• Overview of All-Star Music
• Photo Tour of a Standard Room at All-Star Music
• The Family Suites at All-Star Music
• Photo Tour of a Family Suite at All-Star Music
• The Themed Areas of All-Star Music
• Amenities at All-Star Music
• The Pools at All-Star Music

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