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

AMENITIES AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

When you enter Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort, you are greeted by a red carpet–because you are an All-Star!

This brings you to the arrival building called Stadium Hall, with a lobby where you check in, and can buy tickets and makes reservations.

In the same building is the gift shop…

…and the food court, refurbed in 2013 but still too small.

Between the lobby and food court is a wall with images of sports heroes.

And outside the lobby is where you catch the buses to the theme parks, water parks, and Downtown Disney.

Nestled among the accommodations buildings you’ll find two pools.

THE POOLS AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

This review continues here.

MATERIAL IN THIS REVIEW OF DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

• Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort overview and summary
• Accommodations and theming at All-Star Sports
• A photo tour of a standard room at All-Star Sports
• Amenities at All-Star Sports
• The pools at All-Star Sports

OTHER KEY PAGES FOR WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD

• Where to stay–the Basics
• Where first-timers should stay
• Reviews of all the Disney World resorts, based on my 150+ stays in them

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

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

PHOTO TOUR OF A STANDARD ROOM AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

Note: a room refurb project has begun at All-Star Sports. This will yield queen bed rooms similar to those in All-Star Music and All-Star Movies.  For a photo tour of one of these rooms, see this.

Building 10 (in the Touchdown area) is complete, and Buildings 7 (Touchdown) and 9 (Grand Slam) are being worked on.

This photo tour covers an un-refurbed room.

Rooms at All-Star Sports are entered from an outside corridor, with the bedroom space first, and the divided bath and closet at the back.

On one side you’ll find two full beds with a small table between.

The beds from the back of the room.

Here’s a closer view of one of the beds.

Between the beds is this small bedside table, with storage below…

…and also in a drawer, with plenty of room for your important books.

The art on the wall between the bed area and bath is the only material theming in the room. The top one is from the Center Court area, the lower from Grandstand.

The other side of the room has the rest of the basic furnishings.

Here’s’ the TV side from the back of the room.

You’ll find a small table and pair of chairs and a dresser with a small TV above and a mini-fridge on the side.

Here’s a closer view of the drawers…

…and of the mini-fridge, with scaling objects inside.

Between the dresser and the bath is the space where you’ll find the connecting door if your room has one, and a coat rack on the wall.  This is the part of the room you’d put a crib or such.

The bath is divided into two parts, separated by a wall and door.  The sink area is open to the rest of the room, but has a curtain (at the right) for privacy/light control.

Also in this space is the clothes hanging area, iron, luggage rack, and safe.

The other half of the bath includes the toilet and tub/shower combo.

Here’s the tub with the shower curtain partially pulled.

Rooms at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort, like standard rooms in the other Disney World value resorts, are about as basic–and as small–as they get.  But the All-Stars in particular are the least expensive way to get Disney-owned accommodations for a family of four.

AMENITIES AND DINING AT DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

This review continues here.

MATERIAL IN THIS REVIEW OF DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

• Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort overview and summary
• Accommodations and theming at All-Star Sports
• A photo tour of a standard room at All-Star Sports
• Amenities at All-Star Sports
• The pools at All-Star Sports

OTHER KEY PAGES FOR WHERE TO STAY AT DISNEY WORLD

• Where to stay–the Basics
• Where first-timers should stay
• Reviews of all the Disney World resorts, based on my 150+ stays in them

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest!!

The Value Resorts   Art of Animation    Pop Century    Movies    Sports    Music

OVERVIEW: DISNEY’S ALL-STAR SPORTS RESORT

Among my 150+ stays in Walt Disney World resort hotels, I’ve stayed at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort multiple times, most recently in May 2017.

These stays confirms that for those who can’t afford a deluxe resort, Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort is the fourth best place to stay among the value resorts (the best value resort choice is Disney’s Art of Animation Resort).

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I thought that last year’s version of the Unofficial Guide was the best Disney World guidebook in a decade…and this year’s is even better!

REVIEW OF THE 2014 VERSION OF THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2014 is the annual revision to and update of the long standing leader among Walt Disney World guides. It was released in early August, and I read it almost cover to cover on my resort-hopping visit in mid-August.

The 2014 edition maintained the key improvements in usability that characterized the 2013 edition–nicely re-organized material on the Hollywood Studios and Universal parks, and a much more detailed table of contents–and added even more improvements.

As co-author Len Testa said in his blog post about what’s different in the 2104 version, “the front half of the book was edited and reorganized to ensure important topics are covered completely in a single section, instead of over several chapters.” This is another usability improvement, as it reduces the chance you’ll miss a key point if you don’t read every chapter.

Among many other new features in 2014 is an extended discussion MyDisneyExperience.com, of what Fastpass+ might look like, and how the second part of the Wizarding World–to open at Universal Orlando in 2014–will likely work.

These last two are necessarily somewhat speculative–and I sympathize with the Unofficial Guide team for having to go out on a limb now over developments that might not be fully clear until well into 2014–or even later, in the case of Fastpass+.

At least based on my limited knowledge, these sections track well to the best understandings of how these things will unfold, and don’t go in for much “maybe this maybe that.”

I guess one possible exception is the qualifiers in the page excerpted to the right, about how under Fastpass+ the best rides might eventually be allocated partly based on where you stay.

But if I had to make the call about sharing this possibly versus suppressing it in the chance–or with the hope–that it won’t happen…well, I’d publish it too.

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2014 is not for those who like their material brief and uncomplicated.  Disney World is vast, and the choices to be made in fact are complex.  The Unofficial Guide covers all of it in all its complexity.  This helps for better decisions–but not easier ones!

SOME MINOR NITS, CAVILS, TYPOS, AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH THE 2014 UNOFFICIAL GUIDE

While the traditional suites at Disney World deluxe resorts (and at Coronado Springs) are indeed excluded from most discounts, the Family Suites at Art of Animation and All-Star Music are typically in the deals. (110)

I’ve been campaigning for years that TUG should label Coronado Springs as a “centrally located” resort (the link explains the logic of this)—and this year, Len emailed me that in fact they were doing so—as you can see at the top of 119.  However, mid-way through 119, Coronado Springs is included in the resorts labeled as “not centrally located…” and it is un-mentioned on the “Unofficial Tip” about centrally located resorts on the left bottom of 118

The floor-plan material that’s on 122-125 gets better every year, but I still see some issues with it:

• I don’t know why standard Jambo House rooms are labeled as holding 2-5 people.  Four people is the max in standard rooms at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, and while there are some 2 person rooms, there are king rooms at other deluxes (like the Polynesian) which are shown simply at their standard capacity (in the case of the Polynesian, 5), rather than with a range.  AKL rooms should be labeled the same as Wilderness Lodge rooms—“Rooms accommodate 4 guests, pus one child under age 3 in a crib.”
• The note (about DVC capacity) at the bottom of 123 so far as I can tell is totally correct—a nice development compared to prior years.  However, some of the studio floor plans have lost their detail—e.g. Old Key West, Bay Lake Tower, and BoardWalk Villas.
• Len was kind enough to give me a heads up ahead of time that he didn’t agree with my critique of last year’s Art of Animation Family Suites floor plan.  I had objected to showing the dining table chairs scattered about the suite, and Len noted that both in his suite and in Bob’s suite that that’s what they saw. I can’t argue with that—you have to write what you see.  But I’ve now stayed in the Family Suites three times, and here’s the layout of the dining table chairs what I saw when I entered the rooms on three different occasions:
• Finding Nemo, from June 2012
• Cars, from August 2013
• Lion King, also from August 2013
• Regardless of this point (which tells you more about how Disney geeks obsess over things than about what you will actually find in your own room), there’s a floor plan typo in the Art of Animation.  The dining table is shown as a sofa…
• Some other nits related to these floor plan pages: The floor plan for Coronado Springs should show a desk rather than a two person table, and no room air conditioner below the window; There’s more difference in the use of space in the All-Stars and AofA versus Pop Century than the plans imply—there’s more open space by the door in the All-Stars and Little Mermaid rooms, and more by the bath in the other two; The different scales with which the value resort standard rooms are displayed might mislead some; I continue to insist—but won’t be able to prove until I stay in both on the same visit (update: proved, see this)—that Pop Century and Little Mermaid rooms are the exact same size. (Why: because two of three Little Mermaid buildings were built the same time as Pop was…)

On 133, it would be great if the Moderates all had two queens, but that’s not true for Caribbean Beach among the traditional moderates—nor of course at the Cabins at Fort Wilderness.

The second sentence in the first full para on 134 (“At Disney’s Value…resorts…and Disney Vacation Club Resorts…each room’s exterior door opens into the great outdoors” was true a long time ago, but has not been true at the DVC resorts since the BoardWalk Villas opened in 1996, and not true at the values since the Family Suites at Art of Animation opened last year.

On 136, on-line check has been available beginning 60 days before check-in for a while, and this oughta be emphasized.

The sentence beginning the last para on 150 has lost its verb, and needs an “are.”

Shades of Green has two buildings, one three stories and one five—not “one three-story building” (154)

In my view, the five person capacity of the Alligator Bayou rooms at Port Orleans Riverside deserves more emphasis than it gets on 180—since these are the only traditional moderate rooms (at the moment—I hear rumors about Caribbean Beach) that can fit five.  On the same page, the fifth sleeping spot is now a murphy bed, not a “trundle bed.”

In the discussion of the layout of the Animal Kingdom Lodge, the map has been rotated, but not the references to it, e.g. Ostrich Trail is now on the right of the map on page 184, not the left as noted at the bottom of 185.

I’m not keen on the intro material on the All-Stars (198), which is written a little bit as though these are the only value resorts, just as the material on the Family Suites at All-Star Music (192) is written as though Art of Animation doesn’t exist. I also think the portion of the comment on 191 that says “our room was about 1 mile from the bus stop” should either be suppressed or addressed in the text, as it gives a factually incorrect opinion.  No room at the All-Stars is more than a thousand feet or so from the bus stops, and it’s not even a mile from the beginning of Sports to the end of Movies.

I really don’t like the first couple of sentences in the second para about Art of Animation on 197: “Like Pop Century, Art of Animation consists of four-story buildings and exterior-facing rooms…However, most of Animation’s accommodations are suites similar to those at Disney’s All-Star Resorts.”  While the para goes on to mostly correct itself, I’d revise it so that it begins with something like the current third sentence (‘[Art of Animation] has 864 standard rooms and 1,120 suites”) and then goes on with something like “The standard rooms are similar to those at Pop Century—in four-story buildings, with exterior corridors.  The Family Suites have some similarities to those in All-Star Music, but with different floor plans and interior corridors.”

I’m not liking the second part of the first sentence in the next para, either. It currently reads “Art of Animation suites are…the result of combining two value rooms into one suite.”  True of the family suites in All-Star Music, but not of Art of Animation, where these suites were designed from the ground up, with only the exterior envelope of the building carried over from prior work at Pop Century.

Some other minor points…

• The left side of the image at the top right on 322 cuts off the text at the right margin beside it
• The first sentence of the material introducing the Advance Reservations (#9 on page 351) is confusing—especially the material following the “moreover,” which is both redundant and not entirely true.
• The sentence ending the Akershus material at the bottom of 353 needs to be updated a bit to reflect the opening of the “castles” of New Fantasyland…

Hefty, long, missing photos, and with, as detailed above, some errors…even so, The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2014 is by far the best Walt Disney World guidebook you can buy!

(Disclosure: As noted here, since summer 2011 I’ve had a business relationship with TouringPlans.com, part of the Unofficial Guide intergalactic empire.)

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“MagicBands” are Walt Disney World wristbands that take the place of Disney World hotel rooms keys, park tickets, and–for now–Fastpass+.

MagicBands have been in a limited test for a while, and I’ll be testing mine in a couple of weeks, as part of a bigger September and October test.

(See this and its links for more on MagicBands and Fastpass+.)

In this post, I’m just detailing–memorializing for history??–the ordering and delivery process.

ORDERING AND CUSTOMIZING YOUR DISNEY WORLD MAGICBAND

To order a MagicBand, you have to be in the test.  See the link above to see how you find out if you are in.

If you are in, then you can customize your MagicBand on MyDisneyExperience.com once you’ve logged in.

There’s multiple color options you can choose from among–you can pick the same color for everyone in your group, or mix and match.  See the image at the top of the page for the colors available.

In addition, you can add text that will show on the inside of the Magic Band–both fun, and handy if your kids (or husband) all want the same color.

The text is limited to nine characters, so I couldn’t put on mine “Dave Shute”–just “Dave Shut.”  So I opted for “Dave.” (I hear there’s a movement to convince Disney add more characters, so that my MagicBand could read “Dave, Shut Up.”)

GETTING YOUR MAGICBAND FOR WALT DISNEY WORLD

A few days later this parcel–about the size of a shoe box–came in the mail.

Inside you’ll find the MagicBand box–which, frankly, I like even more than the MagicBand…

My trip is solo this time–though I’m hoping to connect with Josh, as I owe him lunch–so my MagicBand sat in regal yet lonely splendor in the box.

Here’s how it looks right out of the box…

…and on my wrist.

I’ll be using it–and my Fastpass+–in later September: the 20th at the Magic Kingdom, 21st at Hollywood Studios, and 22nd at Epcot.

So since I’ll probably be posting and tweeting about the MagicBand and my overall experience with Fastpass+ (which I haven’t had a chance to test til now), you should probably…

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DISNEY WORLD NEXT WEEK: SEPTEMBER 7 TO SEPTEMBER 15, 2013

The material below details operating hours, Extra Magic Hours, parades, and fireworks.

The same stuff is in the table, but organized by park, not by topic.

(And for more on September 2013 at Walt Disney World, see this.)

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