Resort Thread Disney's ALL-STAR SPORTS Resort

[rmom50]

 

[texasroni75]

I just got the letter, too, regarding the pool refurb during our December stay. We can use the other pool , but hoping they will at least give me my room requests and NOT be put in a room facing the work being done. I seem to have bad luck picking resorts the last few times. 2013 at ASMovies, they had removed all refrigerators during our stay. 2014 at ASMusic, the food court was being renovated. Now this. Sigh.

 

[prettypatchesmsu]

We are back from our vacation and had a great time. Very tired and hard to get back to work today, but sigh, I've got the Disney blues. It helps that we booked the Free Dining Bounceback while we were there, so I'm already counting down to our next trip! We chose Pop Century for the bouceback, I really did not care for All Star Sports. It was ok, but we had issues and did not care for some things. Even my husband did not like it as much as Pop, so we are happy to be there next time.

Our issues that we had with All Star Sports, could happen with any Disney resort probably, and as with anything your mileage may vary, but it just soured us on the resort from the start as it was our first stay there. We had never in all our trips experienced so many problems at Pop or even All Star Movies, so just by comparison it left us not liking Sports. This is just my honest review of our experience.

Our issues with Sports:
Shipping a package to the resort - I had read some others report problems with this but we had done this several times at Pop and Movies, so I just thought it'd be ok as usual. First the facts as management told us, You may not get your package for 48 hours as all packages are not kept on Sports property. They are in a warehouse several miles away and there are thousands of packages. So if you get it sooner, you are lucky. But they say give 48 hours after physical checkin at the resort and requesting your package to get your package delivered to your room. (Online checkin and room ready text does not help with this....You had to request your package once there).
We had shipped our package via UPS 3 day, and it was received and signed for a week before our arrival day. Everything was fine. Until, the day before we arrived it somehow got included with the boxes to be sent back to the shipper and our box went back out to go to our home. So while they were trying to figure out where our box was in the warehouse on our arrival day and we got the 48hr thing, it was really on it's way back to our house where nobody was home. We had supplies we needed for my Mother and us, and they figured out what had happened on day 2 of our trip. So we had to deal with figuring out how to get things that we desperately needed with no transportation to like Walgreens etc, and figure out how to get the UPS box changed to a location where someone could receive it until we got home. It was a hot mess and very stressful for the first two 1/2 days of our trip.

Room & Housekeeping - We got our room requests, the area we wanted and I think the fax worked as too as we got the location (ground floor touchdown area) we wanted. We had issues with the room, the toilet was not even attached to the floor. It was not sealed at all and just totally moved around the floor and water was coming out the back. It was very noticeable just by looking at the bottom of the toilet, so there was no excuse on this one. The maids should have noticed the state it was in when mopping the floor and cleaning the toilet. There was no stopper in the tub so you could take a bath, had to have them bring us one and install it. Our housekeepers were horrible. We had to ask for everything every day via phone, no towels, no cups, fresh sheets. The beds were made up horribly, to the point we had to make them to get in them every night. I think a 5 year old could have done better. It never got any better even after addressing this with housekeeping and having different maids.

Buses - I knew this was going to be a problem after staying at All Star Movies, but I guess I had forgotten how horrible the bus situation is at the All Star resorts. Our average wait was at least 45 minutes most times, both at the resort and at the parks. Sometimes we got lucky, but it was mostly very long waits. There were too many people and too few buses. Our wait for a Downtown Disney bus on our first day was an hour and a half. And that was not because of having to wait on other buses to get us all...there just was not a bus that came at all for that long. The sharing of the buses makes it terrible, crowded, and long waits. I have seen people say they do not share that often, that was not the case for us at all. Most bus trips were shared with all the All Star resorts. The only times we did not share, was when we did not even have enough room for all of us in line to start with at Sports. There were never enough buses for the amount of people.

We also did not like their gift shop, we felt it was very small and have too few items, nor did we like the main pool. It was much smaller than I thought it would be. And a huge issue for us was the location of the smoking area right by the food court doors that were the most convenient. Horrible location for that.

We did like the food in the food court, they had some really good meals. The workers were not friendly at all, but the food was good. The pop machines did not work well, and there were about 5 pop selections that were broken and were not fixed during our stay. The face plates were broken off so you could not push the button and one of the ice things was broken, so they were all unusable. And one section of the machines would just keep repeating "place cup on tray" even if you had it on the tray. We started just avoiding that machine, and when we saw others having the same problems I would tell them to try the other machine as that one does not work right.

The manager who we had unfortunately so much experience with those first few days at Sports was a really nice guy. They did help us and try to make everything better and worked with us. So I cannot fault that part and I appreciated it. But I would not stay at Sports again. It was nice to stay there once, but it just was not for us.

 

[cmorris303]

We are staying at Sports in a standard room Dec 12-15. We've never been before. What room requests would you suggest? Thanks!

 

[dansdad]

We are staying at Sports in a standard room Dec 12-15. We've never been before. What room requests would you suggest? Thanks!

It's a fairly compact resort and no areas I would avoid, so I would check out the different sections and pick which theme you prefer. We always requested the Touchdown area as we are football junkies.

 

[marthachick]

We don't like people walking/stomping overhead so we request top floor.

 

[texasroni75]

Buses - I knew this was going to be a problem after staying at All Star Movies, but I guess I had forgotten how horrible the bus situation is at the All Star resorts. Our average wait was at least 45 minutes most times, both at the resort and at the parks. Sometimes we got lucky, but it was mostly very long waits. There were too many people and too few buses. Our wait for a Downtown Disney bus on our first day was an hour and a half. And that was not because of having to wait on other buses to get us all...there just was not a bus that came at all for that long. The sharing of the buses makes it terrible, crowded, and long waits. I have seen people say they do not share that often, that was not the case for us at all. Most bus trips were shared with all the All Star resorts. The only times we did not share, was when we did not even have enough room for all of us in line to start with at Sports. There were never enough buses for the amount of people.

I had read that All-Star Sports has the "Bus Arrival Time Screens" now. Was the bus arrival screen up and functioning at the resort during your stay? And if they were, were the wait times accurate but very long, or totally off the mark?

 

[prettypatchesmsu]

I had read that All-Star Sports has the "Bus Arrival Time Screens" now. Was the bus arrival screen up and functioning at the resort during your stay? And if they were, were the wait times accurate but very long, or totally off the mark?

Yes, the bus arrival screens are up at the resort and are useful. They were pretty accurate on when the bus arrived. However, the times keep changing so be aware of that. It was not uncommon to have it say the bus to, for example Epcot, would arrive at 8:15am, then you look and it's 8:20am, then 8:22am etc. Our longest wait which was ridiculous was our first night there at about 5pm, at the resort waiting for a Downtown Disney bus. We kept watching the time get longer and longer. It took an hour and a half for a single bus to show up. And it was raining off and on. We stood up on that one as there was no way we were waiting for another one. A nice man gave my 71yr old mother his seat, so that was really nice as she could not stand like that.

 

[texasroni75]

Disappointing that the waits are so long, but your information is extremely helpful! All our December park days are planned out based on arriving for rope-drop, so it looks like we'll be planning to get to the bus stops much earlier than we originally thought just to account for the slow bus transport.

 

[prettypatchesmsu]

Disappointing that the waits are so long, but your information is extremely helpful! All our December park days are planned out based on arriving for rope-drop, so it looks like we'll be planning to get to the bus stops much earlier than we originally thought just to account for the slow bus transport.

Yes, I would definitely agree that to get to rope drop you need to plan to be at the bus stop very early. One problem, is there are tons of other people that are thinking like you so if you are not early to the bus stop then you may not make it on the first bus that comes and having to wait on the next could make you later than you want. There were long lines for the buses in the morning. We tried to be up there at least an hour before opening, and that seemed to work most times to get there for rope drop (and a good spot).

 

[pens4821]

We are staying in February for the first time. Hoping we don't have major bus issues. I don't mind waiting hopefully under a half hour, but surely hoping we don't experience hour long waits. Although, I think it can happen anywhere. Last trip we stayed at CR and waited over a half hour for a HS bus in the AM. In that time, there were something like 3 or 4 DTD buses that were coming and leaving just about empty.

 

[lustergirl]

We are staying in February for the first time. Hoping we don't have major bus issues. I don't mind waiting hopefully under a half hour, but surely hoping we don't experience hour long waits. Although, I think it can happen anywhere. Last trip we stayed at CR and waited over a half hour for a HS bus in the AM. In that time, there were something like 3 or 4 DTD buses that were coming and leaving just about empty.

I think you will be fine. IMO the only bus that will give you trouble is the one for DTD or Disney Springs as it is called now.

 

[rmom50]

I think you will be fine. IMO the only bus that will give you trouble is the one for DTD or Disney Springs as it is called now.

Agree - the other one that is sometimes slow for me is Studios back to ASSp. Although... it seems from some other threads that there might be bus problems lately that I'm not used to having.

 

[lustergirl]

Agree - the other one that is sometimes slow for me is Studios back to ASSp. Although... it seems from some other threads that there might be bus problems lately that I'm not used to having.

I haven't been to DHS for a couple trips now. Nothing holds my interest there.

 

[patster734]

Agree - the other one that is sometimes slow for me is Studios back to ASSp. Although... it seems from some other threads that there might be bus problems lately that I'm not used to having.

Yes, this was my experience too on our trip at the end of September: Taking the bus to and from Disney Springs, and the bus back from Disney Studios. I don't recall any other bus delays with the other parks.

 

[WEDWDW]

Just an FYI-Sports,Music,Movies all have dedicated buses TO DHS ALL the time now-no sharing.

http://www.orlandoparksnews.com/2015/09/walt-disney-world-bus-service.html#more

 

[justindt1]

With all of the bus delays to Disney Springs, is Uber an option? Are the prices reasonable?

 

[Clockwork]

With all of the bus delays to Disney Springs, is Uber an option? Are the prices reasonable?

In June it was 6.25 from Pop to Disney Springs. I used them because when we walked to the bus pickup it was swamped, the only time I've had to use them in Disney. It was also mid twenties to universal studios for a family of 4. I enjoyed the experience and probably will use them a lot more.

 

[lustergirl]

Down to double digit dancing til my trip!!

 

[Dcorey73]

What time do we need to be at the bus stop for rope drop at the parks? We are going the last week of October/first week November.