Which Disney Value Hotel?

[Lorry69]

Is there much difference between All Star Sports, All Star Movies and Pop Century other than the theming?

[disneypars]

All Pop Century rooms have been refurbished and the resort is on the Skyliner route.

[Guest]

I have just booked one night in a value as the first night on a 2020 trip. I went for Art of Animation but I would have been happy with Pop Century as well. I am not so sure about the Skyliner, I might give it a go, but I think these look a bit nicer than the All Stars.

[BebeYorkshire]

Pop Century was beautiful in October, I was really impressed with the standard of the room we had. I would definitely stay there again. It was nice having AoA across the way too as if we missed a Pop bus we had the option of jumping on AoA (at times their buses seemed to be a lot more frequent than Pop ones) and walking across.

[Lorry69]

Thanks everyone, Pop Century it is then.

[Sparksy72]

We have stayed at Pop Century twice, most recently in a refurbished room and really enjoyed it. The food court is great too!

[macadoo]

I haven’t stayed at pop but have stayed at sports and movies, movies was our favourite. Great disney theming, decent foodcourt and great buses, the main plus for us is the all stars are smaller resorts compared to pop and aoa so no rooms are too far from the pools and food courts and no huge bus queues.

[sky13]

I've stayed at AoA (Little Mermaid room), Pop (pre and post refurb), and ASMovies (pre refurb). My favourite is Pop and it is my "go to" resort in WDW now.

For what you've asked - Movies vs Sports vs Pop, these are the main differences I can see:

Refurbs - Movies and Pop have been recently refurbed, Sports has not yet been refurbed. There is a huge difference and improvement after the refurbishment. Compared to pre-refurbed rooms, the refurbed rooms are very nice and new, have lots of lighting, have huge TVs, have a Queen bed and a Queen sized pull down bed (which folds up into a pretty large table), sliding doors instead of curtains for the sink area and for the shower, coffee maker, a very large room safe in a cupboard with code lock as opposed to a small wall safe with key lock, and tons of wall socket and USB charging points. Some of the refurbed rooms no longer have a bathtub and just have a shower.

Transportation - The All Star resorts only have bus transportation. At off-peak times they sometimes share buses. Pop and AoA have bus transport and now also Skyliner transport. Additionally Pop and AoA rarely share buses (I've only been on shared Pop/AoA buses at seriously weird times, e.g. late after park close)... and sometimes from a park I will find I have just missed the Pop bus, so will take the AoA bus back and just walk back to Pop from AoA.

Size of resort - Pop and AoA are huge resorts. Each of the All Stars are I think smaller than either Pop or AoA, but if you add the All Stars together then it is one gigantic resort too.

Location - Pop/AoA are a bit more centrally located within WDW, while the All Stars are a bit more towards the West. Just means that transport times may be slightly different to the parks or Disney Springs.

[Jockey]

We love the pop buses are great, food court fab staff are amazing!

[scoobydooby]

Check carefully how much more a moderate is as well as the gap is not always huge. I haven’t got any experience of the values but have watched them all in videos and read reports. Based on that but not experience I would avoid All Stars at all costs and go for Pop or Art of Animation.