In October of 2008 I went to Disney World for a week with my friend Terye. Since we didn't anticipate spending much time in the hotel room we decided to stay at a value resort. After researching them I knew that the All Star Sports resorts had recently been refurbished, so we decided to stayed there. We stayed in a Surf building near the pool, this is a "preferred building" at the resort.
I wasn't overly impressed with the resort, though most o
f that has to do with what Terye and I anticipated we would be doing. The room size was on the small side, which we knew and wasn't a big deal. It was just fine for 2 adult girls - not sure how 2 adults with 2 kids deal though. I liked the layout of the bathroom though, with the tub and toilet in the room and the sink separate. But the lighting was HORRIBLE. I'm lucky I didn't look like a clown when I went out. Terye hated the programming on the TV, though it's really not surprising what they had. Every ABC, Disney and ESPN channel that ever exsisted, and that was about it. Ok, they did also have the other basic channels - NBC, CBS, Fox.The dining wasn't anything to write home about. There is just the end-zone food court, which I didn't think would bother me so much. But the pizza sucked (which meant I wasn't into any of the Italian foods). The grilled food was just ok, the one breakfast I had wasn't that fresh. Terye and I had at least 1 sit down meal a day and this just didn't really fit in with our dining habits. And after a long day at the parks we liked sitting down and having a nice meal at a restaurant, instead we were stuck with a mediocre quick meal. Fortunately we had dinner reservations somewhere else most nights.
The biggest disappointment was the lack of hot tub. I'm not a huge hot tub person, but after a long day in the parks it would have been wonderful to dip into one, but they didn't have one. I don't know how I missed this, but if I had realized it we might have chosen a different resort. Also, the pool was large, but was often packed with hordes of kids, especially at night. I was shocked by how late parents were keeping their kids up at night. There would be kids running around the pool area at 11pm.
In short, I would recommend the All Star Sports resort for people on a budget and only if there are 2 or 3 people in the room. Or for people just going down for a couple days and will be using it as a place to sleep, not for people who are looking for a resort experience.
