Disney's All-Star Sports Resort
Disney's All-Star Sports Resort is a sports-themed value resort hotel at Walt Disney World in Florida. It opened on April 29, 1994, as the first of Disney's value resorts, a new lower-priced category intended to keep guests on Disney property who might otherwise have stayed in budget hotels off site.[1] The resort has 1,920 rooms and stands alongside its two sister hotels, Disney's All-Star Music Resort and Disney's All-Star Movies Resort, in the Animal Kingdom Resort Area.
History
All-Star Sports was the first part of a three-hotel All-Star development announced in the early 1990s, as Walt Disney World expanded rapidly and sought a share of the inexpensive motel market along the tourist corridors outside the resort. The Miami firm Arquitectonica designed all three All-Star resorts, applying bold colours and oversized sculptural icons to simple, low-rise motel-style buildings.
The resort did not open all at once. The first section, Surf's Up!, welcomed guests on April 29, 1994, and the remaining sports-themed sections followed as construction was completed during 1994. All-Star Music followed in November 1994, and the All-Star trio was completed by All-Star Movies in 1999. The later value resorts, Disney's Pop Century Resort and Disney's Art of Animation Resort, developed the same formula of exterior-corridor buildings, food courts and giant icons at a larger scale.
Rooms at All-Star Sports were refurbished in a programme completed in the early 2020s, which replaced the earlier double beds with queen beds, one of them a pull-down bed that folds away to leave table space during the day.
Theming and layout
Accommodation is arranged in ten three-storey buildings grouped into five pairs, each pair themed to a different sport: Surf's Up! for surfing, Hoops Hotel for basketball, Center Court for tennis, Touchdown! for American football and Home Run Hotel for baseball. Rooms open onto exterior walkways, and the buildings are decorated with giant equipment appropriate to each sport, including oversized surfboards, basketballs and hoops, tennis racquets, football helmets and baseball bats. Stairwells are enclosed by large themed figures and sporting motifs, so that the icons double as wayfinding across the site.
Stadium Hall, the central building, contains the lobby, shop and food court. In front of it lies the Surfboard Bay Pool, the resort's main pool, edged with surfboard motifs, with a smaller quiet pool, the Grand Slam Pool, set in the Home Run Hotel area and shaped in the manner of a baseball diamond. Buses are the resort's only Disney transport link, serving all four theme parks, the water parks and Disney Springs; unlike the resorts on the Disney Skyliner, the All-Star hotels have no gondola, monorail or boat service.
Dining and amenities
Dining is centred on the End Zone Food Court in Stadium Hall, a quick-service restaurant with several serving counters, supplemented by the Grandstand Spirits pool bar at Surfboard Bay Pool. Team Mickey Athletic Goods, the shop in Stadium Hall, sells sportswear alongside general Disney merchandise. Other amenities include the Game Point Arcade, a playground, laundry rooms and jogging paths linking the three All-Star resorts. As at the other value resorts, there is no table-service restaurant or fitness centre, a deliberate distinction from the moderate and deluxe categories.
See also
- Disney's All-Star Music Resort
- Disney's All-Star Movies Resort
- Disney's Pop Century Resort
- Disney's Art of Animation Resort
- Walt Disney World