When planning your Disney World vacation one of the important choices is accommodations. Disney offers more than 25 different resorts with a wide price range so even if your budget is on the lower end, you can still enjoy the immersive Disney magic! Some of the benefits of staying on property at a Disney World resort hotel including early entrance to the parks and complementary transportation to and from the theme parks, water parks and Disney Springs.
For those who will have a car with them the value resorts offer complementary parking on-site. There is no charge for guests staying at any of the Disney hotels to use standard parking at the theme parks and water parks.
There are 5 value level hotels
- All-Star Movie
- All-Star Music
- All-Star Sports
- Art of Animation
- Pop Century
The saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely applicable when it comes to choosing a Disney resort. The value resorts work perfect for our family when we know that a majority of our time will be spent at the parks and only need a place to shower and sleep. The standard rooms are the smallest in terms of square footage and most rooms come with either 1 king bed or 2 queens. For those traveling wanting more space both the All-Star Music and the Art of Animation offer family suites with 3 queen beds.
The resorts are split into sections featuring larger than life characters at the entrance to each building. All the value resorts hotel rooms are accessed from the outside, with the exception of the family suites at Art of animation which are accessed inside the building. When booking your room at the resorts you have a choice of standard or preferred rooms. The preferred rooms are almost always closer to the main building where you will find the front desk, food court and buses/transportation. For guest who want to stay at the Little Mermaid section at the Art of Animation keep in mind this is the farthest section from the main building. The All-Star Movies resort is the smallest of all the value resorts so no matter which section you are placed in the walk to the main building is not too far whereas Pop Centry is much more spread out.
The standard rooms at the value resorts have 2 queen beds. Disney has been remodeling the rooms and now the 2nd bed is a murphy style bed that folds up to make a small table for eating in the room. The downside is the edges of this stick out in the small space so we hit our legs on it while we walk past.
The bathroom areas of these rooms have one sink in the outer hall with the toilet and shower/tub in its own room. All the rooms come with some standard amenities like pod coffee maker, mini fridge, iron and hair dryer. Like I mentioned before these rooms don’t come with a lot of space so if you are traveling with little ones there really is not room for them to play. If you are planning to be spending a decent amount of time you will want more space which the moderate rooms offer but the most spacious are the 2-bedroom villas, but they also come with the higher cost per night.
The value resort only has 1 option for dining on site. Each resort has a food court (quick service) dining area open for meals throughout the day. The food courts have several windows each offering a different style of food so there are plenty of choices for everyone in the group. The downside to this is if everyone wants something different you would need to wait in each line. For the moderate and deluxe level resorts they offer table service dining, and some even have the character dining available.
The pools at the value resorts are themed with the section its placed at the resort but are nothing special. Almost all are too deep for little ones, but they do offer complementary life vest for guest to use while swimming. When my girls were little, we spent a lot of time playing at the stair because they could not touch. The All-Star Movies and Pop Century both have a small baby pool for little ones to play that is in a separate gated area from the main pool. The best pool for families of all the values is the Big blue pool in the Nemo section at the Art of Animation. This pool not only offers the zero-depth entry play space but also has an attached spray and play area for the little kids. Slides and dedicated kid play areas are located at the moderate and higher tiered resorts.
One of the nice things about staying on site for your Disney vacation is the complementary transportation to the theme parks so you don’t have to worry about parking or finding your car at the end of a long day. All resorts have buses available for guest to the parks and Disney springs which run around every 20 minutes. Keep in mind that sometimes the resorts will share buses and if you are staying at one of the All-Star resorts, they normally drop off at Sports the Music and last Movies. The newest transportation option is the Disney Skyliner, for guests staying at either Pop Century or Art of Animation you will use the Skyliner to get to Hollywood Studios or Epcot.
Overall our choice of the Disney value resorts from best to worst:
- Pop Century
- Art of Animation
- All-Star Movies
- All-Star Music
- All-Star Sports