Help me be excited for All Star Sports

[Scoppin]

Hi everyone. We are back from our trip and I feel compelled to bump this post. First of all, I really appreciated everyone's kind words and memories about All Star Sports. It really allowed me to go into our trip with excitement and an open mind. We walked around the entire resort and I have to say, my favorite part was the baseball section! It was so perfectly themed, especially the pool. I loved it there! Our room was in the tennis section.

I just finished my trip report which included my thoughts on Sports, but I thought I'd post here too. I am not typically one to complain but when it comes to how we spend our hard earned money, I don't mess around. We left Sports with an overall bad feeling and will not be returning.
To briefly summarize, on our first day, we noticed a strong sewer smell by the pool. To the point where we sometimes had to hold our breath when we walked by. Not pleasant.
We had connecting rooms with my parents. There was a broken piece of metal between the two doors. My one year cut her foot on it when she crawling by. I also cut my toe on it on a different day. Both were bleeding. We told a manager about this and he said he would arrange for maintenance to come by and fix it. No one ever did so we covered it with bandaids.
On Monday of our trip there was a big storm. The walkways were covered in mulch, sticks, trash and debris. When we checked out on Saturday, all the mess was still there. It was never cleaned up. Sad.
The drink station was frequently out of coffee, iced tea, cream etc. Every day, something was out. Even at 8am. When we asked for something to be refilled, the CMs would stand around talking to each other while we stood there, mug in hand.
And finally, I was up in the middle of night every night with our one year old. One night, while she was laying on the floor near the sink for a diaper change, a cockroach ran out of the bathroom towards us. I woke my husband up to take care of it.

I complained to a manager about all these things in a very nice way. Just to let him know we were unhappy. He could have cared less. Didn't even bat an eyelash when I told him about the cockroach. He tried to give us extra fastpasses as compensation. I said no thanks so he offered a $50 room credit. Half of a night.

Overall, we did not feel like we were 'in the Disney bubble' like we did at Pop. Pop was always neat as can be, the CMs went out of their way to say hello to us, always saying Good Morning Princess to my daughter, or have a magical day princess. We didn't experience any of that at Sports. It felt like your typical Holiday Inn. We personally will never stay there again

But again, I do appreciate everyone's opinion! It makes me think our experiences were not the norm.

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. Especially with you and your little one cutting your feet.

We just came back from our WDW trip, three weeks now, and also stayed at Sports. We however were in surfer section with a view of the main pool and close to the main building. The rooms were nothing to write home about but they were also values. There were only three of us, me and two kids. We didn't have any issue with our room. We did experience some heavy rain as well while we were at the parks and noticed the debris on the walkways. However come morning everything was cleaned up.

I think we only ate twice at the resort. Lunch our second day and breakfast our last day. I found the CMs very helpful. It was our first time so maybe the blank I don't know what I am doing look helped. We were short dessert and kids drinks and the CM actually walked over to the coolers and showed what we were entitled to. I did go back there several nights to refill my mug so I had something to drink while the kids were sleeping. I did notice that at times one side of the drink station was closed. Not sure why as it was still very busy late at night with the crowds returning from the parks. I did find some of the food lines did move very slow. We generally had breakfast in our room and the rest of our meals were in the parks.

However, I have to admit we didn't spend a lot of time at the resort. We were left the resort early and generally didn't come back until around park closure. The kids did have some opportunity to use the pool with no complaints.

I did find the resort busy. A lot of Spanish speaking families. I found out from a CM that South America start their summer vacations in September so this would add to the crowds. It also appeared they were all at Sports.

Overall, our stay was okay. We found it a good place to store our things and sleep. Which is basically what I wanted. Most of our time to be spent in the parks.

 

[DisneyDreamer08]

Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. Especially with you and your little one cutting your feet.

We just came back from our WDW trip, three weeks now, and also stayed at Sports. We however were in surfer section with a view of the main pool and close to the main building. The rooms were nothing to write home about but they were also values. There were only three of us, me and two kids. We didn't have any issue with our room. We did experience some heavy rain as well while we were at the parks and noticed the debris on the walkways. However come morning everything was cleaned up.

I think we only ate twice at the resort. Lunch our second day and breakfast our last day. I found the CMs very helpful. It was our first time so maybe the blank I don't know what I am doing look helped. We were short dessert and kids drinks and the CM actually walked over to the coolers and showed what we were entitled to. I did go back there several nights to refill my mug so I had something to drink while the kids were sleeping. I did notice that at times one side of the drink station was closed. Not sure why as it was still very busy late at night with the crowds returning from the parks. I did find some of the food lines did move very slow. We generally had breakfast in our room and the rest of our meals were in the parks.

However, I have to admit we didn't spend a lot of time at the resort. We were left the resort early and generally didn't come back until around park closure. The kids did have some opportunity to use the pool with no complaints.

I did find the resort busy. A lot of Spanish speaking families. I found out from a CM that South America start their summer vacations in September so this would add to the crowds. It also appeared they were all at Sports.

Overall, our stay was okay. We found it a good place to store our things and sleep. Which is basically what I wanted. Most of our time to be spent in the parks.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience! Its interesting that you noticed your walkways towards the front of the resort were picked up. But ours towards the back, were not.
Our girls are little, 5 and 1, so we spent more time than we thought we would at the resort. The hot days were too much for them and some of our park days were shorter than we originally anticipated. We ate at least one meal, some days two, in the food court. We were actually very happy with the quality of the food and the variety of choices. We also found the staff inside the serving area to be friendly and helpful. The only problems we had in the food court were related to the drink station and the CMs in that area. We also found it to be very busy and sometimes very time consuming to actually get our food. The magic time seemed to be 4-6pm. Very slow and quiet
Hope you had a nice trip!

 

[Scoppin]

Thanks so much for sharing your experience! Its interesting that you noticed your walkways towards the front of the resort were picked up. But ours towards the back, were not.
Our girls are little, 5 and 1, so we spent more time than we thought we would at the resort. The hot days were too much for them and some of our park days were shorter than we originally anticipated. We ate at least one meal, some days two, in the food court. We were actually very happy with the quality of the food and the variety of choices. We also found the staff inside the serving area to be friendly and helpful. The only problems we had in the food court were related to the drink station and the CMs in that area. We also found it to be very busy and sometimes very time consuming to actually get our food. The magic time seemed to be 4-6pm. Very slow and quiet
Hope you had a nice trip!

I was in the food court at 10 and 11 pm and it was still very busy in there. Like to the point I was not sure if there were available seats. I was just going in to refill my mug to hydrate and went back to our room to reschedule our following day.

We actually had our lunch on our last day at Movies. It was very quiet in their food court. Barely anyone there. This would have been around 1:00. It also looked cleaner, brighter and more choices for food. The only negative I saw was someone complaining to the manager about the drink station. Not sure what it was about as I just kept walking. But the gentleman was not happy at all.

I can understand the walkways being a mess after a storm. Nothing you can do about that with the rain washing down out of the gardens. But they were clean when we were on our way out. We also noticed the gardening crew working on the gardens near the outside of the pool and in the pool area.

We did thank you. The kids, 8 and turn 11 on trip, didn't want to come home.

 

[ajrwdwgirl]

I would have been freaked out by the bug in the room too. But I have had a cockroach in my room at the Poly and when we stayed at the Caribbean in June we had quite a few bugs (not cockroach or bedbugs) often crawling on our walls. I figured especially at the CBR there was a decent amount of foliage outside our door and it is Florida, there are bugs. I don't remember ever having bugs at the Sports, Music or Pop. I do remember having a bug in my room at the Movies, because hubby wasn't around to kill it for me. Bugs are gross but do tend to get into places.

I would have been upset about the broken metal too, that was too much of a hazard with a little one or really any one.

 

[BigHero4]

We stayed at Sports a couple years ago in September/October, and had a great experience. As others have mentioned (and you experienced), it's a value. Not really any frills, but we still felt we had a good Disney experience. No smell from the pool. Both pools were clean and well staffed. Front desk was about 90% helpful... had some minor issues with our luggage. Otherwise the grounds were well maintained and we did have some storms while we were there. Food court was OK, but we were mainly there to grab quick meals to and from the park. We stayed in the Football section. Kind of noisy, but not outrageous. Easy walk to the buses.

 

[LieutLaww]

I was there last in Sept of 2015, 0 noise for the whole of my 2 weeks stay, room was clean and tidy and all the staff I interacted with were very helpful. As others have said the food options are very basic but I mainly ate in the parks anyway so was not a big deal.