OK, gonna try and quote multiple people and get all my thoughts/replies out in one posting:
Something doesn't seem to add up. The existing Pop Resort has 2880 single rooms. The press release for the Animation Resort says there will be 1120 suites and 864 themed rooms. Each suite equals 2 singles (1120 x 2 = 2240) plus 864 single rooms equals 3104. Are they building more than 10 buildings like Pop? It looks like the foundations were already laid for 10. How are they going to fit 224 more rooms?
Maybe the press release got the information backwards and meant 1120 single themed rooms and 864 suites. That would be equivalent to 2848 Pop rooms (1120 + 864 x 2).
Anyone else curious about this? Or did I misread the press release?
I'm thinking they got the number of suites wrong in the article.
Each building in the current Pop Century has 288 rooms (72 rooms per floor x 4 floors). Three buildings would equal 864 rooms, which is the exact number of regular hotel rooms they say there will be. (And because they've stated that all the regular rooms will be one entire theme, it means that it'll be one of the groupings of 3 buildings, kind of like how 50's and 80's/90's are now).
The remaining 7 buildings would normally have 2016 rooms, but you cut that in half to make the suites, and you get 1008 suites. So somewhere there's a miscalculation of 112 suites....
I wonder if they will give it a separate main entrance form the existing Pop Century one. It would be weird to have two different resort signs at the same entry. Even Port Orleans retained different entrances.
That side of the property already has its own entrance off of Victory Way, but it's easy to miss because none of the traffic lights and signage were ever installed for it.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=28.352035,-81.548885&spn=0.00558,0.00825&t=k&z=17
I did not have time to read all 12 pages - just page 1 and 12 - so I do not know if anyone asked this already. I love staying at Pop because it has the best bus service since it does not share with another resort. Will this new value resort be sharing Pop buses? I'm guessing it will. If so I would not like that at all.
I understand a lot of families love the family suites but our family prefers getting two adjoining rooms instead. So this announcement only makes me worried that when the new resort opens the great bus service at Pop may be no longer. Sorry for being a Debbie Downer!
As NewfieFan said, it may share during non-peak times.
Each half of the Pop/Animation complex has about the same maximum Guest capacity as 1 1/2 All-Star resorts. So combined they're about what the All-Stars are as a whole.
What will most likely happen is that Studios and Animal Kingdom routes will share a bus full-time, just as the All-Stars do. Magic Kingdom and Epcot routes will run dedicated buses to each hotel during peak times in the morning and evening, and then combined buses during mid-day.
One thing that you can benefit from, though, is that if the line for one side gets obnormally long, you can hop on a bus to the other hotel and have an easy walk back to your room.
-Rob
