For a recent visit to Walt Disney World on short notice, I was fortunate to luck into a reasonable rate at All-Star Movies, one of Disney’s five value resorts. It’s a resort I’ve endorsed in the past and continue to…mostly. Read on the learn our latest thoughts on Disney’s All Star Movies Resort!
Basics of Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
All-Star Movies is one of the three All-Star resorts at Walt Disney World (the other two are All-Star Music and All-Star Sports). These are Disney’s lowest-priced value hotels, and they’re all near each other and roughly equivalent in quality. Rack rates for standard rooms at All Star Movies in 2024 range from $133 to $305 per night. Deal prices can get closer to $100 per night.
Staying at All-Star Movies, you get the perks of any Disney stay. You’ll have access to free transportation (by bus, as discussed below) to and from the parks and Disney Springs. You’ll also have access to Early Theme Park Entry and the ability to book your individual Lightning Lanes at 7AM (as opposed to when the parks open).
If you’re considering All-Star Movies, you may want to read some of our other posts, including reviews of the other value resorts. We have a ranking of the Disney World value resorts. We also have a guide to all the hotels of Walt Disney World. Here are our reviews of all the value resorts (links open in new tabs):
Review of Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort (refurbished room) (you are here)
And if you’d like to see where this resort falls overall, check out our Disney World hotel rankings.
All-Star Movies Grounds and Theming
Like the other value resorts, All-Star Movies has simple amenities, small rooms, and somewhat kitschy theming. Let’s start with a map:
The grounds are broken into eleven buildings and two pools. The main building is “Cinema Hall.” That’s where you’ll find reception, the concierge (in case you haven’t bought event or park tickets or made your advance dining reservations), the Reel Fun Arcade, Donald’s Double Feature Gift Shop, the World Premiere Food Court, and the Silver Screen Spirits pool bar.
Nearest to Cinema Hall is the Fantasia Pool. Over by the Mighty Ducks rooms is the Duck Pond Pool. Both pools have laundry rooms next to them.
The ten room buildings—1 and 4 (the 101 Dalmatians rooms); 2 and 3 (the Mighty Ducks rooms); 6 and 7 (the Love Bug rooms); 5 and 8 (the Fantasia rooms); 9 and 10 (the Toy Story rooms)—form the outer border of the grounds.
There’s no denying that the Movies theming comes off as more “Disney” than the theming at Music or Sports. Obviously this is because Disney can surround you at all times with reminders of their movies, from Toy Story buildings to posters in the food court.
All-Star Sports has other issues (which we’ll cover in an upcoming review), but “sports” is definitely the least Disney of the themes. All this points to All-Star Movies being the best option if you’re torn between the three.
All-Star Movies Activities
All-Star Movies also has a decent activity schedule. Movies utilizes a dedicated theater room for its nightly movies.
Here’s the December 2018 activity schedule. We haven’t grabbed one on subsequent visits, but this gives a good taste of what you can expect from the resort.
Athletic Hosting at All Star Movies
Like all the All Star Resorts—and occasionally Pop Century and Art of Animation—All Star Movies frequently plays host to athletic teams competing in competitions at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports. These teams range from young kids to college students.
If your visit happens to coincide with one of these events, the All Stars get quite busy and quite loud. For this reason, we don’t recommend the All Stars for adult-only trips to Disney World. (You can read our Adulting at Disney World Hotel Suggestions.)
Even families with kids might not enjoy a stay that co-occurs with one of these events. Especially if your kids are light sleepers, the increased noise won’t be great, and the behavior of large, unsupervised groups of teenagers is often sub-optimal.
You can check the ESPN Wide World of Sports schedule for events, but keep in mind that’s going to be hit or miss. The teams might not use a specific hotel for a specific event, or the hotel might get used for something that isn’t on the schedule when you look. This is one of those things you just sort of have to accept as a risk.
Booking Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
I was looking for the cheapest option for my stay (I was traveling solo and going to spend 15+ hours in the parks each day). I quickly look up prices and then contacted our favorite travel agent, Lauren Quirk of Travel With Character LLC. She confirmed what I saw, a $141.31 / night rate for a preferred room, and booked it for me.
The value resorts see a lot of variation in pricing depending on where you look. You’ll sometimes find them with lower prices on sites like Expedia or Orbitz.
As always, if you book through a non-Disney site you should be sure to link your reservation to your My Disney Experience account both as a means of confirming it and to be sure you get all the perks associated with your stay.
Arrival & Our Room at All-Star Movies
We arrived via Uber from our nearby apartment (read more about Uber at Walt Disney World). Since Disney has ended their Magical Express shuttle service from Orlando International Airport you’ll have to find your own way from the airport if you’re flying in.
We had checked in online via the My Disney Experience App around 11AM, but our room was not ready by the time we arrived around 12:30PM. A Cast Member greeted us when we entered and suggested we might get a room more quickly if we went to the check-in desk.
(Dec. 2018, hence the Christmas decorations)
We already knew this option to be a possibility, having done this successfully at our last All-Star stay. Nonetheless, we wanted to put online check-in to the test, so we said we’d prefer to wait and headed to lunch.
We received notice around 4:00PM that our room was ready.
This seems reasonable for someone who checked in online and failed to visit the desk on arrival. Disney seems right to assume those people are at the parks into the evening.
The All-Star Movies rooms were refurbished in 2019, receiving the same changes that came to Pop Century before it and All Star Music and (presumably) Sports after it. Of the recent (last ten years or so) refurbishments of the Disney World hotel rooms, I’ve felt several (like Caribbean Beach) fall into a middle ground where they’re too bland and minimalist without being sleek and functional.
While the new rooms at the All Stars (and Pop Century) are light on theming, they’re also highly functional. That is a trade that I’m more than happy to take.
A big upgrade for us right now is the use of a murphy bed in place of a second bed. As childless “digital nomads”, it’s great for us that the murphy bed serves as a table when it’s up. This really opens up the room.
Conversely, though, the room would be awful for us if we needed a desk and had a third person with us. Once the murphy bed is down, there’s no desk in the room!
There are a few reasons I’m okay with the simpler aesthetic at the value resorts while I criticized it in reviewing Caribbean Beach, Port Orleans French Quarter, and Polynesian (Pre-Moana rooms, that is).
First, the entire resort is super kitschy, and I don’t mind the rooms being a refuge from this. If a kid needs to squeal at Disney “details,” a stroll around the resort, particularly past the Toy Story buildings, should suffice.
Second, I cherish the All-Star Resorts specifically because of their practicalities. The key to the All-Stars, as I see it, is to not mess anything up. They aren’t swinging for the fences here—a simple, clean, functioning room is fine by me.
Finally, I have recent, vivid memory of the pre-refurbishment rooms at the All-Star resorts. In fact, I’ll probably be in one again in a few weeks. Value rooms have never been awesome, so I think by comparison I’m happy just to see them do something a little more modern.
A final note about the room. In updating my review, I had this note before: “The shower had low pressure, and the door (no shower curtain) can be a bit awkward to navigate in the small space.” While I didn’t notice those issues on my most recent visit, I did have a problem where the sliding shower door would slide open about 8 inches every time I closed it (closing the doors the other way didn’t help).
Noise and My “Preferred” Room
For my most recent stay at All Star Movies, I was in a Preferred Room in Toy Story building 10. The “perk” of these rooms is supposed to be their proximity to the main building and pool. It definitely is nice to be just a quick two minutes from the buses vs. five minutes or more, but I found my room came with a big downside.
I’ve never found it a huge problem, but the value resorts have a reputation for being noisy. The doors for the rooms all face outside, and the frequent huge groups of kids (sporting competitions, etc.) bring noise with them. But I’ve never had a problem with that noise and I didn’t have a problem with that noise this stay either.
Instead, I had much worse noise. As it happens, my preferred room was facing the main parking lot at the front of the resort. This shouldn’t really be an issue because it’s not like people are arriving by car at all hours of the night, and it’s theoretically better than facing the courtyard which can have kids running and screaming through it pretty late.
Unfortunately, the side of the main building I was on was where their loading dock was. So three nights in a row I was kept awake—at 3AM and 5AM—by trucks arriving, beeping to back up, and then leaving their engines running.
You could request to change rooms in this circumstance, I didn’t (among other factors, I simply didn’t have the time). My final night of my stay, I managed to sleep soundly all night.
While I definitely think the beeping and trucks are loud enough to be detrimental, I also think my sleep schedule and caffeine intake played a role in my sleep difficulties the prior three nights. That said, I will take steps (like room requests) to avoid this situation in the future.
Food & Drink At All-Star Movies Resort
It sounds silly to keep repeating that we’re fans of the cafeteria-style quick service at the value resorts, but it remains the case. We see great value in having a wide-ranging, reasonably priced selection of basics (cheeseburgers, pizza, pasta) right at our fingertips.
Food court meals are quick service meals under the Disney dining plans. If you’re on the quick service dining plan, you’ll find fine use of your credits here. If you have table service credits though, you’ll have a bit of a challenge because your options are (1) time consuming visits to other hotels or Disney Springs and (2) time consuming meals during valuable park time.
The “World Premiere Food Court” is in line with the over-the-top theming of the value resorts. Attached to the food court is “Silver Screen Spirits,” which serves as the pool bar.
Transportation at All-Star Movies
Traveling to and from the All-Star resorts, you’ll be relying on buses and rideshare (Uber, Lyft, Minnie Vans) to get to all four theme parks, the two water parks (Blizzard Beach and Typhoon Lagoon), and Disney Springs.
Lines for the All-Star buses can get long, especially as buses are less frequent midday. Keep in mind that the All-Star resorts often share buses, too, and All-Star Movies is usually last for pickup and drop-off.
Non-stop travel times to the theme parks are, approximately:
All Star Movies to/from Magic Kingdom — 15 minutes
All Star Movies to/from Animal Kingdom — Less than 10 minutes
All Star Movies to/from Epcot — 10-15 minutes
All Star Movies to/from Disney’s Hollywood Studios — 10-15 minutes
I did have one nearly awful experience involving the buses. I was heading to Animal Kingdom one early morning and had been outside since 6AM. By the time a bus rolled around at 6:51AM there was only space for a few people on it. I hadn’t been standing in line (because I never think of these things), and I was fortunate the groups in line couldn’t fit but a group of one (me) could.
Even though it can come with some added costs, having a car at Disney World when staying at the All-Stars can significantly cut down on your travel times (you’ll still want to bus to Magic Kingdom, though, since the parking lot isn’t adjacent to the park).
When it comes to getting to Advance Dining Reservations at other hotels or getting to the parks (other than Magic Kingdom) in a pinch, we still favor using Uber. It isn’t a perfect service, but it generally will beat using Disney’s bus services in a pinch. If you want to spring for it or you have to get to Magic Kingdom quickly, you could also consider a Minnie Van.
Conclusion - Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort
All-Star Movies Resort suits the aims of many Disney travelers well. The value resorts are more utilitarian than anything else. They have a place in a Disney vacation mostly because they don’t mess anything up. They aren’t bad hotels.
Their transportation situation isn’t more awful than some moderates or even deluxe resorts, like Wilderness Lodge or Animal Kingdom Lodge. You’ll definitely find something you like in their food court.
With that bar set, All Star Movies actually impresses. The larger than life Disney movies characters that fill the resort are a bit of theme that kids will love and that you really won’t find in many other places at Walt Disney World.
The rooms are—in our opinion—some of the best at Walt Disney World. Obviously if you’re looking for more cartoon theming you might do better at Art of Animation, but you also could just step outside your functional All Star Movies room into the wonderfully themed hotel.
Unlike All Star Music and Art of Animation, you won’t find suites at All Star Movies. Unfortunately there’s little to be done if that’s a dealbreaker, though besides pointing you to those hotels we’d also mention you might consider an Airbnb Near Disney World if you need space.
All in all, I still have two worries about All Star Movies that will keep me preferring Pop Century in the near future. First, there’s that bus incident. If I hadn’t been lucky enough to get on the bus as a solo traveler, I would have had a real mess on my hands. It’s unacceptable for Disney to have insufficient bus capacity for rope drop.
Second, there’s that noise issue. I’m worried about future visits because I won’t always be waking up at 4AM daily like I was that trip. If I want to sleep in until 8AM, I can’t do that with a truck beeping constantly at 3AM.
Those issues aren’t enough to knock All Star Movies off my list completely, but I will be a little nervous heading into my next visit.
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