After a long day at the parks in Walt Disney World nothing beats relaxing and splashing in a Walt Disney World pool. All Disney resorts on property offer amazing pools, but the All-Star Resorts offer some unique perks to their pools that might tip the odds towards them being some of your favorites. Here are 5 reasons why the pools at Disney’s All-Star Resorts are amazing!
1. Main Pools are Huge!
The main pools at each of the three All-Star resorts, the Calypso at All-Star Music, the Fantasia pool at All-Star Movies and the Surfboard Bay pool at All-Star Sports are all huge in size. Due to the large number of hotel rooms and potential resort guests, Disney needed a swimming hole large enough to ensure people weren’t standing on top of each other while swimming. While there is still an upper limit to how many people are allowed in the pools at one time, we never felt like any of the pools we visited were over-crowded. We always had room to swim and were able to carve little ‘corners’ of space for ourselves to make the pools feel like our own.
2. Awesome water features!
The large pool at All-Star Music, the Calypso pool, has the three caballeros (featuring Donald Duck) smack dab in the middle of the pool. Each of the three caballeros has a fun water squirting feature that sprays over the pool at the swimmers that pass on by. All-Star Movies has the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey at the Fantasia pool and All-Star Sports has Goofy with a water cannon at the Grand Slam pool. We love the special character water features. Seeing them pool side reinforces the fact that you are at Disney, which of course, we love.
3. Kiddie pools!
While we loved taking a dip in the large pools, having kiddie pools in close proximity to the main pools was really nice. At the Fantasia pool there was a fun little splash pad that our four-year-old loved (and I’m sure that our 11-month-old would have loved it, had he not been taking a snooze when we visited). The kiddie pools were nice too if the adults didn’t want to get completely submerged in the water. Although that being said, the water at all of the pools we visited was the perfect temperature for a dip. Running to the towels in the 70 degree weather post-swim was the hardest and coldest part!
4. Ample Seating!
Seating is ample around each pool and it’s easy to see most of the pool from a majority of spots on the pool deck. This is important when you are trying to keep your eyes on multiple little ones around the pool. We ventured to the pools at various times during the day, afternoon and evening and we never had trouble finding seats for our family of four. Depending on the season you are visiting Disney, it might be slightly more difficult to find a spot to recline. However, considering we were visiting All-Star Music during the last few nights of ‘Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party’, the last few nights of Epcot’s Wine and Dine Festival and the runDisney Wine and Dine race weekend, we stayed during some peak crowd days ourselves and still were able to find seating.
5. You can pool hop!
My ultimate favorite thing with the All-Star Resorts is the fact that you are able to pool hop between the 6 resort pools. We love swimming on vacation and it’s always a must that the resort have at least one pool where we stay. Multiple that times six and you have so much variety in terms of where to swim during your stay. Many of the other resorts on Disney property, even though close in proximity, don’t allow guest to pool hop. For example, if you are staying at Pop Century, which is just across the Generation Gap Bridge from Art of Animation resort, you will not be able to use the Big Blue Pool. It is reserved strictly for AOA guests. (Hey, more motivation to book at stay at Art of Animation, right?)
Another bonus perk, due to the reasonable resort sizes, walking all the way from All-Star Sports over to All-Star Music won’t take more than fifteen to twenty minutes. Of course, this depends on where your resort room is situated on the property and how fast you walk. Given the fact that with an 11 month old and a 4-year-old in tow and were able to cover the ground in about 15-20 minutes (with our sit-and-stand stroller), this is probably a pretty safe estimate of how long it will take you. If you think of it in relation to the mile long runDisney running trail that expands from the front of All-Star Sports, passes by All-Star Music and ends at All-Star Movies, you know the distance won’t be much more than a mile. Unless of course you walk up and down every walkway at the resort, then you can probably get in 5 or 6. If that’s your goal…
When we stayed at All-Star Music we were never more than 5-10 minutes from a pool and we were in the Rock section (which we loved!). We were 2 minutes from the piano pool, which was very quiet and never crowded. It might have been my favorite pool, because even though it was out in the middle of the resort, it felt secluded in a way.
With so many pools, we only made it to three of them for a swim. Essentially this means we will have to plan another trip to visit the remaining 3 pools. I’m thinking we need to stay at All-Star Movies this time.
We love the All Star pools 🙂 Especially the piano pool. We have hit all the pools except the Music ones.
Sneaky tip… not all Disney Resort Hotel pools are heated… but the All Star ones are!
Ooo, I didn’t know that about the pools being heated!! Great tip, Beezo!! Thanks!