I’ve been expanding my Disney horizons lately, contemplating a trip to China that would include some time at Shanghai Disney, and one of the elements that has me captivated is the Toy Story Hotel. Freshly opened only a few months ago, the Shanghai Disney Resort is so impressive that it’s been added to my official Disney bucket list. Of course, it had me wondering why we couldn’t see something like this in the USA. Disneyland is out of space, so it’s going to have to be hypothetically built in Walt Disney World. Disney doesn’t currently have the budget to throw around ideas for a brand-new resort, especially considering how the last new venture panned out. Galactic Starcruiser, I’m looking at you! But if you ask me, a new resort isn’t the only option.
Of course, it wouldn’t be me without a plan to implement some or all of the elements of Shanghai’s Toy Story Hotel into the Walt Disney World sphere, and it all begins with All-Star Movies. This budget-friendly resort opened in 1999, and almost 25 years later, it could do with a bit of a makeover. The buildings are not dissimilar either, the cookie-cutter style symmetry that you can see above would only need a coat of paint to have a similar effect in the Orlando-based Disney district, and the effect could be a huge draw card.
I am sure that fans of this resort would like to keep the designs of the suites unchanged; some of them are very cute! But with a fresh coat of paint and a few accents, it wouldn’t take much to transform your standard room into something like these Toy Story Hotel rooms pictured above.
Simple changes to wallpaper and carpet could bring to life hallways and elevators, making each floor feel like a different Toy Story theme. If you wanted to go a step further, you could slightly theme the rooms on each floor to the hallway. For instance, in the images of Shanghai’s Toy Story Hotel above, you can see a Space Ranger theme associated with Buzz and the cowboy/western theme that is connected to Woody’s storyline. Can you imagine rooms with a similar aesthetic?
Adding in more characters to the outside area would be a breeze with All-Star Movies already wide open spaces. Wouldn’t some of these additions make that outdoor space more fun? Now, I’m not expecting the entire hotel to get some instant upgrade, though even if a single building for the premiere Toy Story treatment, wouldn’t that be exciting? To offset the cost, they might even consider making these premium-style rooms that have a slightly higher fee, though to be honest, I would pay that to be upgraded from the standard All-Star Movies buildings to something new and fresh like this one.
Let me know what you think. Would you stay in my hypothetical Toy Story upgrade of Disney’s All-Star Movies Resort?
Zoë Wood is a travel writer from Sydney, Australia. Since her first visit to Disneyland at the age of 6, she has spent her years frequently visiting Disney Parks and traveling around the world.
Join Zoë as she lets you in on all the tips, tricks, anecdotes, and embarrassments that arise from her family adventures.
