Comparing AP/DVC rental rates at one resort to rack rates at another resort isn't really a fair comparison. What were the discount rates at Pop at the same time? We usually stay in a suite at AoA and when comparing rates, I can almost always get a standard 5-person room at certain Deluxe resorts for about the same price as a suite at AoA (but we prefer more space and 2 bathrooms, so we stay with AoA). But if I compared the discount rate at the Deluxe resorts with the rack rate at AoA (even thought that's not what I'd be paying -- we've never paid rack rate for any room for any of our stays over the last 20 years), the discount standard Deluxe room is almost always going to be cheaper than the rack rate AoA suite.
When pricing rooms for our trip next June, Pop is $42/night more than All Star so that's not a huge premium to pay for the Skyliner -- $10-20/person per day depending on how many people are in the room and how often you use the Skyliner. Now, a Little Mermaid room is $112 more per night than All Star. There's no way I'd pay that premium for that room. If I was staying in a standard room, I'd choose Pop over LM any day and we'd still choose Pop over All Stars as well as we find the Skyliner to be worth that small premium. On our 8 day trip last June, we used the Skyliner 6 days -- and 4 of those days we used it twice a day as we typically go back to the resort for a few hours in the afternoon and return to a park in the evening. There were several times that we hopped over to one of those parks in the evening simply because of the convenience of the Skyliner. It was about a 7 minute trip to DHS and about 12 minutes to EP for us which we found to be faster than when we had to take buses (before Skyliner) to those parks. And we also found ourselves dreading the ride to MK & AK because we had to take a bus to get there!.
For us, it's totally worth the extra cost of staying at a Skyliner resort (just like some people are willing to pay more to be at a monorail resort), but I realize not every one spends as much time at EP and DHS as our family. It's great to have so many choices since one size definitely doesn't fit all when going to Disney World.
That's pretty sad that your Uber/Lyft drivers had so much trouble finding Pop Century. We drive to Disney and even before GPS/Waze/Etc. existed, we never had trouble getting to Pop or AoA even when all we had were printed out Mapquest or AAA directions.
I'm not sure how anyone with a GPS service has trouble getting anywhere.