Walt Disney World has announced resort refurbishments and other hotel construction projects at Walt Disney World for 2025 & 2026. Two of these involve guest room renovations at Port Orleans Riverside and French Quarter Resorts. This shares dates, details, and our commentary about the likely scope, scale, and impacts of the work.
As suggested above, this is the first of a few projects that were just announced, with the Year-Long Pop Century Room Refurbishment being the other big one. These probably are not the only hotel renovations on the horizon, either–just the ones that have start dates earlier in 2025. Keep an eye on our Walt Disney World Hotel Construction Tracker for further updates.
The last few years have thrown a monkey wrench into Walt Disney World hotel refresh timelines, with several resort refurbishments being delayed due to the closure and the pent-up demand in its aftermath. The good news is that this hasn’t been as bad on the hotel side as with DVC properties, so Walt Disney World won’t be spending the next few years playing catch-up, but between a few postponed projects and the likelihood of larger-scale reimaginings and new construction, there’s likely a lot on the horizon.
Let’s start with the official announcement from Walt Disney World about the Port Orleans French Quarter room redo:
From May 2024 through Spring 2025, some Guest rooms at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – French Quarter will be under refurbishment. Guests may see or hear construction work during daytime hours. Most Resort hotel amenities will remain available.
This is nothing new, at least in part. This room project was added to the schedule earlier this year, and originally had an end date this month. After learning it was a hard goods refurbishment, we quickly concluded that it could not conceivably be done by November 2024. And now we know that it won’t be, as Walt Disney World has added a second phase, which will presumably resume after the WDW Marathon Weekend in mid-January 2025.
The next couple of months are Walt Disney World’s highest occupancy time of the year, so it’s not uncommon for Walt Disney World to do phased refurbishments that skip November and December (sometimes expanded to October through January). That’s almost certainly what’s happening with Port Orleans French Quarter. It’s not that the project has been delayed by several months past its original November end date–it’s that this month never really was the full completion date.
Let’s start with the official announcement from Walt Disney World about the Port Orleans Riverside room redo:
From early April 2025 through the end of January 2026, guest rooms in the Magnolia Bend at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside will undergo refurbishment. During this time, guests may see or hear construction work in the area.
We previously predicted this would happen next in 2025 and 2026, which was hardly a bold bet. Walt Disney World follows a schedule with room refurbishments, and Riverside was slated to be next up after French Quarter.
The interesting wrinkle here is that Port Orleans Riverside had been in the midst of a resort-wide soft goods refurbishment in 2019 and 2020, with the Royal Rooms next up to go under the knife in March 2020. All of the Alligator Bayou rooms were finished and, to the best of my knowledge, so were the standard Magnolia Bend rooms.
However, the Royal Rooms in Magnolia Bend were mostly untouched. Some did end up replacing the carpet with new laminate floors and other light refreshes, but that’s it. The vast majority of the 500+ Royal Rooms are materially unchanged since 2012–save for the bed runners, which were long gone even pre-closure.
It’s a given that the Royal Rooms at Port Orleans Riverside will receive a hard goods refurbishment in 2025-2026. They mostly missed their last soft goods refurbishment and would be due for a gutting, regardless. Major renovations will likely happen.
What’s completely unclear at this point is whether the Royal Rooms will continue to exist post-refurbishment or if a new concept will be introduced. It’s our understanding that the Royal Rooms aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, and are routinely given out as a free upgrade to guests.
Although we have no inside information to suggest as much, we’d also hazard a guess that the Royal Rooms are more expensive to create and maintain. There’s a lot of attention to detail and custom design throughout the Royal Rooms, and that cannot be as inexpensive or efficient as some of the modern rooms at Walt Disney World.
I hope that the Royal Rooms continue to exist. We stayed in one earlier this year and found it to be in shockingly good shape despite the lack of refurbishment, and also thought that the style largely stood the test of time despite being over a decade old. That’s more than I can say about many of the “modern” rooms that came about in 2013-2017, some of which are already long gone because they aged so poorly.
With that said, I can’t help but think back to the Pirate Rooms at Caribbean Beach being converted to the new ‘Under the Sea’ Little Mermaid rooms. It’s entirely possible that this is a blueprint for what’s to come at Port Orleans Riverside, albeit (hopefully) not Little Mermaid inspired.
The key difference, in my view, was that the Pirate Rooms, while thematically strong, had all sorts of issues. Their location and uncomfortable beds were the two big ones, and they became infamous as a result. Even after Walt Disney World opened the Skyliner (thus improving their location) and made tweaks to the rooms, they couldn’t overcome their reputation as awful. The Royal Rooms don’t have any such issues with their perception–so perhaps that’ll be their saving grace?
Nevertheless, I’m skeptical that the Royal Rooms will continue to exist. It just doesn’t seem like the direction Walt Disney World will go given everything we’ve seen over the last several years.
And I write that as someone who is generally pleased with the trajectory of room redesigns. My gut is that they’ll take the path of least resistance and deliver something in the current blueprint that balances space-saving modern design features with thematic flourishes, trying to appease both diehard fans and first-timers.
Personally, I think that’s the wrong approach. Port Orleans Riverside needs something to give it a selling point among the Moderate Resorts. French Quarter has the compact layout; Caribbean Beach has the Skyliner, nicer amenities, and proximity to Riviera Resort; Coronado Springs has Gran Destino and convention-caliber facilities. Port Orleans Riverside hasn’t had any resort-wide upgrades and feels like time has passed it by.
For years, Port Orleans Riverside was our favorite Moderate Resort for this very reason–it felt like a bygone era of Walt Disney World, was thematically unblemished, and had beautiful grounds. But if I’m being honest with myself, I love the idea of Port Orleans Riverside more than the actual resort.
We still love to visit and spend time at this thematic exemplar, but when push comes to shove and we’re actually doing a stay for practical purposes, Riverside is somewhat low on our List Ranking All of the Best & Worst Resorts at Walt Disney World.
I don’t think Royal Rooms alone are that “something” to differentiate Riverside from the other resorts, but it would be cool if they offered a wider variety of themed rooms. Failing that, maybe Riverside would benefit from a character dining experience, immersively themed bar, or other marquee draw.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Imagineering revisits the Royal Rooms concept with a modernized take or goes in a different direction completely. Our hope is for the former, so our daughter can enjoy them again if/when she enters her princess phase. I’ll take that a step further and hope that Imagineering doubles-down on this type of room (Haunted Mansion and individual character rooms would be great!), adding themed categories like this to resorts all across Walt Disney World. This type of concept has been a huge hit at the international resorts and it seems like Walt Disney World guests would go crazy for something similar! (Even as I write this, I know how far-fetched it is.)
One thing that’s not far-fetched is for the Port Orleans Riverside refurbishment lasting longer than presently scheduled. By the time Magnolia Bend is done in January 2026, it’ll be time for Alligator Bayou to receive its next round of room redos. If the normal project cadence is followed, that’ll also be a hard goods refurbishment and could last until early 2027.
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Your Thoughts
Do you like the Royal Rooms at Port Orleans Riverside? Would you prefer this type of highly-detailed style, or prefer something more subtle like the new rooms at French Quarter? Hoping Magnolia gets something like the ‘Under the Sea’ rooms at Caribbean Beach (but themed differently)? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of the Royal Rooms at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
