My husband and I just returned from an 8 day, 7 night stay at POR. This was our first time staying on Disney property, and overall we were very pleased with our choice of Riverside. The resort is absolutely gorgeous, and we loved the general atmosphere. Here are some of my observations from our stay:
Room:
We booked a standard view room when we made the reservations. When we checked in, we were told that we would have a garden view (woohoo - upgrade!) in Alligator Bayou - Building 26, room 2656. Our room was a corner room on the second floor.
The view was quite pretty - it overlooked a wooded section of the resort. However, we didn't have the curtains open very often, as I don't like the thought of people walking by and peeking in. That is one thing I did not like about the resort, and wish the door/window set up was more like the deluxe resort style (although, I guess Disney has to have some things to set apart the moderates from the deluxes
)
The interior decor was fabulous. We loved Disney's attention to detail - we really felt like we were part of the "bayou." During the week, the room was in a nice, quiet location of POR. It was about a 5 minute walk to the lobby/food court (I actually wore my pedometer during the week, and found that it was approximately 600 steps from our door to the food court. 1200 steps round trip
)
Overall, the beds were not as comfortable as I would have liked. I'm used to (and prefer) a nice, soft bed. The POR beds were a bit firm for me. Because of this, I did have some trouble sleeping. However, the bedspread was nice and thick, and quite comfortable.
Mousekeeping:
Mousekeeping was fantastic! We would leave our room around 9/10 in the morning and return for a break in the afternoon (normally by 2), and our room was always cleaned during that time frame. Our mousekeeper was great about bringing us new shampoo/conditioner/soap each day. As such, I was able to bring home quite the hoard of Mickey soap
.
My only minor complaint was that sometimes our mousekeeper was too efficient at cleaning. A couple times I had left a half full bottled water on the nightstand (meaning to finish it off later), and would return to find that our mousekeeper had thrown it away. Once, she also threw away half used Mickey shampoo/conditioner (and replaced with new ones). I thought it was kind of odd to waste the bottles when there was still soap in them.
Food:
The food court at POR was fantastic. The cinnamon rolls are excellent
(and I'm bummed out that I didn't discover this until the day before we left.) I normally tried to get to the food court by 7 am to get my coffee (still Nescrape) and found the food court pretty empty. A couple times I slept in and got to the food court around 8:30/9. By that time, it was PACKED. There were also several teenager groups (choir/cheerleaders/band/etc) staying at the resort, and this was normally when they were there trying to eat, which could explain the extra crowd.
We only ate dinner at the food court twice. Once we did the "make your own pasta" station. It was delicious - but be warned: the servings are HUGE. One serving is definitely enough for two people to split. The other night we ate dinner there, I had the "make your own salad." It was quite good as well. My husband was craving fried food that night and settled for chicken tenders and fries. He said they were pretty standard.
We did eat at Boatwrights one night. We both split the Romaine Salad appetizer and the Pasta with Shrimp entree. Both were delicious. Even with us splitting the app/entree, we both had huge servings. Neither my husband nor I could finish our pasta. For dessert I had the pecan pie (YUM!) and my husband had the Butterscotch Creme Brulee (he enjoyed this).
Extras:
Carriage Ride - My husband surprised me with a carriage ride one night. It was such a fun way to explore the resort (we had the driver take us on a tour of POFQ). The ride was only $45 for about 30 minutes, and the carriage could easily fit 4 adults or 2 adults and 3 children. It was a nice way to spend the evening.
Boat to DTD - We loved riding the boats to DTD. The scenery is gorgeous. However, catching the boat at the POR dock did take awhile. Both times we rode the boats, the line at the dock was HUGE. We had to wait for 4-5 boats to come through before we got on. However, coming back to POR from DTD, we had little to no wait.
Transportation - we rented a car while we were there, so didn't rely on Disney transportation (other than the boats to DTD). We found the drives to the different parks and other resorts to be quite easy. Disney does a great job of providing ample signs pointing the direction to different locations. Our longest drive was to Animal Kingdom - and it only took us 10 minutes. Our shortest drive was to Epcot - it took about 5 minutes.
Overall:
We would definitely stay at POR again. I would like to stay in a Mansion room next time we go - just for a change of decor.
I did take a lot of pictures that I wouldn't mind sharing if there is any interest. They just need to finish uploading onto photobucket.
I go to portorleans.org daily (sometimes more than once daily 
) and obsess over which exact room location would be the best and what should I request and blah blah. In actuality, I really don't care. It's not going to make or break our trip. It's just something to "do" to pass the time 
