Port Orleans Riverside FAQ thread --- 2012, Part Three --- NOW FULL / CLOSED

[2012DisneyWorldBride]

Have fun, take lots of pictures, and enjoy your MK photo shoot!!!!

Awwww thank you! We are super excited!!!!!!

 

[nedac]

Here now... I should have re sent my request fax. Not a single request was honored. Kinda bummed, but definitely not a deal breaker. Hoping my baby girl sleeps tonight.

 

[dawgsgirl]

Here now... I should have re sent my request fax. Not a single request was honored. Kinda bummed, but definitely not a deal breaker. Hoping my baby girl sleeps tonight.

Sorry..same thing happened to us. Got to remember that a faxed request is not a guarantee. It does not help when the resort is full. Hope you have a great trip!!

 

[Venomhatch]

Originally I was suggesting for guests to send them in 2 weeks before arrival. Just so in cases like this it could be resent. I also welcome guests that are concerned about no replies to PM me and I'll see what I can help with.

* I really am sorry to hear about the requests.

 

[MK4ever]

Got back last week from POR. Can I say my husband and I LOVED, LOVED this resort! It is now our favorite. So peaceful and relaxing. Could not believe we would love it over WL or BC but we did.

 

[andrewilley]

So, it's me, my DD5 and my 2 parents, booked into a Garden View Royal Room at POR. What are the best rooms in that category? suggestions on what to request?

I'd suggest asking for a courtyard-facing room on the river side of the buildings - Oak Manor might be a nice choice. If you get that, you'd have fairly easy access for the main buildings, the main pool, and the evening movies too. Perhaps ask for an upper floor (no noise from the room above) but that can add to the walking a bit.

We leave tomorrow!!! So excited to tryout POR for our first time. We have booked a royal room with pool view.

Great choice of room, there are only a few Pool View Royal Rooms, and they are all very conveniently located for pretty much everything.

We have the same category booked, and we didn't book a specific building. After great advice from our POR experts, I requested upper floor, river side of the building (so we might avoid the garden/parking lot view,) and close to the main areas.

Sounds like a great plan too, getting too specific can end up making it tricky to fulfill if that choice isn't available at the time.

Thank you! WOW - an email back too! That is awesome to hear!

Although the support provided by the POR room allocation team is amazing, please do remember that requests are still not guaranteed. I guess that sometimes they may be too busy, or have too many requests to handle, or whatever, and they have to prioritise medical/small children/etc requests? Also, simple one-room requests, such as "second floor" or "close to main building", might not get pre-blocked as it's often better to leave those to be handled by the Ready Room system (which means you will get an available room assigned when you arrive, rather than having to wait until later in the afternoon which might happen if they pre-assigned one particular room in advance).

Firstly, what is Micky Mail and will I get it over here in the UK (I don't want to miss out on anything!). Secondly, what is the easiest way to get some bottles of water to keep in my room/ take to the parks with me? I am staying for 2 weeks, but will not have a car - using the ME from the airport and then buses on the resort

The Mickey Mail thing is a postal package with things like Magical Express luggage tags, etc. I don't think we get those in the UK (I never have, but then I tend to drive anyway). Garden Grocer or WalMart are good choices for delivery of water/etc to the hotel, try to time it so it arrives just before you do, and use the resort's street address rather than the PO Box number. To be honest, I don't find the water from the drinks fountains at the WDW food courts all that bad, although the tap water tastes a little chloriney.

Hope you have a great time!

We just booked a standard view royal room.

Is there a building we should request? Is Parterre Place easier to get to POFQ food court?

We don't care about the bus system, we just want to be close to both food courts.

The problem is the POR and POFQ food courts are in opposite directions, and you will most likely be on the other side of the buildings (parking lot side) anyway. Take a look at the map on www.portorleans.org/royal-rooms.php, which has clickable links to floorplans of all the buildings so you can see where the Standard rooms are located in relation to the other parts of the resort. The POFQ food court will always be further than the POR one though, so I'd suggest using POR access as your main aim.

Finally finish reading all the posts. I am looking for recommendations about free online fax for room request. I would be grateful for some info.

See the info in the first post which covers making faxed requests in more detail now.

I know, I know!!! We are so excited! We are NOT doing any parks - just hanging out at the resort! We are in big trouble now that we have stayed on site - will never be able to be offsite again. Will have to start saving up as soon as we get home

Sorry for the ongoing expense this is going to cause you, but welcome to the club! In the meantime, enjoy being back at POR, take the river ferry to DTD, hire a surrey bike, watch a movie and roast some marshmallows in the evening.

Sorry..same thing happened to us. Got to remember that a faxed request is not a guarantee. It does not help when the resort is full. Hope you have a great trip!!

Quite. And as I said above, I think sometimes they may prefer to leave requests to be fulfilled by the Ready Room system. Doing Online Checkin might help though, as those rooms are manually allocated a few hours before you are due to arrive, so they should check for any logged requests then.


Andre

 

[momtwoboys]

I think today is my online check in day!!! but for some reason its not doing anything when I click on Check-in? I wanted a little disney in our Sunday is it not working for anyone else?

 

[mom2princesses2]

Just back from an 8-night stay in a RR at POR and thought I'd throw a review out there.

First, HUGE THANK YOUS to Andre for this thread and his website and to Venomhatch for his advice. Both helped tremendously in my planning!

POR - A beautiful resort with lots of amenities. We are "park people" who spend almost all our time in a park rather than doing things at a resort slew didn't take advantage of most of the things offered but we saw plenty if people enjoying the surrey bikes, carriage rides and outdoor movies.

Royal Room - We choose a standard-view Royal Room but thanks to the fax request and Mr. David Elg, room assignment manager, we got upgraded to a river view RR. The RR is by far my favorite room we've stayed in at WDW. We have two DDs so anything princesses-related is a hit but I think any Disney-enthusiast would be impressed with the details. We had stayed last at CSR so I thought we'd miss the sliding door but we did not. The curtain and two sinks worked well. We were in room 9721 in Oak Manor and its location was perfect for us. It was on the second floor and looked over the courtyard where outdoor movies were shown in addition to the river. We were very close to the bridge leading to the lobby and the South Bus Depot and only a 3 minute walk from Ol' Man Island with a quiet pool just around the corner from our room.

Riverside Mill - We never ate at Boatwright's but we ate lunch and breakfast at Riverside Mill. The food was ok and came in large portions. The make-your-own pasta could have feed three of us. The choices were ok with breakfast being better. I prefer the Pepper Market at CSR but Riverside was fine.

Ol' Man Island - We enjoyed the quiet pools three times and Ol' Man Island once. Ol' Man Island is very shady with lots of trees and leaves in the pool, on the ground and covering chairs. It was probably just the time of the year that we were there. Also, there were not enough chairs for the crowd, especially in sunny spots. Again, probably only noticeable because it was a little chilly in the shade when we were there. One drawback was the inability to refill mugs at Muddy Rivers. You had to go to Riverside Mill to refill them. It's not a far walk, just not as convienent as CSR where you could refill them poolside. Plus Riverside Mill had a sign at the door specifying you need to wear shorts and pants so I wasn't sure if a wet bathing suit was ok. There were fun activities for the kids with two wonderful CMs leading games the whole time we were there. They even gave out small prizes to every kid who played any of the games. Our DDs really enjoyed the games and the slide. I enjoyed the hot tub and Cabana Banana drink!

Fulton General Store - Really nice selection of items although no resort- specific merchandise that I saw.

Bus Transportation - On our last stay at POR, we were near the East Depot and encountered too many full buses passing by us while we waited. I was really thankful when we were able to get close to the South Depot and it worked out for the most part. There were two mornings when we had to wait for a second bus. There were two evenings when the line for POR was excessively longer than other resorts, one at DHS and the other at the MK. The night at MK, we ended up taking the bus to POFQ and walking to our room from there. It was not a long walk at all and we enjoyed seeing a little bit of POFQ so it worked out. We definitely didn't have any bus issues like these before, but it really wasn't too bad for us.

POR CMs - The three CMs we dealt with directly at the front desk and Concierge during our stay weren't overly enthusiastic but were fine. We had hit-and-miss with cleaning CMs to the point we could see the one day when we had a really good CM clean the room but always appreciated the creative towel animals! And nothing to say our stay wax ruined by any. The greeters outside the lobby were always ready with stickers and smiles!

Overall - We would definitely stay at POR again and definitely a RR again!

 

[C&B Young]

I know, I know!!! We are so excited! We are NOT doing any parks - just hanging out at the resort! We are in big trouble now that we have stayed on site - will never be able to be offsite again. Will have to start saving up as soon as we get home

Make sure you take advantage of the boat to Downtown Disney! Our favorite non-park activity while staying at Port Orleans! It's especially beautiful at night.

 

[SRUAlmn]

Royal Room - We choose a standard-view Royal Room but thanks to the fax request and Mr. David Elg, room assignment manager, we got upgraded to a river view RR. The RR is by far my favorite room we've stayed in at WDW. We have two DDs so anything princesses-related is a hit but I think any Disney-enthusiast would be impressed with the details. We had stayed last at CSR so I thought we'd miss the sliding door but we did not. The curtain and two sinks worked well. We were in room 9721 in Oak Manor and its location was perfect for us. It was on the second floor and looked over the courtyard where outdoor movies were shown in addition to the river. We were very close to the bridge leading to the lobby and the South Bus Depot and only a 3 minute walk from Ol' Man Island with a quiet pool just around the corner from our room.

I'm looking at the maps on portorleans.org and I'm confused as to where your room was. It looks like 9721 is in Parterre, and is a garden view, not a river view. The movies are shown at Oak Manor, right? So I'm trying to figure out how you were overlooking the courtyard there.

 

[andrewilley]

I'm looking at the maps on portorleans.org and I'm confused as to where your room was. It looks like 9721 is in Parterre, and is a garden view, not a river view. The movies are shown at Oak Manor, right? So I'm trying to figure out how you were overlooking the courtyard there.

Maybe she meant 9271, which fits the description? If so, that's a lovely location, very convenient for everywhere.

Andre

P.S. Seven pages to go until we hit 250, and six days until I'm at POR... any bets which will come first? Will I perhaps be creating a new FAQ thread from a Royal Room?

 

[MickeyEars]

Andre~
Are there any corner river view rooms in Magnolia Terrace? Trying to figure out what to request!!

Thanks!

Carla

 

[mom2princesses2]

Maybe she meant 9271, which fits the description? If so, that's a lovely location, very convenient for everywhere.)

Yes and thank you Andre, it was room 9271 and a very lovely location indeed!!!

 

[cad300]

Hello everyone, first time POR here, and have some quick questions. My fiance and I are celebrating our engagement for a few days, and we are real pumped to go to POR!! If someone would be so kind to help, it'd be greatly appreciated!!

1. We reserved a king bed room. Any specific requests I should ask for (building location, etc)

2. We booked through Orbitz and I can't seem to find a way to check-in online. If I call POR, will they be able to assist?

3. We plan on hitting up the Wishes fireworks the first night and then head to DTD. How late do the boats run from DTD back to POR??

4. Any special ideas that I can either request from the hotel or Disney in general to get something with the engaged aspect part of the trip? It'd be a nice little surprise for the future bride.

Thanks so much!!

 

[melissarose]

hi everyone!! just got back from POR yesterday, and we had an AMAZING time. could not have dreamed of a better vacation. so many perfect little things fell into place it was unbelievable!

i would like to say a HUGE thank you to venomhatch for his help with my requests! they were all granted, except for the king bed, which i pretty much knew wouldn't be because that is a separate booking category! but we got a second floor, corner room in AB!! it was AWESOME! we were in building 26 and i loved it.

the buses were actually great. we caught it mostly at the west depot, which was usually the first stop so we always got a seat. we never waited more than 10 minutes. the boat to downtown disney was actually the longest line we waited in all week. it took forever to get on, we had to wait through three boats, and then the ride was really noisy, not super relaxing lol. we only took it once.

the weather was PERFECT. couldn't have got a better week of weather. sun shining ever day, warm, omg just beautiful. we totally forgot it was february! thought it was like june!

finally, when we went to fly home on friday our flight back to toronto was cancelled. we ended up going back to disney for a night, stayed at coronado springs (POR/POFQ were full). it was nice enough, the grounds were pretty and the lobby was gorgeous, but in my opinion POR is WAY better. the rooms were fine, but i think they could use a little sprucing up. i know POR was just renovated, but i think coronado could use a little updating in the rooms. anyways, it was nice and i was glad we got to check it out. at least now we know for sure we made the right decision!!!

thanks to everyone on this thread for all your awesome info

 

[DisneyFave]

Just got home from a wonderful week at POR, our first time staying there! I have been lurking on this forum for weeks, but could not post, because DD14 thought we were staying at a value resort. She is like a little detective, so I could not mention in any of the forums that we were staying at POR, and even had it in my signature that we were staying at Pop. And it worked! She was totally taken by surprise when I turned into the entrance of POR! I want to thank Venomhatch for the information he gave me via PM about faxing the resort.

That is so adorable! Your daughter is very lucky to have you!

 

[DisneyFave]

Just wanted to send a big thank you to Andre and Venomhatch for their info on room requesting. I faxed in my 5-day request, and within an hour I got an email from the Room Inventory Mgr saying that he assigned us a corner room, second floor in Bldg 17! Couldn't be happier!

Because of this forum I also learned that I could add on the WPFM option to my 10-day no-expiration pass for such a small cost even after purchasing it from Undercover Tourist. I am SO glad I found this site!!

 

[siskaren]

I think today is my online check in day!!! but for some reason its not doing anything when I click on Check-in? I wanted a little disney in our Sunday is it not working for anyone else?

You can check in at 60 days now, right? The reason I ask is that your ticker says you're 2 months and 3 days from your arrival, which I would assume would have to be more than 60 days. If your arrival date is April 11, you should be able to check in today, but if it's later than that, you'll have to wait.

 

[momtwoboys]

not sure what is up with my ticker, but when I log into the disney site it says 60 days on my reservations page???I think when I made the ticker I didn't have my dates finalized?????

 

[momtwoboys]

arrival date is April 12th, and when I log in it says 60 days, then at the area where is says when you can check in is shows 0....weird huh?