Port Orleans Riverside Q&A Thread 2013, Part Two [Thread now FULL and closed]

Status
Not open for further replies.
I was looking at several people on the schedule thread and noticed that many are starting their trip in the middle of one week and ending the middle of the next. Is there a particular benefit to this? Like is staying the entire weekend particularly awesome?

My normal time-off would be a Mon-Fri (easier for several reasons) but I might try to swing it differently if it's important enough to do so.

Thanks for any info,

I believe in most cases arriving mid-week is financially motivated. Sometimes a special/discounted rate requires a mid-week check in. Also I have found Tuesday and Wednesday are good days to get cheaper flights.
 
dansdad said:
I believe in most cases arriving mid-week is financially motivated. Sometimes a special/discounted rate requires a mid-week check in. Also I have found Tuesday and Wednesday are good days to get cheaper flights.

I agree with the cheaper airfare solution.
 
All this talk about AB room photos prompted me to (finally!) sort out and upload a bunch of Alligator Bayou room photos that I've had sitting here in my pending folder for ages. There's now about 80+ AB photos (including some King Bed room shots) at www.portorleans.org/gallery-POR-AB-Rooms.php.

Thank you so much for these photos! They are bright and detailed and current.

We are really hoping to get into AB for our stay. Our most important thing is for all 3 of our rooms to be in the same building though. I don't want my parents or uncle to be halfway across the resort from us! :) But will request AB in the fax we send and already have it on our reservations. I really like the look of building 38.
 
To the PP who was asking about 5 in a room, whereas her youngest child was 10 years old and unfortunately didn't get an answer. I too, remember in the past them saying that 5 could fit in a room but only if the youngest was 9 or younger. Perhaps that has changed but if you reserved the room with the ages of your children and they took the reservation, I guess they allow it. I myself would like to know, if there is a cutoff of age when 5 is not allowed in the room? Maybe Andre knows?
 

I was looking at several people on the schedule thread and noticed that many are starting their trip in the middle of one week and ending the middle of the next. Is there a particular benefit to this? Like is staying the entire weekend particularly awesome?

My normal time-off would be a Mon-Fri (easier for several reasons) but I might try to swing it differently if it's important enough to do so.

Thanks for any info,

We usually go Tuesday through Thursday, ten days. It's usually easier to find less expensive airfare on those days. I am a SAHM and I homeschool my kids, so we have no set schedule to stick to.
 
I was looking at several people on the schedule thread and noticed that many are starting their trip in the middle of one week and ending the middle of the next. Is there a particular benefit to this? Like is staying the entire weekend particularly awesome?

My normal time-off would be a Mon-Fri (easier for several reasons) but I might try to swing it differently if it's important enough to do so.

Thanks for any info,

We originally planned around work days, and, when looking at airfare, quickly realized we could save a ton of money for a family of 5. :)
 
All this talk about AB room photos prompted me to (finally!) sort out and upload a bunch of Alligator Bayou room photos that I've had sitting here in my pending folder for ages. There's now about 80+ AB photos (including some King Bed room shots) at www.portorleans.org/gallery-POR-AB-Rooms.php.

A few examples:

POR-Room-ABrefurb-2012-5654_forum.jpg


POR-Room-ABrefurb-2012-5675_forum.jpg


POR-Room-ABrefurb-2012-5652_forum.jpg


POR-Room-ABrefurb-King-2012-5700_forum.jpg


Andre

Thanks so much for the pictures Andre! I now have plenty of pics to show DH! I still don't get why so many people don't like AB (other than the fish shower curtains) as well as the mansions. I guess I'm easy, I like all Disney resort rooms! :love:
 
Before the refurb, I remember families posting that a family of 5 booking into one AB room needed to have one family member under a certain age. I guess for fitting on the trundle bed. I never asked personally because our youngest was under the "Disney Adult" age on our past stays there. He is 10 now. Will Disney have a problem booking all 5 of us in one room now?

No problems at all. They still suggest "under 10 years" for the murphy bed (basically to avoid guests arriving and having issues with the bed size) but the only technical limitation that that the website imposes is that the fifth person cannot be an adult - it's fine with four adults and a 17-yeay-old child, but not five adults. I would suggest that 5' 3" is about the comfort limit, but if someone tends to sleep curled up a bit then taller would be OK.


Wow, that is shocking! I knew about the "front desk" line really being an offsite call center, but the offsite call center should have a "button" to push that immediately connects the room to the real front desk when there is an injury to a guest.

They can transfer calls to the resort. Whether or not they choose to do so is another question though, and it depends on the person you are speaking to. In this case I would have thought it was a no-brainer that the guest needed to speak to someone on-site urgently though.


I'll be going 11/11-11/17 were staying in a standard room with roll in shower. Not sure what section we will be in but I assume I will need to fax something to let them know my mom will have a scooter.

You shouldn't need to fax, no. All of the roll-in shower rooms are either on the ground floor or located very close to an elevator (see my floorplan maps). If you do want a specific location for accessibility reasons, call the special assistance line on 1-407-939-7807 well in advance of your visit.

As for buses, I have very rarely seen two guests in wheelchairs or scooters at the bus stops at the same time, and the drivers always give priority load loading those guests first. You may have more of a wait returning from a park after fireworks - but then everyone has that problem anyway!


Thank you so much for these photos! They are bright and detailed and current.

I've tried to calibrate them so they are fairly accurate, and so the flash and natural/artificial light images don't clash too badly (in-room photos are really difficult to get exposed and correctly colour-balanced without using proper professional lighting). Then I very slightly over-saturated the colours to make them 'pop' a little and give a bit more of a "postcard" look to them, as they were looking a bit washed out otherwise (not sure whether I may have slightly overdone it though?).

For example, here's an original JPEG as it came out of the camera (this one was taken with flash) versus the version I created with a bit of work in Photoshop using the RAW image file (I'm still not 100% happy with the ceiling colour, but the rest is more accurate I think):

POR-Room-ABrefurb-2012-5657_camera.jpg
POR-Room-ABrefurb-2012-5657_small.jpg


It's a rather tedious and laborious process with so many photos, but I'm glad you liked the results. I guess it'd be easier with a reference calibrated monitor, but I need a lot more people to press the 'Donate' button on the website before that's going to happen! :) (at the moment, donations don't even meet the annual server costs)

Andre
 
Andrewwilly, thanks so much for the reply. I'm relieved now. I know she would prefer a second or third floor but I will give that number a call.
 
They have a started a review site, It looks like its in beta but, as usual, its got that Disney charm.

Looks promising. Even though it's in beta, I did have to smile when I searched for the Riverside Mill food court and it showed a photo of the River Roost lounge.

Andre
 
Looks promising. Even though it's in beta, I did have to smile when I searched for the Riverside Mill food court and it showed a photo of the River Roost lounge.

Andre

:rotfl: Oh, Disney, how we love your lack of knowledge about yourself. :rotfl:
 
Hello. Just in case inquiring minds would like to know... Checked in yesterday evening and our room has a working fridge.

Also I had booked a standard room. My only requests were for the mansions. We got a surprise upgrade to a garden view royal room. I don't think it's technically a river view but we can easily see the river just past the gardens.

Traveling with my DB (14) and to my shock he's really enjoying the royal room. It's not too princess-y and he likes all of the detailing.
 
I just wanted to tell my experience at PO Riverside. It is a beautiful resort. We are a family of 5 (2 adults and 3 children, 13,10,6) and we stayed in the Alligator Bayou July 13-20. We had a first floor garden room, 2 queen size beds and a murphy bed. My 10 year old and my 6 year old took turns sleeping on it. I knew about the refrigerator from reading the boards. When we got to the resort we asked about a fridge in the room and they told us yes and it was working. Wrong!! Yes it was running but not cold. We went to Walmart and bought food luckily not a lot of refrigerated items. We called and was told we were supposed to be told when we checked that they were disconnected. After we told them it was running so we figured it was not affected so we put food in it. Well we got a $175 room credit for the fridge because we were supposed to receive a letter about it in our packet. Nothing was given. We even bought 3 cases of water because we drink a lot of water. LOL!! Anyway we kept it cold be putting a few bottles on the air conditioner. It was freezing cold water. I keep refilling ice buckets and putting the ice in Walmart plastic bags to put the food and creamer for our coffee and left it in the fridge on a towel so the bag wouldn't leak and it stayed cool. We just had to eat the food everyday as a snack or use the turkey to make sandwiches to take to the park for lunch.


To be one step ahead of this situation, I have a really nice cooler tote that I use for the supermarket/costco. It's from 31 and is big but not too big. I decided to use it as a carry-on bag with my laptop etc in it. If our fridge is not working we will fill it with ice to store cold drinks and a few perishables we ordered from garden grocer. Just posting in case this idea helps anyone!! We leave in 2 days! :yay:
 
I think they are doing pretty good with the turn around on these fridges. I don't think it be too bad of an inconvenience. We shall see.
 
I was looking at several people on the schedule thread and noticed that many are starting their trip in the middle of one week and ending the middle of the next. Is there a particular benefit to this? Like is staying the entire weekend particularly awesome?

My normal time-off would be a Mon-Fri (easier for several reasons) but I might try to swing it differently if it's important enough to do so.

Thanks for any info,


Like others have said, its usually easier to find cheaper airfare for weekday flights. We usually fly Jet Blue, and most of the time if they have a sale it only includes weekday flights. While it does sometimes happen, it's rare that they would discount a weekend flight.

Another benefit of going mid week to mid week is hotel cost. If you have a trip that is longer than 7 days, you will only overlap one weekend. If you started on a Saturday and stayed for 10 nights, you'd have to pay for two Saturday nights, and those rates are usually higher than weekday rates.
 
I was looking at several people on the schedule thread and noticed that many are starting their trip in the middle of one week and ending the middle of the next. Is there a particular benefit to this? Like is staying the entire weekend particularly awesome?

My normal time-off would be a Mon-Fri (easier for several reasons) but I might try to swing it differently if it's important enough to do so.

Thanks for any info,

In our case, our kids have the Friday/Monday off school that week, so we're coming in Tuesday night for 6 full days/nights, flying back Monday night. Only take 2 days out of school that way. Usually, we go Friday night to the next Saturday. Hope that helps.
 
I'm going the exact same dates!! :)

We booked a river view room, requesting a mansion building (hoping odds are good, since only 3 AB buildings have river views).

We will be there Nov. 11-19th. Two families, ten people in hopefully two connecting rooms in garden view alligator bayou.
 
Hey POR Fans: Disney Parks Blog has a "Caption This" photo from POR on today's blog:

http://disneyparks.disney.go.com/bl...ide-at-disneys-port-orleans-resort-riverside/

Caption This: Mickey Mouse Lounges Poolside at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside

posted on July 22nd, 2013 by Jennifer Fickley-Baker, Social Media Manager

Mickey Mouse sure looks like he’s enjoying himself in this week’s “Caption This” photo. This pic was shot at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside at Walt Disney World Resort in 2009.
 
To be one step ahead of this situation, I have a really nice cooler tote that I use for the supermarket/costco. It's from 31 and is big but not too big. I decided to use it as a carry-on bag with my laptop etc in it. If our fridge is not working we will fill it with ice to store cold drinks and a few perishables we ordered from garden grocer. Just posting in case this idea helps anyone!! We leave in 2 days! :yay:

Same goes for me... In fact all our traveling bags are 31.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.












Save Up to 30% on Rooms at Walt Disney World!

Save up to 30% on rooms at select Disney Resorts Collection hotels when you stay 5 consecutive nights or longer in late summer and early fall. Plus, enjoy other savings for shorter stays.This offer is valid for stays most nights from August 1 to October 11, 2025.
CLICK HERE













DIS Facebook DIS youtube DIS Instagram DIS Pinterest

Back
Top