Disney's PORT ORLEANS RIVERSIDE RESORT Information & Questions

[patster734]

We just returned back from our stay at POR. We arrived Wednesday morning and returned Sunday morning. We really enjoyed our trip.

We were in building 38 (room 3802), so we had to cross Ol Man Island when going to the main buildings. When going to the theme parks, we had a short walk to the North Depot. However, because of all of the paths, there were a couple of times that we would start to take the wrong path between our room and the North Depot.

We watched Yee-Haa Bob Jackson Wednesday night. I thought he was funny and entertaining, but my wife found him a little annoying. The bar was always packed for his show, so try to get there early to get a seat, especially on the weekends.

We also dined at Boatwright's Friday night and Saturday night. If you plan to eat there, I suggest making a reservation. On Friday, we got back to our room around 7pm, and checked for an available reservation on the Disney App and got one for 7:55pm. We relaxed in our room until it got closer to our reservation time. We got seated pretty close to our reservation time, but people without reservations were being told the wait was over 1 hour.

I wanted to ask what people's experiences have been with bypassing check-in with an arrival before noon. How early have you gotten the text/email that your room is ready?

We received our text at 10:17 AM so we were on the DME bus when the text arrived. Because we weren't familiar with the resort, we still had to get a map of the resort from the front desk to locate our room.

 

[DisneyRunner2009]

I got my email that my room wasn't ready at my expected arrival time of 8:00 am. I got a follow up email that my room was ready around noon.

 

[bigmac5]

Preferred bldg 14 is pretty loud. We were in 1439 and there is a lot of parking lot noise. Its near a loading area and we constantly heard the beeping of trucks backing up. I would recommend staying in a different preferred building.

We were pixie dusted to building 14 and found it very quiet. Loved how close it was to the food court and to the buses.

 

[BrittyRo]

We want to ship water from Amazon to POR. Question regarding shipping. What happens if the water arrives to POR a couple of days before we get there?

 

[dansdad]

We want to ship water from Amazon to POR. Question regarding shipping. What happens if the water arrives to POR a couple of days before we get there?

Bell Services will hold it for you. Then when you arrive, you can stop there and pick it up. Or once in your room, call them and they will bring it up for you. If you choose to have them bring it up, it's customary to tip the Bellman.

 

[buzznina]

Does the FC still play the "Down by the Riverside" song? The last time we were there (2 years) I think, they did it on the hour. Our DDs really loved it

 

[andrewilley]

Does the FC still play the "Down by the Riverside" song? The last time we were there (2 years) I think, they did it on the hour. Our DDs really loved it

Yes, but not quite as often, especially as busy times.

Andre

 

[mistysue]

I just realized I posted this before in the FQ thread by accident.

Does anybody have recent allergy experiences with the POR food court? I ask because I did contact special diets and they sent me the standard website for my son's allergens and most resorts have dozens of items. POR has exactly burger and hot dog buns. No tenders, no pancake mix, no cake mixes, no noodles, no grab and go type items. If you look at the egg/dairy/peanut list POR is not even on the list because they ordered NOTHING. Basically if any of their meats or veggies have been prepared with anything they are likely to be unsafe, so he could easily be left with no options. So I have now emailed them twice with the specific question of whether they normally stock any of the items that are standard at other disney resorts and they answer about how the list is just the last order but they did not directly address the question. I know they don't want to be responsible, but a heads up about whether I need to take action is all I am asking for. I'm a little worried I am going to show up with my son to find out we need to travel away from our resort to get breakfast every day. There are zero in park counter services that can give him a breakfast he is not allergic to so I don't want to have to get up every morning and resort hop to eat or throw in a last minute breakfast ADR for every single day of our trip. He is allergic to wheat, soy, egg, dairy, peanut, some treenuts, shellfish, sesame and buckwheat- which really takes a lot of the standard options off the table if any of it is pre-made and means the substitute items often are his only breakfast items.

 

[andrewilley]

At all Disney restaurants, you can ask for the head chef and discuss your specific needs and they will always try to help. If you are worried, give POR a call directly and ask to be put directly through to the food court (ideally to the head chef) and discuss it with them, in case they have to prepare anything in advance for you. I would advise you do this at least 48 hours in advance of your trip.

What link did they give you for information by the way? The one I had (http://www.disneyworld.com/specialdiets) does not seem to be working any more. Have you tried allears.net (http://allears.net/din/special.htm) too, as they have a lot of advice on travelling to Disney World with food allergies.

Andre

 

[mistysue]

At all Disney restaurants, you can ask for the head chef and discuss your specific needs and they will always try to help. If you are worried, give POR a call directly and ask to be put directly through to the food court (ideally to the head chef) and discuss it with them, in case they have to prepare anything in advance for you. I would advise you do this at least 48 hours in advance of your trip.

What link did they give you for information by the way? The one I had (http://www.disneyworld.com/specialdiets) does not seem to be working any more. Have you tried allears.net (http://allears.net/din/special.htm) too, as they have a lot of advice on travelling to Disney World with food allergies.

Andre

Thank you, part of the problem is that I can't responsibly wait until 2 days before our trip. If there is not going to be a possibility for us to eat a meal at the resort we need to switch resorts now or skip our trip for this year because it's not worth the stress. The response of "ask at each location" is what has led to it taking us multiple hours to eat a few CS meals in the past and left us criss-crossing the park as we run from place to place. We can't enter a park expecting CS breakfast or even to pick up snacks because it's unreasonable to expect there to be any for him. We either eat at the resort, go to another resort, or we won't eat until one of a few select places opens for lunch. (I will add here that unless we give him pretzels or potato chips we really don't have shelf stable foods that are both safe and that he likes, we need a kitchen for breakfast foods if the hotel doesn't have them!)

The specific links from the special diets department look like this but they don't post these on their site:
http://wdw.wdpromedia.com/media/kana/sd/WDW-SoyFree.pdf
http://wdw.wdpromedia.com/media/kana/sd/WDW-DairyFree-EggFree-TreeNutFree-PeanutFree.pdf
http://wdw.wdpromedia.com/media/kana/sd/WDW-GlutenFree.pdf
You can substitute different allergens in the title to see if they have a specific one. This list is not an inventory list, it is a list of what their recent order included- which is why I'm trying to ask for experiences. I don't know if they had a stockpile or if they stopped offering things. If you're interested, looking at the above and comparing POR to different resorts- say POP- will give you an idea of why an alarm is going off for me. Most resorts are placing orders of many many items and POR ordered nothing. This means the only items they are restocking are standard menu items. (so juice, bacon, a huge list of meats that might be safe, but do you want a plain slice of the same meat pan fried at every single meal for 2 weeks?)

 

[magictam2]

You are reading my page and my maps correctly. The six Pool View rooms in building 18 are sold under the Pool View booking category (shown in light blue on my maps). Similarly the river view (dark blue) rooms in buildings 14 and 27 are River View not Preferred category rooms. The same applies to the King Bed rooms.

Preferred Location bookings get you the remaining standard and garden rooms only (officially anyway).

Andre

Hi, I'm avidly reading everything I can before I book tomorrow. We have it narrowed down to POR and pool view but want building 18. So if I'm understanding this correctly, I need to book pool view and then ask for a preferred location? Or should I book preferred and ask for pool view. Thanks so much for you're help.
Just as an FYI, I will be arriving 2/27 (day after Thanksgiving) in early am and don't mind waiting for my room to open up.

 

[dansdad]

Hi, I'm avidly reading everything I can before I book tomorrow. We have it narrowed down to POR and pool view but want building 18. So if I'm understanding this correctly, I need to book pool view and then ask for a preferred location? Or should I book preferred and ask for pool view. Thanks so much for you're help.
Just as an FYI, I will be arriving 2/27 (day after Thanksgiving) in early am and don't mind waiting for my room to open up.

You'll have to decide which of the two is the most important, preferred or pool view, and book that one. Then request the other.

 

[siskaren]

You'll have to decide which of the two is the most important, preferred or pool view, and book that one. Then request the other.

Not according to what Andre wrote in http://www.portorleans.org/room-requests.php. It says that you would have to book the view you want, then request preferred.

 

[dansdad]

Not according to what Andre wrote in http://www.portorleans.org/room-requests.php. It says that you would have to book the view you want, then request preferred.

Understood. Just giving my opinion as to get both things the OP wants requires somewhat of a free upgrade. So I would rather have the one I want the most to be guaranteed.

 

[andrewilley]

Correct, you can book Pool View and then request one of the six pool view rooms within building 18. But that's a pretty specific request given that there are only six rooms there, out of nearly 150 Pool Views at the resort which you could be assigned to. If you book Preferred, you could be rooms very close to the pool although technically not one of those six specific rooms.

As has been said, which is more important to you: guaranteeing a location near to the main buildings (which could well be near to a pool, but not technically a 'Pool View') or a guaranteed view of a pool, but could be anywhere around the resort. Those are you basic options, in case any additional requests cannot be met.

Andre

 

[Amanda999]

So am I a chump? I am paying an extra $40/night (with tax) for preferred.

I always seem to get the farthest/least desirable room in the category I book (at any resort), so I fear what I'd get if I didn't book preferred!

 

[NicoleLarson]

So I know POR has a pretty big following on these boards. So I need someone to talk me into staying there. We have two kids (Ds2, DD6) that love the values but I am a deluxe girl, so I haven't really seen the need for the mods. However, I'm trying to put together a quick trip over easter and the deluxes are out of our price range. So that leaves mods and values but it seems like the mods have more activities than the values since we aren't planning going to the parks much. So I think my kids would enjoy that part more. I've stayed at POFQ (liked) and CBR (hated). If I hated CBR, am I going to hate POR? What I didn't like about it was the size and theming. I just felt that everything was so far and I didn't get that feeling that I was somewhere else.

 

[andrewilley]

Thank you, part of the problem is that I can't responsibly wait until 2 days before our trip.

I'm sending you some specific contact details for the head chef by direct message, let us know how you get on.

Andre

 

[patster734]

So am I a chump? I am paying an extra $40/night (with tax) for preferred.

I always seem to get the farthest/least desirable room in the category I book (at any resort), so I fear what I'd get if I didn't book preferred!

If you can afford it, go for it. Because money was tight, we booked a garden room. We got room 3802, which I thought was good spot. It was a short walk through Ol' Man Island to get to main buildings, and an even shorter walk to the North Depot for the bus.

However, as there are no guarantees, I could have received a room much further away.

We dined at Boatwright's a couple of evenings, and had drinks at the River Roost two additional nights. If our room was further away, we may have sought other alternatives.

 

[magictam2]

You'll have to decide which of the two is the most important, preferred or pool view, and book that one. Then request the other.

Correct, you can book Pool View and then request one of the six pool view rooms within building 18. But that's a pretty specific request given that there are only six rooms there, out of nearly 150 Pool Views at the resort which you could be assigned to. If you book Preferred, you could be rooms very close to the pool although technically not one of those six specific rooms.

As has been said, which is more important to you: guaranteeing a location near to the main buildings (which could well be near to a pool, but not technically a 'Pool View') or a guaranteed view of a pool, but could be anywhere around the resort. Those are you basic options, in case any additional requests cannot be met.

Andre

Thanks for the help/info and support. Instead of booking on line, I called in to book it. Went with a pool view and the CM I spoke with recommended requesting building 85. He was put that in the notes. I know there is no guarantee, so we shall see. I'm hoping as I arrive very early but can wait all day for room, it's doable.
Again, THANK YOU