Scheduled Maintenance and Refurbishment Work

Please remember that maintenance plans and dates are subject to change at any time, and often Disney does not release details of scheduled work until around three months prior to its commencement. Updates will be posted here as and when further information or dates become available, so it would be worth bookmarking or watchlisting this page.

Only major projects will be listed here. Other smaller routine works can be expected during any visit, especially during the off-peak winter months, as that’s how they keep the place looking so beautiful for you! For completed projects, please see the Refurbishment Projects Archive page.

Special thanks to regular Port Orleans guest John “RiverRooster” Schmidt who provides invaluable photo updates during his trips. For lots more of his photos, please see his Guest Photo Gallery page.

Port Orleans French Quarter “Doubloon Lagoon” pool closure, January—April 2024

Plenty of advanced notice on this one. The main Doubloon Lagoon feature pool at Port Orleans French Quarter will be closed for refurbishment during the opening few months of 2024. More specific dates will presumably be made available closer to the commencement of works.

Guests will still be able to use any of the six pools over at Port Orleans Riverside, which is a ten minute walk away or can be reached using the ferry boat service or shuttle buses. When this sort of work has been undertaken in the past, the resort has always provided a free local shuttle service to get guests to and from the alternate pool.

Update: the pool closed on 22nd January 2024 — including the splash play area, pool bar, and the hot tub (slightly earlier on 17 January). There is currently no specific end date for the work, they are still only saying April.

Port Orleans Riverside Guest Room “Soft Goods” Refurbishment (started late Summer/Fall 2018)

All of the guest rooms at Port Orleans French Quarter (see below) and Port Orleans Riverside’s Alligator Bayou and the regular Magnolia Bend mansion buildings (80 and 85, Acadian House and Magnolia Terrace) were refurbished just prior to the extended shutdown due to COVID.

Work on the two Royal Room buildings was slightly delayed but was finally scheduled to commence just after Easter 2020... but of course the impact of COVID caused those plans to be indefinitely postponed. There is currently no firm indication of when this final phase of work will commence, but it definitely won’t happen during the current Disney financial year. So hopefully work may commence sometime fairly soon after after October 2023?

When work does eventually start on these last two Port Orleans Riverside buildings, the process should take around three months to complete and the area will be closed section-by-section — for example one wing at a time, all floors at once — to minimize disruption to other guests while still allowing other parts of the buildings to remain in use.

Building Original Estimated Start Date Status
80 Completed end Sept 2019 Work commenced 8 July 2019. First rooms re-opened early August, some work still continuing in the southern section. Now complete (end Sept 2019)
85 Completed mid Oct 2019 Work started on southern half of building 85 on 13 Aug. Completed second week in October.
90 Nov 2019 [postponed indefinitely] Following the Coronavirus closures, there are currently no imminent plans to resume room refurbishment work.
95 Dec 2019 [postponed indefinitely] Following the Coronavirus closures, there are currently no imminent plans to resume room refurbishment work.
 

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Port Orleans Riverside, Magnolia Bend Refurbished Guest Room Interior, August 2019

 

During the Alligator Bayou work, the 20s leisure swimming pool (the one closest to building 24) was closed for fairly extensive maintenance work, including re-skimming the interior surface, starting from 13 Aug. The pool re-opened to guests on 29 September. The 30s pool (next to buildings 35 and 36) was also closed for a few days from 7 Aug to 10 Aug for minor routine work on the decking area.

In advance of this work, the second week in May 2018 saw the start of installation of the new style wall-mounted amenity dispensers (body wash, shampoo, etc) in the bathrooms of the Riverside mansion buildings, starting with Parterre Place and working round to Acadian House over the following month or so.

Building Original Estimated Start Date Status
37 Completed by 30 Aug Work commenced 21 July.
30 Aug first guest reports from new rooms.
38 Completed by 3 Sep Work commenced 4 August, first guest stay reported on 3 Sep
39 Completed Work commenced 11 August. Now Reported as Completed
36 Completed Reported as Completed
35 Completed Reported as Completed
34 Completed Reported as Completed
After this building, work was paused until April 2019, pushing schedule back by six months
24 Completed Work commenced beginning of April 2019. Now Reported as Completed
28 Completed Work commenced April 2019. Now Reported as Completed
26 Completed Reported as Completed
25 Completed Work commenced April/May 2019. Now Reported as Completed
27 Completed Work commenced May 2019. Now Reported as Completed
17 Completed Reported as Completed
16 Completed Reported as Completed
15 Completed Completed end of June 2019
18 Completed Reported as Completed
14 Completed Completed start of July 2019
 

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Port Orleans Riverside, Alligator Bayou Refurbished Guest Room Interior, August 2019


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Port Orleans Riverside, Alligator Bayou Refurbished Guest Room Interior (bed folded down), August 2019

Port Orleans Riverside pool slide on Ol’ Man Island closure, 2-6 Dec 2019

The slide at the Ol’ Man Island pool will be closed during the week of 2—6 Dec for maintenance. There will be a free shuttle to French Quarter that picks up by the Gazebo near building 85 (Magnolia Terrace) and takes guests to the Doubloon Lagoon Pool during that time. There may also be intermittent pool downtimes associated with the work, but there are no official dates or times.

Magnolia Bend Quiet Pool Closure from mid September until late October 2019

Update: The Magnolia Bend quiet pool was reopened on 31 October 2019.

The quiet leisure pool located in Magnolia Bend between buildings 80 (Acadian House) and 85 (Magnolia Terrace) will be closed for maintenance and refurbishment work from mid September 2019 until late October 2019. The closure includes the laundry building next to the pool. This work broadly aligns with the current guest room refurbishment process that is underway in the same general area. The main feature pool on Ol' Man Island, and the other four quiet pools around the resort, will remain open as normal.

Port Orleans French Quarter Guest Room “Soft Goods” Refurbishment [Now Complete]

The planned dates for the upcoming Port Orleans French Quarter guest room soft-goods refurbishment project over the first half of 2018 are as follows. Please remember that this schedule is tentative and may be subject to change as the project progresses. Currently each building seems to be re-opening around a month behind its target date, and the revised completion estimates were provided at the start of April.

Location Original Schedule Completion / Estimate Progress
Building 2Jan 6 – Feb 9, 2018 Completed 1 March Top floor re-opened 8 February. Building fully completed 1 March.
Building 3Jan 23 – Feb 25, 2018 Completed End of March Work commenced 1 March. Top floor re-opened 18 March, middle floor by 20 March. [Building now fully re-opened]
Building 1Feb 10 – Mar 13, 2018 Completed mid-April Top floor closed and being prepped for work as of 17 March.
Update on 31 March: work now underway on all floors. [Now fully re-opened]
Building 5Feb 26 – Mar 31, 2018 Completed early May Update on 2 May: Floors 2 and 3 reopened for guests. Floor 1 almost complete. [Now fully re-opened]
Building 4Mar 14 – Apr 16, 2018 Completed end of May Update on 1 May: Top two floors now being worked on, ground floor was still in use.
15 May: All floors now being worked on.
23 May: Top floor re-opened to guests, 2nd floor nearly ready.
[Now fully re-opened]
Building 6Apr 1 – May 4, 2018 Completed by 22 June 15 May: Work has started on top floor, lower floors are still occupied.
27 May: More floors started work.
All floors being worked on by start of June.
Reported completed as of 22 June.
Building 7Apr 17 – May 20, 2018 Completed by 10 July 16 June: Work progressing on upper floors, ground floor still in use by guests
22 June: All floors now closed to guests and being worked on.
7 July: Top two floors now re-opened, ground floor almost done. [Now All Complete]


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Port Orleans French Quarter, Refurbished Guest Room Interior, August 2018

 

Refurbished Rooms Report, 3 March 2018

For the latest photos of the new rooms, please see our French Quarter Refurbishment Gallery Page.

Lagging somewhat behind the originally planned schedule, the first of the refurbished rooms in building 2 at Port Orleans French Quarter were re-opened to guests on 8th February 2018. Initially only the top floor rooms were opened while work continued on the rest of the building, the remaining floors being completed and the whole building re-opened by 1 March. Workers then moved on to building 3. Guests arriving in June and July have reported receiving emails warning them of possible construction disruption during their stay, so obviously there are concerns that this work will seriously over-run the original provisional timescale.

The new room design is very understated — some on Facebook have even gone so far as to say it’s a bit bland. The colours are more muted and the refreshed curtains are much more subtly ‘New Orleans’ themed than they were before. The old venetian blinds have been replaced with net curtains, providing a somewhat more limited degree of privacy unless you also close the blackout curtains which will cut out any external light completely. The lovely decorative borders along the ceiling edges are all gone too, just plain walls now.

Sadly there is still only plain white bed linen, rather sterile in both the good and bad senses of the word. However on the plus side, the beds themselves are now raised on legs rather than solid metal bases though, allowing about 14 inches of extra space beneath each bed for storage of luggage, etc.

Hard wood flooring with an attractive inlaid design effect has replaced the old carpets (which will now be much easier to keep clean) and the chest-of-drawers features a new top panel including power and USB sockets, and the chairs have been reupholstered. The over-bed lights have new oblong shades with subtle fleur-de-lys designs, and the switches have been replaced throughout.

There are some nice new touches such as a larger single main mirror and a repositionable round shaving mirror in the bathroom, and a larger wall-mounted TV (sadly with obtrusive white plastic conduit concealing the cables, shame they could not have channelled the wall during the refit). The wall safes are now larger and have combination locks rather than physical keys.

Toiletries are now provided as large wall-mounted dispenser bottles in the bathroom rather than the small individual bottles which somehow always seemed to end up in guests’ suitcases...

Most other fittings appear to have remained unchanged, such as the bed headboards, green bench seat, bathroom tiling and shower, hand basins and counter-top, coat rack, Cuisinart coffee maker (not Keurig), and the Imagineering painting on the wall.

Many thanks to Jenni Lee over on the Port Orleans Magical Guide Facebook Group for her first photos on opening day:

 

Original Background Information

In order to minimise disruption the work will be undertaken on a floor-by-floor basis for each building, starting on the third floor and working down to the ground floor. There should be very little impact to guests staying in the other buildings, and no one will be allocated to a room on a floor that is currently under construction. However it is possible that guests may be allocated to rooms on other floors in the same building, depending on occupancy requirements at the time.

No further details or photos are available as yet, but the work will most likely include changing out the carpeting for hard wood-effect flooring, possibly adding a shutter of some sort between the bedroom and the vanity area, and other general decor and soft goods replacements including the addition of a larger Smart TV hung on the wall. I would be most surprised if we didn’t also see some of the added features that have been popping up at other resorts (for example Pop Century) such as USB charging sockets, extra storage options, etc. And if we are really lucky, perhaps something a little less stark than the plain-white bed linen that recently appeared at the resorts. Only time will tell.

[Update on 9th January 2018] A poster in the excellent “Disney’s Port Orleans Resorts - A Magical Guide” Facebook Group observed that work has now commenced on the upper floor of building 2, as we revealed a few months ago. They saw carpet being pulled up and mattresses, furniture, TVs, chairs, etc being removed. Pressure washing of the outside of the building was also taking place.



 
 

Previous Major Maintenance and Refurbishment Projects

For details and photos of some of the previous major maintenance and refurbishment projects that have taken place over the past few years at the Port Orleans resorts, please the please see the Refurbishment Projects Archive page. These include: