Disney’s Port Orleans Resort first opened to the public at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida on 17th May 1991. Originally featuring just 432 guest rooms in three buildings, the room count was soon increased to 1,008 as construction on the remaining four buildings was completed.
Disney’s Dixie Landings Resort first opened to the public on 2nd February 1992 featuring the rustic styled Alligator Bayou buildings. Shortly after that, phase two of the resort opened with the more elegant sophistication of the Magnolia Bend mansion buildings bringing the total number of guest rooms up to 2,048.
Dixie Landings was linked to the Port Orleans Resort, and then onward all the way to the Disney Village Marketplace area, by the Sassagoula River, a man-made waterway named after the Native American word for the Mississippi.
At Port Orleans, Bonfamille’s Cafe, the full-service restaurant adjacent to the main lobby, closed its doors for the last time at the end of service on 5th August 2000. Boatwright’s Dining Hall, the remaining full-service restaurant at Dixie Landings, continued to serve both sections of the resort.
On 1st March 2001, the transformation of Dixie Landings and Port Orleans into one large resort began with changes to road signage around the two resorts.
On 1st April 2001, Port Orleans and Dixie Landings officially merged to form one large resort. In fact, the two sections had always shared the same management team but this process completely removed all vestiges of the old Dixie Landings terminology. The reason for the merger has never been made completely clear, but many think it was largely due to the inferred racial undertones of the Dixie Landings back story.
The combined resort is now to be called Disney’s Port Orleans Resort, with the area formerly known just as Port Orleans changing its name to Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter and the area formerly known as Dixie Landings changing its name to Disney’s Port Orleans Riverside. The combined resort now spans some 325 acres and features a total of 3,056 guest rooms, making it the largest in Walt Disney World.
A while after the terrible events in New York in September 2001, temporarily reduced tourist demand allowed the Port Orleans French Quarter section to be closed for extensive update and renovation work. The freshly renovated rooms had new furniture, new carpeting, new wall coverings and remodeled bathrooms. French Quarter was closed from 4 May 2003 and reopened to guests a year later on 21 March 2004, see the Local News 6 website for details. Subsequent renovation work at the larger Port Orleans Riverside section was undertaken on a building-by-building basis and did not require the closure of the whole resort.
On 1 June 2007, all Walt Disney World resort hotels became completely non-smoking, with just a few designated outdoor smoking areas defined for those who still feel the need to light-up. Smoking is no longer allowed in guest rooms, on balconies, in corridors or in any other public areas. Previously, smoking was permitted at Riverside in buildings 17, 27, 28, 34 and 36, Acadian House and Oak Manor, and at French Quarter in buildings 2, 4 and the upper floors of 6.
The Sassagoula Times is the free handout information sheet which has been issued to guests staying at the Port Orleans / Dixie Landings Resorts since they first opened. It started as an extremely elaborate eight-page tabloid newspaper which documented the entire fictional backstory to the two resorts, but more recently has been reduced to a simpler four-page letter-format resort information handout. For more details of the elaborate faux history of the resort, and for scanned/downloadable copies from 1996 to the present day, please see the Sassagoula Times page.
Here are a few other related websites I’ve found which may be of historical interest: