Loved it!

How was your stay at Riverside? Leave your comments or full trip reports here. Photos welcome.
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catherine8716
Posts: 8
Joined: May 18th, 2012, 1:24 pm

Loved it!

Unread post by catherine8716 »

Just returned a week ago from our 11 night stay at the Port Orleans Riverside holiday. (2nd - 13th Dec) This was our 2nd visit to the resort and enjoyed it just as much as our 1st visit in October 2012. We had previously stayed in the Magnolia Bend mansion and sent a fax to the resort a few days before arrival to request either this building again or the Oak Manor with a river view on a the 1st floor. I had mentioned in the fax that my sister and I were travelling to celebrate our birthdays which are in the next month. Soo happy when we arrived in resort to find out we were upgraded to a Royal Room in the Oak Manor building with the river right on our doorstep. Think it was room 9272?! Magical things can happen there ;)
The detail in the Royal Rooms is amazing, perfect for little princesses with the fireworks display on the headboard. I'm 27 in a few weeks and even I got really excited about this. We even found a couple of hidden Mickey's in the room - look on the table with the letter from Princess Tiana and the headboard with the fireworks - You will have to really look for them. Beds were really comfy and shower was good and powerful. Mouse keeping came everyday and left some nice towel toys. Not as many as we had last year though.
We were given our customised Magic Bands on arrival at check in - we only had problems with them on the first day with our FP+ but this was resolved by the 2nd day. We just showed the CM's the MDE app to prove we had actually booked the FP+ times and they were fine with this. It might be worth updating your FP+ times when you are out there too as this seemed to work for us. We chatted to a really nice CM in Animal Kingdom who mentioned they are still working on the system and they are still experiencing some problems. I was a bit weary about the Magic Bands before travelling but they were great, it was so nice not having to get your key to the world card out everytime time just to get into your room or use for your dining plan. We were still given Key to the world cards at check in as some of the restuarants don't have the magic bands system installed yet but the only time we ever used the cards was to get more fast passes aswell as the three we had booked ;)
The weather was really warm which was really nice, even in the evening but on our last night it did get quite cold. Perfect pool weather, we only went there on a couple of occasions. Pools seemed a lot quieter now in Dec than when we went in October. The rides in parks were a lot quieter too which was nice. The buses were fine, had to stand a few times which we didn't mind. Never waiting more than 15 mins at the resort for one and there was a bus always pretty much waiting for us at the park to bring us back. The drivers weren't the cheeriest bunch... On our last visit we had a few that were really informative and really funny. The boats down to downtown Disney were great, nice change from the buses. We had one guy think his name was Clint or Clive? He was brilliant... telling us some funny stories and jokes all the way back to the hotel one night. Little things like this just add the to the holiday experience and it would have been nice to have had this more esepecially with the bus drivers.
We eat breakfast at the Riverside Mill most mornings which was nice, my sister loved the pancakes. I only eat once in the evening and had the make your own pasta which was lovely. Pizza there was really good too.
The surrounding of Port Orleans is gorgoeus, we would often go for a walk around in the afternoons and was a nice place to come back to after a long day in the park. We walked down to the French Quarter one day, the Christmas decorations were very pretty here. I prefered them there to the Riverside.
We did the Mickey' Very Merry Christmas party at Magic Kingdom but I wouldn't do it again, I much prefered the Halloween party. We did have reservations at the Be Our Guest Restaurant - it is pricey but the food and experience there was really good. Even got to have our prictures taken with the Beast afterwards :)
We spent one day going around the other resorts to look at their Christmas decorations which was lovely and had afternoon tea in the Grand Floridian. The Ginger bread house there is very impressive as well as the Chocolate carousel in the Beach and Yaught Club.
Have lots of pics of the resort to upload. Would definatly return to Port Orleans.. Just got to start saving again :D
podgirl
Posts: 5
Joined: December 5th, 2013, 7:34 pm

Re: Loved it!

Unread post by podgirl »

Thanks for writing that report! Sounds like you had a lovely time. We are driving down from Canada and will arrive tomorrow, in time for our 20th anniversary. It's already so warm here in Georgia that we can't wait to get in the pool tomorrow!
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