Port Orleans News

Walt Disney World's ever-rotating Carousel of People took another turn earlier this week as Diane Petit replaced Kelly Kline as the new General Manager for the combined Port Orleans Resorts.

Diane transferred over from the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa at the beginning of this week, and Kelly - who had only been in the role of GM at Port Orleans for less than two years, having replaced John Berko in October 2022 - has moved on to run the nearby Saratoga Springs Resort.

We wish them both well in their new positions.

Port Orleans French Quarter Building 1 is now open! After a three month "hard goods" refurbishment, Cast Members held a short opening ceremony at 9:30am on Friday 30th August, led by resort General Manager Kelly Kline.

The first guests will be assigned to the building from around 3pm this afternoon, and about 60+ guests should be sleeping in one of the new rooms by tonight. Buildings 2 and 3 remain under construction, and as more buildings are completed the remaining buildings 4-7 will be worked on. There is now a slightly delayed estimate of February 2025 for the whole resort to be completed.

The new rooms offer a cool blue theme with brown accents and a longer white marble effect countertop, and feature solid sliding doors to both the vanity and bathroom areas, and a glass shower door rather than any curtains. Three "Princess and the Frog" pictures adorn the walls, but otherwise there is no in-your-face Disney detail - although there are subtle New Orleans musical instrument references in much of the patterned decor. There is lots more storage than before, which will be welcomed by families in particular. A bench seat (NOT an extra bed) is provided beside the table in regular rooms, or two chairs in corner rooms where the bench seat would not fit under the second window.

Fold-out reading lamps are by each bedside, and there's a small wall-mounted table for the guest on the far side of the bed. USB-A and USB-C ports are provided alongside each power socket. The rooms now feature beverage coolers not mini-fridges, which is not a move welcomed by most guests but seems to be a general trend at Walt Disney World. There's a cute little wooden step in the vanity area for kids to reach the basins - and for adults to reach the very high safe! Some rooms will have walk-in showers instead of tubs, but I'm not sure how many as yet.

Lots more detailed photos will follow when I get home and can upload content from my DSLR camera, but in the meantime the first look pictures taken on my phone are on our Facebook Group. Many thanks to Kelly for her time and for the sneak peak access.

Opening ceremony photos
First in-room photos

Update on 24 July: Now live, and seems to be working well with resort guests getting 7-days advanced access. Search the internet for 1001 bloggers and websites discussing the minute details.

There's a lot of information to unpack, and as this site is about the Port Orleans Resorts I'm not going to dig into every detail here, but basically as from the morning of 24 July 2024, the Genie+ daily ride reservation system will turn into "Lightning Lane Multi Pass". The new My Disney Experience app based system will operate more like the old FastPass+, allowing guests with valid tickets to pre-book time slots for up to three attractions at the park of their choice. A tiering system will apply, so you will only be able to pre-book a maximum of one headliner "top tier" attraction per day, and two (or even all three) lower tier attractions. Once you've attended your first pre-booked attraction of the day, you will then be able to use the My Disney Experience app to search for a fourth available attraction from any tier - which could even be at a different park if you are park-hopping - and so on throughout the day.

Additionally, there will be one or two highest-demand attractions in each park that can ONLY be purchased on a one-off basis, by separately paying for up to two "Lighting Lane Single Pass" slots per day. These will include rides like TRON, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Guardians of the Galaxy, Rise of the Resistance, and Flight of Passage.

Guests with dated tickets, Annual Passes, etc will be able to book up to three days in advance of their visit. Disney Resort hotel guests will be able to make bookings up to seven days prior to their arrival date - and then for the length of their stay (up to a maximum of 14 days). One nice feature is that you will be able to make your selections and ensure that you can get the specific choices you want BEFORE making any payment, so no more leaving it to fate to see what's left after you've handed over your money.

Initially the pre-booking facility was going to be limited to guests who are already in the USA, but Disney has now added Canada to the system and hopefully other countries may follow soon, so (for example) UK guests travelling to a Disney hotel are not placed at a seven-day disadvantage compared to US residents.

Pricing is still to be announced, but it is generally expected that it will be roughly in line with the seasonal/date-based pricing policy of the existing Genie+ and Individual Lightning Lane systems, so expect to pay $15-$40 per person per day for the Multi Pass option, and $15+ each for the named Single Pass rides.

There is more information all over the internet of course, but you could start with the Disney Parks Blog announcement or the Walt Disney World website Plan Ahead & Save Time in Line page (may not be easily viewable outside of the USA).

The work on all buildings was completed, including the snagging revisits, by the end of May 2025. There has since been some additional repair work carried out to fix a few cracked/damaged walkways.

Update 16 May: Building 2 reopened today, so just building 1 still closed for snagging work at the moment. Can't be much longer now.

Update 14 Apr: Building 3 is now open again, and apparently building 4 too. Building 2 has started snagging work, and building 1 was not far behind it. We don’t yet know whether buildings 6 or 7 will require any further work, or whether the additional issues were identified and remedied during the original refurbishment work.

Update 31 Mar: Building 5 has now re-opened. It seemed to happen in stages, as some rooms were reported to be open last week. Also, currently buildings 3 & 4 are temporarily closed again for snagging/remedial work.

Update 11 Mar: Building 5 is still closed, and there are reports of other buildings (currently 3 & 4) being temporarily closed again for snagging/remedial work to tackle issues that have been noted by guests and/or cast members since the refurbished rooms were first reopened.

Update 14 Feb: Building 7 is now reported to be open to guests, staged over the last week or so. So now only building 5 is closed, with the rest of the resort now reopened with refurbished rooms.

Update 30 Jan: Building 5 is now reported to be closed, so that's finally it for the previous rooms style. Buildings 1-4 & 6 are now fully reopened with refurbished rooms, and building 7 must be nearing completion too by now.

Update 18 Jan 2025: Building 6 re-opened today, leaving just building 7 closed at the moment. Building 5 is currently the only location remaining with old-style rooms but expect that to commence its refurbishment very soon, at which point only newly refurbished rooms will be available at the resort.

Update 24 Dec: Building 7 is now completely closed, alongside building 6 which has been closed for a while. Building 5 is now the only one remaining with old-style rooms.

Update 11 Dec: Some parts of building 7 are now reported to be closed for refurbishment; most of the river facing rooms are still available. Building 5 will be the final one to close.

Update 26 November 2024: Building 4 is now reported to be open. So 1-4 are now open with new rooms, 6 is closed, and 5 & 7 still have the previous room design.

Update 10 November 2024: Building 3 construction barriers were removed on 5 Nov, and the first guests were admitted on Sunday 10 Nov. Building 6 was closed as of 4 Nov. So currently buildings 1, 2 and 3 are open with refurbished rooms, 4 & 6 are closed, and 5 & 7 remain the last ones open with the previous room design.

Update 28 September 2024: Building 2 has now re-opened. So currently buildings 1 & 2 are open with all-new rooms. Buildings 3 & 4 are closed. Buildings 5, 6 & 7 are still open with the previous room design.

Update Thursday 19 September 2024: Building 4 is now closed as they prepare to refurbish the rooms there. So currently building 1 is fully open with all-new rooms. Buildings 2, 3 and 4 are closed. Buildings 5, 6 and 7 are still open with the previous room design.

Update Friday 30 August 2024: Building 1 re-opened today, see separate news article.

The Port Orleans French Quarter guest rooms have commenced a resort-wide refurbishment program. Entire buildings will be closed for guest use during the work to reduce impact on other guests, and building 1 was shut as from the end of May 2024. It is expected that each building will take 4-6 weeks to complete, with building 2 being the next in line which started work early July. The entire resort is expected to take until November or December.

Disney has not released any advance details of what the new rooms will look like, but we do know that this will be a full "hard goods" refurbishment. This means that everything will be stripped back to bare walls and floors, and all existing fittings will be replaced. From brief glimpses into work in progress rooms, it seems like the wall between the bedroom and the vanity area has been removed for possible installation of hard shuttered doors to replace the current privacy curtains.



The last French Quarter refurbishment program ran from 6 Jan 2018 to 10 July 2018, which included new hard flooring, larger TVs, raised beds, new soft fittings, and some other details such as an illuminated vanity mirror and the fitting of multiple USB ports.

For more info on refurbishments, please see https://www.portorleans.org/rehab.php .

[Update: Show has now concluded, so boat times are back to normal]

During the run of the "Disney Dreams That Soar" drone show over the lake at Disney Springs, the last Sassagoula Ferry boat from Port Orleans to Disney Springs will be at 7:30pm, with the final return trip from Disney Springs at 8pm. After then, it's road access only until the next morning. If you plan to use Disney transportation to get back to your hotel after 8pm, the resort bus stops are fairly centrally located within Disney Springs, just behind Coca Cola / Wolfgang Puck, adjacent to the Planet Hollywood globe.

If you want to see the drone display there are two shows every night, the first is at 9pm and then a second one at 10:45pm. The limited run of this show is from 24th May to 2nd September 2024, after which the Sassagoula Ferries should return to their normal evening operating schedules.

Note: When the drone show first started, the ferry service was not operating anyway due to low water levels. It resumed on 17 June 2024.