Port Orleans News

More planning permits have been filed by Disney with the Orange County Comptroller’s offices for guest room renovations, this time at Port Orleans Riverside. The permits specifically refer to work on Alligator Bayou building 24 and to Parterre Place (building 95). No other details or dates for commencement of work have been given and the permits last for a year. If you want to view the submitted paperwork, click HERE or HERE.

According to Mouse Planet and wdwmagic.com, Disney have recently filed work permit paperwork with the Orange County Comptroller’s offices for “guest room renovation” work to be undertaken at Port Orleans French Quarter by Friedrich Watkins Company of Orlando, FL.

The work permit refers specifically to Building 7 and states that the work must commence sometime before mid-March 2011. There is no information given as to whether this is to be a general refurbishment or just involves a few rooms, or what the work will entail, but the last major resort-wide refit of the guest rooms at French Quarter took place back in 2003/04.

“Ye Haa” Bob Jackson, the popular musician who entertains the crowds four evenings a week at the River Roost Lounge at Port Orleans Riverside, is a guest on the Main Street Mugs Live podcast this week. The full show can be heard on their website or you can downloaded it as an MP3 file.

As part of the Eyes on Ears project, a live webcam was streamed directly from a river view room in Oak Manor at Port Orleans Riverside from 13th February until 21st February 2010. See the video page for more details, or visit www.eyesonears.com to see current live webcams streamed from other Walt Disney World locations.

All Disney Advanced Dining Reservations (including for Boatwright’s Dining Hall at Port Orleans Riverside) can now be made up to 180 days in advance of your planned dining date, as opposed to the temporary 90 day system introduced at the end of last year. Disney Resort guests get an extra 10-day window from their arrival date, giving a maximum of 190 days from check-in day.

The switchover day, when 90 extra days of availability was created overnight rather than being phased in gradually, was fraught with somewhat predictable problems. The online booking system was completely swamped and crashed within a few seconds of the extra 90 days being released at 6am and it was down for the rest of the day (possibly in a deliberate attempt to keep the remaining telephone booking system operating?). The phone lines were instantly jammed at 7am with some guests experiencing waits of well over an hour (if you could even get into the queue; many people spent literally all day redialling and getting “lines are busy” messages). Some restaurants — such as Cinderella’s Royal Table — did not even show up on the system at all, and the agents’ computers were prone to crashing or simply locking out a whole batch of in-progress reservations all day.