Walt Disney World has announced resort refurbishments and hotel construction projects at Walt Disney World for 2025 & 2026. Two of these involve guest room renovations at Port Orleans Riverside and French Quarter Resorts. This shares dates, details, and our commentary about impacts of work. (Updated July 29, 2025.)
This is the first of a few projects to be announced, with the Year-Long Pop Century Room Refurbishment being the other big one. These probably are not the only hotel renovations on the horizon, either. Keep an eye on our 2025-2026 Walt Disney World Hotel Construction Tracker for updates on other, smaller-scale projects.
The last few years have thrown a monkey wrench into Walt Disney World hotel refresh timelines, with several resort refurbishments being delayed due to the closure and the pent-up demand in its aftermath. The good news is that this hasn’t been as bad on the hotel side as with DVC properties, so Walt Disney World won’t be spending the next few years playing catch-up, but between a few postponed projects and the likelihood of larger-scale reimaginings and new construction, there’s likely a lot on the horizon.
Let’s start with the Port Orleans French Quarter refurbishment, which wrapped up just before the start of the summer season. This hard goods refurbishment totally overhauled the rooms and infused Princess and the Frog details, including character portraits and more.
Throughout each room, colorful fabrics and patterns inspired by the city’s charming architecture bring the lively spirit of “The Big Easy” to life, just like the buildings’ vibrant exteriors. You’ll also notice nods to Mardi Gras celebrations, including artwork featuring those iconic purple, gold and green beads.
The bathrooms have been done, and the whole spaces have functional and stylistic upgrades. See our Photos & Video of New Rooms at Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter Resort for a detailed look inside.
Now that construction crews have finished at POFQ, they’ve moved over to Riverside to finish the other side of the sister resorts…
Here’s the official announcement from Walt Disney World about the Port Orleans Riverside room redo:
From early April 2025 May 2025 through the end of January 2026 February 2026, guest rooms in the Magnolia Bend at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside will undergo refurbishment. During this time, guests may see or hear construction work in the area.
As you’ll notice from the strikethroughs, this project was delayed by a month on the frontend and has been extended by a month on the backend as a result. As discussed towards the end of the post, we’d fully expect this to be extended again, or to have a separate bulletin added for Alligator Bayou. Suffice to say, it’s likely that Riverside has construction through early 2027, not 2026.
In terms of other updates, only buildings 80 (regular rooms) and 95 (Royal Rooms) are currently open; the rest are in varying stages of construction. That are also unconfirmed rumors that building 90 is being converted back into standard rooms, and only building 95 will be Royal Rooms when all is said and done.
Assuming this is accurate, it means that building 95 will likely be the last to be renovated and it’ll probably be done in phases to avoid taking the whole building down at once. This is unlike the other buildings, but is likely a matter of practicality. Walt Disney World didn’t block off Royal Room reservations initially, so they’ll either need to offer free upgrades or retain a portion of the Royal Room inventory for the duration of the project. That is, assuming building 90 reopens as standard rooms.
Again, all of this is unconfirmed rumor at this point. We shall see what happens once building 90 reopens. What follows is our original commentary about the Port Orleans Riverside room refurbishment…
Port Orleans Riverside had been in the midst of a resort-wide soft goods refurbishment in 2019 and 2020, with the Royal Rooms next up to go under the knife in March 2020. All of the Alligator Bayou rooms were finished and, to the best of my knowledge, so were the standard Magnolia Bend rooms.
However, the Royal Rooms in Magnolia Bend were mostly untouched. Some did end up replacing the carpet with new laminate floors and other light refreshes, but that’s it. The vast majority of the 500+ Royal Rooms are materially unchanged since 2012–save for the bed runners, which were long gone even pre-closure.
It’s a given that the Magnolia Bend rooms at Port Orleans Riverside will receive a hard goods refurbishment in 2025-2026. They mostly missed their last soft goods refurbishment and would be due for a gutting, regardless. Major renovations will likely happen.
What’s unclear at this point is whether the Royal Rooms will continue to exist post-refurbishment or if a new concept will be introduced. It’s our understanding that the Royal Rooms aren’t nearly as popular as they once were, and are routinely given out as a free upgrade to guests.
Although we have no inside information to suggest as much, we’d also hazard a guess that the Royal Rooms are more expensive to create and maintain. There’s a lot of attention to detail and custom design throughout the Royal Rooms, and that cannot be as inexpensive or efficient as some of the modern rooms at Walt Disney World.
I hope that the Royal Rooms continue to exist. We stayed in one earlier this year and found it to be in shockingly good shape despite the lack of refurbishment, and also thought that the style largely stood the test of time despite being over a decade old. That’s more than I can say about many of the “modern” rooms that came about in 2013-2017, some of which are already long gone because they aged so poorly.
With that said, I can’t help but think back to the Pirate Rooms at Caribbean Beach being converted to the new ‘Under the Sea’ Little Mermaid rooms. It’s entirely possible that this is a blueprint for what’s to come at Port Orleans Riverside, albeit (hopefully) not Little Mermaid inspired.
The Royal Rooms are among the very best-themed rooms in all of Walt Disney World. However, making a new version of the Royal Rooms that’s as elaborate and ornate as the pre-refurbishment version doesn’t seem like the direction Walt Disney World will go given everything we’ve seen over the last several years.
And I write that as someone who is generally pleased with the trajectory of room redesigns. My gut is that they’ll take the path of least resistance and deliver something in the current blueprint that balances space-saving modern design features with thematic flourishes, trying to appease both diehard fans and first-timers.
Personally, I think that’s the wrong approach. Port Orleans Riverside needs something to give it a selling point among the Moderate Resorts. French Quarter has the compact layout; Caribbean Beach has the Skyliner, nicer amenities, and proximity to Riviera Resort; Coronado Springs has Gran Destino and convention-caliber facilities. Port Orleans Riverside hasn’t had any resort-wide upgrades and feels like time has passed it by.
For years, Port Orleans Riverside was our favorite Moderate Resort for this very reason–it felt like a bygone era of Walt Disney World, was thematically unblemished, and had beautiful grounds. But if I’m being honest with myself, I love the idea of Port Orleans Riverside more than the actual resort.
We still love to visit and spend time at this thematic exemplar, but when push comes to shove and we’re actually doing a stay for practical purposes, Riverside is somewhat low on our List Ranking All of the Best & Worst Resorts at Walt Disney World.
I don’t think Royal Rooms alone are that “something” to differentiate Riverside from the other resorts, but it would be cool if they offered a wider variety of themed rooms. Failing that, maybe Riverside would benefit from a character dining experience, immersively themed bar, or other marquee draw.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Imagineering revisits the Royal Rooms concept with a modernized take or goes in a different direction completely. Our hope is for the former, so our daughter can enjoy them again if/when she enters her princess phase. For those of you with girls who are currently already in this phase, you might want to consider a Royal Room stay ASAP in case I’m right and they do go extinct.
I’ll take this a step further and hope that Imagineering doubles-down on this type of room, adding themed categories like this to resorts all across Walt Disney World–or just a wider variety to Port Orleans Riverside (the once-rumored Haunted Mansion rooms and individual character rooms would be great). This type of concept has been a huge hit at the international resorts and it seems like Walt Disney World guests would go crazy for something similar! (Even as I write this, I know how far-fetched it is.)
One thing that’s not far-fetched is for the Port Orleans Riverside refurbishment lasting longer than presently scheduled. By the time Magnolia Bend is done in 2026, it’ll be time for Alligator Bayou to receive its next round of room redos. If the normal project cadence is followed, that’ll also be a hard goods refurbishment and could last until early 2027.
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Your Thoughts
Do you like the Royal Rooms at Port Orleans Riverside? Would you prefer this type of highly-detailed style, or prefer something more subtle like the new rooms at French Quarter? Hoping Magnolia gets something like the ‘Under the Sea’ rooms at Caribbean Beach (but themed differently)? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment of the Royal Rooms at Disney’s Port Orleans Resort – Riverside? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!