I happened to be on eBay this morning as part of my recurring search for any Dino-Rama / DINOLAND memorabilia that might be cool enough to buy, and I came across a substantial number of listings that basically comprised an entire Royal Guest Room at Port Orleans Riverside.
We previously reviewed a Royal Guest Room and the entire Port Orleans Riverside resort here. My feedback at the time (years ago) included:
Now, these rooms are certain to impress kids. Adults might be a bit more on the fence. Yes, there are some cool features, but unfortunately the closer you look the more disappointing the room becomes.
These rooms are starting to show their age (going on seven years). If Disney refurbished these, I’d come back in a heartbeat to see what they came up with. As they are, I’ll be waiting at least until I have a prince or princess of my own.
Fast forward to 2024, when Disney announced that Port Orleans Riverside’s Magnolia Bend rooms, the set of rooms that contains all the Royal Guest Rooms, would be getting refurbished.
Disney has not said anything about the Royal Guest Rooms specifically, but these eBay listings suggest that any sort of “soft” or minor refurbishment is out of the question. I normally wouldn’t care much about eBay listings alone, but this accords with other rumors, along with the simple fact that the rooms are aged well beyond a soft refurbishment at this point.
As of today, I’m still seeing availability for these rooms in May, but they seems to disappear at some point in the summer, suggesting their closure will occur in the next few months. This brings us to the real question—what will happen to these rooms? There are probably two (and a half) possibilities.
First, these rooms could retain their “Royal” theming while getting overhauled. This is the outcome I hope for, but it’s tough to know what it would actually look like.
At the time I last visited these rooms there was a lack of truly “themed” rooms at Disney World. You basically had the kitschy rooms at the value resorts (Art of Animation, particularly), the Pirate Rooms at Caribbean Beach, and these Royal rooms.
But the recent trend (mostly at the deluxe resorts, FWIW) has been the debut of very well-themed rooms, like the Incredibles rooms at Contemporary, Moana rooms at Polynesian, Mary Poppins rooms at Grand Floridian, and the Under the Sea rooms at Caribbean Beach. Even French Quarter’s rooms got a shift toward Princess and the Frog.
Prior to the debuts of those rooms, the Royal Rooms really stood out. Nowadays, I think it would be more of a challenge to create a room with the same distinctive flair as the old Royal Rooms that doesn’t wind up going too over the top. It’s a tougher needle to thread.
This is why I mentioned a “half” possibility—these rooms will retain some special theming, but it won’t be Royal or it will be Royal, but not as over-the-top as it was before. This would basically mean taking the blueprint that has worked for the modern rooms at Disney World and plugging the “royal” theme (or some other theme) into it.
If it seems like I’m making distinctions without real differences, I’ll give you two rooms to contrast—the Little Mermaid Rooms at Art of Animation and the Under the Sea rooms at Caribbean Beach. The old Royal Guest Rooms at Riverside were analogous to the Little Mermaid Rooms—over-the-top, smack-you-in-the-face theming. Whatever replaces them will follow the more modern trend seen in the Under the Sea rooms.
The other possibility is that the rooms are eliminated entirely, replaced by standard Magnolia Bend rooms. I can’t say the likelihood of this, simply because it seems to be a relatively niche business issue. I was surprised to see the high-quality Under the Sea rooms show up at Caribbean Beach, but I’m not sure that bodes in either direction for the future of the Riverside rooms, especially as new economic and competitive forces come into play.
Finally, it’s possible we’ll see a mix of these two options. Riverside could reduce the number of Royal Guest Rooms while still keeping some with unique theming. This strikes me as the least likely option just given economies of scale, but again, it’s a niche business point that depends on factors I’m not privy to.
Whatever the case, I have to say I’m not too sad to see these rooms go. I was always very conflicted about them. On the one hand, they were truly something special. They had an aesthetic that some people thought was the most Disney aesthetic of any Disney hotel rooms. But even several years ago they were far past their prime, both conceptually and physically. A discerning eye (maybe even an average eye) was going to find clear fault once they started looking at the rooms. I hope they get a worthy replacement, but either way—it was a Royally fun time when they were around.
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