Disney's Port Orleans Resort - French Quarter — Hotel in Lake Buena Vista

We just spent 14 nights here for our 25th wedding anniversary, after spending 17 nights here in 2018 and having a fantastic time. So we couldn't have been more devastated to find how much it had changed.

We asked for a quiet room, away from the busier areas and were happy when we arrived and were in Building 1, but things quickly went downhill. We had a lot of issues but the main issue we had was big lorries, arriving during the night, in the car park we were overlooking (this is also overlooked by building 3 and partly building 2) waking us up.

We were woken before 6am about 10 of 14 of our holiday by lorries arriving, doing 3 point turns with their warning beeps going and then loading and unloading laundry in the customer car parking outside customer rooms. As well as that we were woken during the night by lorries delivering plant machinery in the same car park.

When I first spoke to management about it, the manager on shift (I wont mention her name on here) said she would check it out and come back to me. 24 hours later I had heard nothing and had to follow up. She said had checked and there was nothing found by engineering but offered to move us to a pool view room (this took a week to happen). I pointed out that there was construction work going on in building 5 overlooking the pool and that was even noisier all day. She said she would look into it but wanted us to have a magical time and to leave it with her and she would come back to me. I never heard from her again.

I took photos of videos of the lorries over the next few days to show management but You can't call the managers, you have to go to reception every time you want to speak to them, which is frequently understaffed and you need to wait. It was really frustrating and just took up so much time, with the other issues we had as well.

I finally got hold of the lead manager a couple of days later after they left a voicemail. He said he had asked his staff to get him out of a meeting if I came over but they forgot. I explained our issues with all the things that had happened. I showed him the video of the lorry doing a 3 point turn outside our room and 5 50am and he said “Oh thats just a Disney Houskeeping lorry!”.

The managers view was that we had been offered a room change so little they could do.I said building 2 was right by the construction work and he said “No the building work is right across the other side of the hotel” I told him we had tried to sit by the pool the day before and had to leave after 15 minutes because they were doing construction work overlooking the pool in building 5 with no sound, privacy or dust screening while drilling etc. I said using the app ‘sound mate’ I happened to have on my phone I had recorded sound levels of up to 94db in the final minute before we left and I didnt want to move closer to that. We are on a 2 week break and want to relax! He said “Oh maybe you are right, it is that building!” For reference, there are 2 other buildings closed for construction work.

I asked if he thought I was being unreasonable to complain about being woken before 6am most mornings and he paused and said “Well my Mum gets a bit like this….” As someone who just retired, I found this rude, insulting and patronising. I then said would think its ok for heavy plant machinery to be driven around outside his room before 8am? (the hotel quiet hours are supposed to be 11pm to 9am), he said “No” but he was happy for it to happen to his clients.He came back to us and offered us a room at an inferior resort. We refused and just made the best of our holiday after that. I never heard from the managers again and the issues just continued.

You learn a lot about Hotels and companies when you have issues. This was my 6th visit to a Disney hotel and we had never had an issue before but this has taught us a severe and expensive lesson on our 25th wedding anniversary so we won’t forget quickly.

I gave the hotel 2 stars because the food is comparatively good and the housekeeping and restaurant staff are really nice and very...

The wife and I spent 5 nights at POFQ in early May to do an adults trip. We had stayed there around 14 years ago with our son, and remembered that we liked the smallness of it and location was good for EPCOT and MK. We also had read the rooms were updated and that was a draw, they were which was why I almost gave it a 5 star. ||The room was so freshly updated it smelled pleasantly of fresh paint. The renovation to new furniture, updated bathroom, USB ports in several spots, raised bed for easy luggage storage, hard surface flooring as opposed to carpet were all well thought out and imagineered. The bed was comfortable and a/c worked really well. The shower water pressure was also good and we always love a double sink. There is plenty of storage too. We had a corner room and the morning light was great, the hot tub and main building was right across the street from us. Zero complaints about the room. The resort had some good points as well. The pool area was large for a small resort and we never had a problem finding a lounger. The pool bar was great! The regular day and evening bartenders were very friendly and knowledgeable about lots of things Disney. The frozen Irish Coffee was my favorite and reminded me of Molly’s on the Market’s version in NOLA. The hot tub area had a lot of debris in it, and I feel like could have been better maintained. Also, I think they should keep the last hour open as adults only as younger kids were in there until close every night and took up the whole tub. The food court area was just okay. We realize they have to mass produce food so our expectations were not super high. However, if they promote authentic food they have some work to do. The bread for po boys is way too dense and soft. The beignets were just donuts with powdered sugar on them, very bready. The beef po boy has almost no gravy and that’s what makes the sandwich. The fries and basic breakfast options were good (when warm) tho, and we always found something to eat that did the trick. The drinks area was good, although they could use a second ice machine. The inside bar was hit or miss. The advertised music didn’t happen a couple nights. We had one great server, one disappeared for a long time and another who was just inattentive. The drinks were okay. The staff were all friendly as you would expect from Disney, although some seemed like they didn’t want to be there. Bus service worked well, and the video boards with ETA’s was fairly accurate. We wanted to take the boat to Disney Springs but both times they were not in service due to weather issues. If you need to get to a different resort, using an Uber is an efficient option. We had dinner at the Yacht Club one night and it cost like $8. Way worth it. We also cane back from the Polynesian via Uber after a monorail bar crawl. And it cost...

French Quarter was smaller than riverside in Port Orleans and work very well overall due to this. ||Pro’s |Buses - one stop to get to parks. Never too busy bar two reasons, 1 being preempted and two MK buses rolled up for one morning slot. ||Resort mugs , had with our package saved loads.||Dining plan for quick service, worked really well for us but is a downside. Again got in our U.K. based booking. ||Location, well placed for all parks and springs. ||Staff in the main. ||Cons|Buses - never enough put on for peak return times from parks, E.G. post fireworks. Longer waits compared to other hotels but the pro ‘s might be the reasons.||Busses to water parks. No direct bus makes zero sense. ||Dinning plan, why can you not swap adult meals to kids meals. Not everyone wants to pig out on the 75% fast fatty food on offer. Also when you have meals credits, you should be able to swap those to snakes. We had loads left over and server said he would get in trouble putting snakes through as meals and no option to swap. So we literately binning food to get drinks . Total waste Disney and you’re trying to promote recycling and sustainability. Well your policies, process and systems don’t live up to that view.||Restaurant staff management l. Poor, don’t bother ordering a birthday Mickey Some cake here. Ruined wife’s birthday surprise. Ordered a week in advance any they never put the order in. Not there anymore n the morning. Then after looking around and saying that riverside hadn’t sent it, the manageress said she could get it that day but I explained we were out all day so do not bother, they then charged my room for the cake after the details the manager Robi took were used as the lady didn’t listen. Only glade I went to complained lain to the front desk later that day as there is no opposite to a cast compliment in the app, the chat service said talk to the desk. They must have wipe the charge as was zeroed out when checking on check out as showed. The manager at the front desk when I asked to make sure we were not charged and no the cake was no longer wanted as we source another in Disney springs , must have arranged some snacks with a mug that were left in the room with a birthday message which did put a smile on my wife’s face after the ruined morning. ||Restaurant is too small and not enough table and chairs. | No outside social areas other than a few park benches. Nothing near the rooms. ||Weird room layout. ||Cons always seem to take up more text. Overall great choice to stay. Nice staff in general, great facilities and location. Not perfect...