{travel} Disney Hotels - Riviera Resort

Since it's Thursday, I decided to do a throwback to our stay at Disney's Riviera Resort. It is a goal of mine to stay at (almost) all of the Walt Disney World Resort hotels. So far I've stayed at eight of the twenty, not counting Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser or doubles of the same hotel (BoardWalk Inn vs BoardWalk Villas.) There are different levels of resorts - Value, Moderate, Deluxe, Deluxe Villas (DVC) and Campgrounds. My current list, in alphabetical order:

All-Star Movies Resort - Value
Animal Kingdom Lodge Villas (Jambo House) - Deluxe Villa/DVC
Art of Animation Resort - Value
BoardWalk Villas - Deluxe Villa/DVC
Port Orleans Resort - French Quarter - Moderate
Port Orleans Resort - Riverside - Moderate
Pop Century Resort - Value
Riviera Resort - Deluxe Villa/DVC

I thought it would be fun to take you along with me to each of the hotels, starting with Riviera Resort where we stayed for one night on our recent anniversary trip in September. This is a Deluxe resort so it is one of the more expensive on property. In order to stay here we rented someone's Disney Vacation Club points, aka DVC, to save some money. We paid $280 for the night versus $681 if we bought directly from Disney. Still a splurge but fun for a night!

When staying at a deluxe resort you have access to Extended Evening Hours at Magic Kingdom and EPCOT on select nights (sometimes they throw in a Hollywood Studios night too.) On the night we stayed we were able to go to Magic Kingdom from 11pm - 1am after the park closed to regular day guests. Staying at ANY Disney resort hotel gets you Early Theme Park Entry where you can enter any park a half an hour before the official opening time.

Now on to the good part - the hotel! Riviera Resort, which opened in December 2019, is the only full DVC hotel at Disney World. This means all the rooms will have kitchenettes and be slightly larger than normal hotel rooms. You do not need to be a DVC member to book these rooms, but they will be more expensive paying cash vs points. You will also have access to the Disney Skyliner in addition to buses for transportation to and from the parks.

The resort was inspired by Europe and the Mediterranean so there will be touches all over the hotel referencing that. One of my favorite parts of the hotel is the Peter Pan and Tangled tile mosaics when you enter the resort from the Skyliner.

Speaking of artwork - this hotel is allllll about the art. The hallways and rooms are full of beautiful Disney-inspired paintings. And the best part? You can buy anything you see at the resort - none of it is available online so you must visit Riviera Resort to purchase which makes it even more special. I took advantage of this in September 2021 to buy a Wall-E & Eve canvas. We made a special trip to the hotel just so I could order it. The process is fairly simple:

To purchase you must visit the Riviera Resort gift shop and find the “Art on Demand” Kiosk to select your artwork. You can customize the size, type of print (canvas or paper,) frame, etc. At this kiosk you can purchase all of the art seen throughout the hotel! We chose a 15 3/4 x 28 inch canvas with no frame.The receipt stated it would be delivered in 2-3 weeks but ours arrived just 12 days after we made our purchase.

The moment you walk out of the bus or off the Skyliner you instantly feel transported to a new place. The hotel feels super luxurious and relaxing. I wish we had more time to explore every inch but we got to the resort at 7pm and left fairly early the next morning. It was a bit of a last minute stay when our flight changed, ha ha. The morning we left we made sure to check out the offerings at Le Petit Café and walk around the neighboring library/lounge. It would be the perfect place to get some work done or just relax.

We didn't have time to visit their main restaurant Topolino's Terrace – Flavors of the Riviera on this trip, but we'll use it as an excuse to visit again. Even if we don't stay there we can make a reservation to dine with Mickey and friends! They have a character breakfast with Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy and a more upscale dinner. The dinner is a "Signature" dining experience so there are higher prices and a dress code. If you're not into characters or fancy dining they have a quick service restaurant as well as a bakery.

Here is a quick walk-through of our Deluxe Studio as well as some more photos from the resort below. We paid for a standard view room but we ended up having a look at EPCOT's geodesic sphere, aka Spaceship Earth. I was very pleased!