Caribbean Beach Resort Construction Report: October 2018
Walt Disney World’s largest hotel construction project, the re-imagining of Caribbean Beach Resort, is nearly completed! In this post, we’ll share photos of the new Old Port Royale area, including Sebastian’s Bistro, Banana Cabana, and Centertown Market. We’ll also offer thoughts on the new waterfront area and share insight as to whether it’s “safe” to book a stay at Caribbean Beach now.
We have a lot of ground to cover, but before we get started, some background is probably in order for those of you joining these updates already in progress. Caribbean Beach’s re-imagining began last spring, and was originally scheduled to finish about 6 months later. Here we are 18 months later, and the project is finally starting to wrap up–with the new check-in at Old Port Royale and dining opening officially on October 8, 2018.
For a basic primer on Caribbean Beach, including a look inside the guest rooms (all of which were refurbished only a few years ago), read our comprehensive Caribbean Beach Resort Review. Up until now, the biggest addition to come from the re-imagining is new Spyglass Grill (which we reviewed in full here).
In our September 2018 Caribbean Beach Resort Construction Update, I remarked that I was really excited (a little too excited, perhaps) when I saw the construction walls were down. I also closed by saying that we were really eager to return to Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, and we’d likely book a return stay in January or February.
I lied. Well, lie is probably a bit strong of a word, as that was my intent at the time. To make a long story short, we “needed” to book a short stay, Caribbean Beach was a good option, so we decided to roll the dice. At the time, we didn’t have any intel that Old Port Royale would be open, but I was holding out hope in the back of my mind.
I was really optimistic, having heard rumors that the internal goal was a quiet opening of Old Port Royale on October 1, about a week before our stay. That date came and went, and then Walt Disney World announced the official opening date of October 8, 2018. That meant we’d miss everything by a day, but I still figured there’d be a few days of soft openings for the restaurants.
In about the worst twist of luck possible, that didn’t happen before we checked out. On a positive note, we were upgraded to a preferred room in Martinique (I believe this classification for those rooms just returned, but I could be wrong). This location near the beach was perfect for me to obsessively check whether the planters “guarding” the walkway to Centertown had been removed.
Those planters were practically taunting me–just a couple of them standing between me and the new area. I could’ve easily walked right around them and had an up-close look at the finished Centertown dining, but I restrained myself. (Ironically, during our last visit, this walkway had been open with some actual construction walls up around Centertown Market.)
The bigger disappointment was having to use Custom House. I guess it was nice to see it “one last time” but I probably could’ve done without that. On the morning of check-out, I had to drop off luggage at Bell Services before going to the park. That meant taking an internal bus to Custom House, taking a bus back, and then switching.
This may not seem that tedious, but the whole process took 78 minutes from the time I exited the room until getting on a park-bound bus. If Old Port Royale were open, it would’ve taken ~15 minutes.
That aside, it was really good to be back at Caribbean Beach Resort. In addition to the upgrade to Martinique, we received a first-floor corner room, which meant two windows. We got lucky with this same configuration at Port Orleans French Corner this summer (I wrote about it here) and I’m a big fan.
I spend a decent amount of time working in the room, and having two windows while sitting at the table is nice. It makes the room airier and less claustrophobic.
The new-look of Old Port Royale, at least on the exterior, is nice and meshes perfectly with the existing atmosphere of Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort.
It remains to be seen if that holds true inside. The concept art has a bit of an overly ‘modern chic’ style to it, but everything else with the style of the re-imagined resort has looked good.
Same story with Banana Cabana and Sebastian’s Bistro. The exteriors look good, but how well the interiors work in person remains to be seen. From concept art, Sebastian’s Bistro appears to have a pretty generic vibe.
On the plus side, the menu for Sebastian’s Bistro looks very promising. We can’t wait to dine there.
Likewise, the exterior for Centertown Market looks nice.
Lots of nice detail-work and texture to these facades–hopefully it has a nice marketplace vibe inside, too.
Another thing that was great about the visit was being there over the weekend. With no construction on the Skyliner or Riviera Resort, sitting in a hammock on the beach was once again serene.
Only the faint sound of background music was audible, and this was exactly the relaxing tropical vibe I came to love about Caribbean Beach in the first place.
The jury is still out for me on the long term impact of Disney’s Riviera Resort next door and the Skyliner overhead.
For us, the transportation upsides of the Skyliner far outweigh the visual blight it adds, but the Riviera is a potentially different story. At least it’s not as tall as the Coronado Springs tower, I guess.
As we noted in the last update, the Skyliner pillars are all now up, and landscaping around them is mostly restored. This means that the ground around these is no longer all torn up, which is a plus.
We’ll have an update soon on the Skyliner station construction progress.
Signage is in the process of being replaced–several trucks from a local sign company were present on Friday and by Saturday afternoon a lot of new signs were already up.
One sign that had been installed but not yet “revealed” is the new entrance marquee on Victory Way. We saw this beginning to go up and later covered with black tarps.
I know you’re sitting on pins and needles, unable to wait until tomorrow to know what this new entrance marquee looks like. Based on the glimpses I saw, the logo in the top right corner of the welcome paper above is likely the resort’s new logo and marquee.
We’ve commented on it before, but the letter on the left is something that greets guests in every resort room now, and is a nice touch in terms of soliciting guest feedback.
I have a ton more sunrise, sunset, and night shots of Caribbean Beach, but I’ll save those for a future post as I still need to comb through and edit them all. So stay tuned for that if you want some non-construction photos.
Finally, we’ll conclude this update the way we always do, answering whether you should stay at Caribbean Beach Resort? So long as you aren’t bothered by work continuing on the Disney Skyliner gondola stations and Disney’s Riviera Resort, both of which will remain under construction through at least Spring 2019. However, the gondola stations and Riviera Resort are on the perimeter of Caribbean Beach, and should not be all that intrusive to the guest experience.
Accordingly, we think it’s safe to book Caribbean Beach Resort now for all future travel dates from a perspective of construction. The Old Port Royale and Centertown projects are wrapped up, and that will significantly improve the ambiance and guest experience at Caribbean Beach Resort. With the new food court, table service restaurant, and Spyglass Grill, Caribbean Beach has excellent dining options.
The only downside is that the Skyliner gondolas won’t be running until Summer 2019 (our prediction—Walt Disney World has not made an official announcement). Even that has an upside, in that you won’t be paying higher room rates that are an inevitability once the gondola system debuts.
Overall, it was a great stay at Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort, even without the new dining and Old Port Royale being open. Not only do we once again recommend staying here, but unless something goes terribly wrong with the new restaurants, Caribbean Beach is likely to once again reclaim its throne as our favorite Moderate Resort at Walt Disney World. This was a position it held (shortly) following the resort’s “Polynesian-Lite” room refurbishments, but lost during this construction.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you excited to check out the new Sebastian’s Bistro or Centertown Market? Do you agree or disagree with our take on the construction impact on Disney’s Caribbean Beach Resort? Have you stayed here since the work began? How did it affect your stay? Planning on staying at Caribbean Beach in late 2018 or early 2019, or will you wait until the Skyliner is operating? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Thanks for the updates. My daughter just upgraded us to Caribbean for December and now I’m so excited and can’t wait. We’ve tried wilderness cabins, pop, and Orleans and I’ve loved them all. Disney elderly addict!
Thank you for all of the information you provide. We (Family of 6) were told not to book two rooms here because it is so torn up from construction. We will be booking two queen rooms at Port Orleans Riverside Dec 31st-Jan 5th. We still have time to change. So since you are familiar with all the Moderat resorts which would you choose? CBR or Port Orleans Riverside…..a big plus is how easy it is to get bus transportation and not gave to stop at a million stops.
Thank you for you posts and answers.
I can’t wait to be at CBR over Easter weekend 2019!! Does anyone have any insight as to whether a preferred room is worth the increased cost? Our water view rooms were $228 per night and it would be $20 more per night for the preferred. For a 4 night stay, is it worth it?
Hearing lots of good things about Sebastian’s too. For the price, I think CBR is a steal for early 2019 right now.
Thanks again Tom for all the work and great info!
I think it really depends upon how much you’ll want to visit Old Port Royale. Will you be dining there once per day or more? You’ll probably save yourself a bit of walking that way, but keep in mind you can always make a room request for a water view room that’s nearer Old Port Royale.
Sebastian’s Bistro
We had a chance to visit Sebastian’s Bistro just a few days after opening since we were at the Walt Disney World resort. We were not staying on the resort so we dove to our reservation.
Finding the restaurant was not easy at all. We saw zero signs telling us where to go or any help on where to park. We wound up parking and walked to find the restaurant. Fortunately there were plenty of cast members to help us along the way.
Check in was easy as the restaurant was mostly empty. The restaurant is much smaller than I expected. Seems to only have seating for 100 total inside with a large out side bar.
For a restaurant called Sebastian’s Bistro there is a strong lack of theming. There are two paintings with Sebastian, but besides that there’s nothing else. This could easily be any Caribbean themed restaurant. There is a strong lack of the Disney touch.
The menu is a bit small but has a little bit of everything you can imagine Caribbean related. Price point seems about average for a Walt Disney World experience.
We had a forty (40) minute wait for two burgers. My friend ordered the avocado burger and loved it. It’s a chimichurri and beef mix. It was cooked right and even though it was so big he had to take it apart to eat , it was well received.
My order was a big regret. I ordered the crab cake burger. I ordered it medium but was served more than well done. Not wanting an extremely long wait for a new one I went with my order. The burger was very disappointing. Besides the crab cake on top there was zero flavor to the meat. For ordering one of the most expensive items on the menu I am extremely disappointed.
The restraunt took note of the problems and took care of the cost of the burger. While the ambiance / atmosphere of the restaurant is good. I haven’t found anything that is particularly worth a return trip.
Thanks for the updates!
We are looking forward for our honeymoon there next year.
Cant wait 🙂
A bit of a random question – is the in-room dining (pizza) now being delivered from on-site as opposed to another resort?
Just left CBR Sept. 30th so we just missed the opening. Oh well, we had a great time anyway!!
While many of the Sebastian’s lunch menu options look good to me, I’m surprised there aren’t more choices of the “less-island-y” variety. If even one person in a party is looking for something a bit more plain, the whole group would have to eat elsewhere. And the Lunch Mains? Of the 7 options, 4 are kale and 2 are jerk chicken. The sandwich options don’t fare much better in terms of simpler palates. Perhaps adults will be ordering from the children’s menu! I know Disney’s version of spice, etc is muted, but I can see this menu causing many to turn away.
Hey Tom Thanks for all the info. We’re planning another trip next year in early September. Really hoping the gondola will be up and running by then. The one big issue with me is having to look at the Riviera across the lake. I always liked the privacy of the Caribbean Beach Resort. CBR and Beach Club are my favorite hotels. Stayed in Jamaica, Aruba and Martinique several times. What do you mean when you said you upgraded to Martinique? We didn’t pay anything extra to stay there. Looking forward to you next messages.
I just watched a video tour of the renovated rooms. They look very classy, which I love. I think they missed the mark on storage from what I could see. The renovated rooms at Pop Century have awesome storage. They should have done the same at Caribbean Beach.
The rooms at Caribbean Beach were renovated before Pop Century’s rooms. I think had the order been reversed, you’d see the same in the new CBR rooms, as that has been the trend of late.
Thank you so much for all of your updates! We’re headed there in November and I’ve been keeping a close eye on your website and updates. I’m going to put a room request in (standard room) for a general area of the resort. Are there any areas to still stay away from do you think?
This is my families first time there (I’ve been, but family hasn’t) and I would hate for it to be a bad experience – thank you!
Do you think they will leave the mug refill stations in some of the ice machine rooms? I’m guessing no, but it was so convenient!
That remains to be seen–I sure hope so!
Would you recommend Caribbean Beach or Wilderness Lodge?
Those are perhaps two of the least comparable resorts at Walt Disney World in terms of theme, layout, etc., so I can’t really say.
If money is no issue, I’d choose Wilderness Lodge.
My family of 5 stayed at The Caribbean last week, and we weren’t bothered by the construction at all. We were also upgraded to the Martinique. I loved that they have make-up mirrors in the rooms-that’s pretty hard to find in hotels. The Spyglass Grill food was awesome. And the pool at the resort was fantastic, as was the staff. All in all, it was a great experience.
We have 5 adult-sized people staying in one room at CBR. The murphy bed will be too small for any of us. Will the rooms accommodate a twin sized air mattress on the floor?
Yes it will. You can also order roll away beds (for a cost) which ate similar sized. We’ve had them in our room by moving the table over and they fit fine.
Donna-Thanks! I was told we CAN’T order roll away beds for fire code reasons?
Did you get your’s from Disney or an outside company?
REALLY appreciate the info. We were really concerned about the sleeping arrangements.
Yes, they will. But you will have to be sure to deflate when not in use, as there is not much space around it while it is down. And it poses a challenge in the event of an emergency, so you and your room mates must plan with this in mind should anything happen and you need to exit rapidly. Have a magical time!
I’m not sure–it’ll be a tight fit if so. Those rooms would be unpleasantly crowded with 5 adults either way.
Tom and married-understood and thanks. We have experience with tight rooms given we are a family of five so we’re kind of used to it. We’ll only be in the room to sleep anyway, so we should be fine.
Thanks for the advise and info!
We have never stayed at CB before construction, but stayed twice this last year during the construction. We liked the little island markets in each section in a refurbed room- is that a permanent thing or will those close as construction finishes?
Those are now closed as of today.
No, only the market in Martinique is closed, the others remain open. This makes sense; Martinique is half the size it was before the Riviera construction, and it is right nest to Centertown.
Thanks for the update. We have ADRs at Sebastian’s in January. Really looking forward to trying it out!
Would you recommend Coronodo Springs or Caribbean Beach for a stay this coming March?
Caribbean Beach, without a doubt.
I far prefer CBR to begin with, but Coronado is also more likely to be feeling impacts of construction at that time.
Whooohooo! We are arriving this Friday! Awesome news and thanks for the update! The remaining construction won’t bother us a bit.
Thanks for the update! We’re staying later this month and didn’t expect the OPR/Centertown construction to be complete by our visit so this is a huge bonus!