The Murphy Bed in the 5-Person Alligator Bayou Rooms at Port Orleans Riverside

By Dave Shute

THE REFURBISHED 5 PERSON ROOMS AT PORT ORLEANS RIVERSIDE

The only standard moderate resort rooms at Walt Disney World that can sleep five are in the Alligator Bayou section at Port Orleans Riverside.

Both the Port Orleans resorts have been refurbished over the past 18 months or so (for details, see this), with the main improvement being the replacement of the old full beds with queens.

In addition, the rooms in the Alligator Bayou section of Riverside, which used to sleep a fifth person on a trundle bed, now sleep the fifth person on a mini-Murphy bed.

I’ve finally had a chance to stay in one of these refurbished rooms.  I’ll post a full review later this month, but wanted to get the details on the new mini-Murphy out now.

THE SLEEPING SPOT FOR A FIFTH PERSON AT ALLIGATOR BAYOU

Alligator Bayou rooms now have two queens that face an object with a TV on it. See the floor plan above and the image to the right.

I’m not quite sure what to call this object. It’s both too narrow and too rectilinear to call it a couch or a daybed, even though it does have a cushion above its row of three low drawers.  It feels more like a church pew with cushions than anything else.

I suppose for really little kids with really remarkable posture this object could serve as a seating area.

But what this object really is is the frame for a Murphy bed.

Unfolded, the Murphy bed is about 66″ long by 31″ wide.  The cushion is a quite-comfortable 5″ deep.  And the whole bed is backed by a darling picture of a sleeping gator.

This bed is too short for me too have tested it by sleeping on it.  But I did hang out on it reading for about 30 minutes, and it was comfortable from beginning to end.

The bed is supported both by hardware and by the “church pew” (being cantilevered over the side of the “pew”), so I think it could hold any kid short enough to be comfortable on it.  Although I measured it as about 66″ long, you probably want to save it for kids 5 feet tall or shorter.

The moderate rooms are quite spacious for the price, so the Murphy Bed fits into the room just fine.

Even unfolded, there’s an easy 30″ between it and the queen beds, meaning that moving around the room isn’t impeded at all.

However, once the bed is down, you do lose access to the only real drawers in the room.

The room already lost a lot of drawers in the conversion of this part of the room from a dresser/TV credenza to a Murphy bed with a TV above and three drawers below.  The placement of the new Murphy Bed basically means you’ve got to be done using these drawers for the night before you pull the bed down.

And since the odds are that, because of its size, this bed will sleep your supreme (that is, youngest) sleepy-head, that means being done with the drawers before the first person in your family goes to sleep.

All in, I’m not sure shifting from the old trundle bed to the new Murphy bed is much of a plus for 5 person families, and is a clear loss–because of the reduction in drawers–for families that don’t need either because they can fit into the two queens.

The old trundle bed had issues too for families that used it: it subjected its inhabitant to being stepped on, made one side of its associated full bed awkward to get into and out of, and blocked the connecting door–see the image of the old bed system.

But it didn’t cost any drawers, and didn’t require careful drawer management before going to bed!

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