WDW Magazine April 2018: Beaches and Bayous | Page 124

PORT ORLEANS RIVERSIDE The lobby at Port Orleans Riverside is modeled after the inside of an actual riverboat! If you look up, you’ll see the ports of call listed around the tops of the columns: Riverside, French Quarter, Gretna, Chalmette, Port Eads, St. Louis, Sainte Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, Cairo, New Madrid, Caruthersville, Memphis, Helena, Greenville, Vicksburg, Vidalia, Natchez, and Baton Rouge. (Look for Hidden Mickeys in the wood latticework above these listed destinations and on either side of the giant fans!) The partially built sailboat, inside Boatwright’s Dining Hall, is an authentic reproduction of the flat-bottom New Orleans Lugger that sailed the Mississippi River in the 1820’s. Robert Fulton is whom Fulton’s General Store is named after. In 1807, he built the first commercial steamboat, the North River Steamboat, later known as the Clermont. PHOTO BY MIKE BILLICK