Walt Disney World has announced a slew of resort refurbishments and other construction projects at Walt Disney World for 2025 & 2026. One of the most notable of these updates is to the guest rooms at Pop Century Resort, which were “recently” reimagined but are somehow already due for another refresh. This shares dates, details, and our commentary about the likely scope, scale, and impacts of the work.
As suggested above, this is the first of a few projects that were just announced, with Port Orleans and Wilderness Lodge also receiving similar bulletins about projects in the pipeline. (More on those very soon in separate posts.) These probably are not the only hotel renovations on the horizon, either–just the ones that have start dates in early 2025. Keep an eye on our Walt Disney World Hotel Construction Tracker for further updates.
The last few years have thrown a monkey wrench into Walt Disney World hotel refresh timelines, with several resort refurbishments being delayed due to the closure and the pent-up demand in its aftermath. The good news is that this hasn’t been as bad on the hotel side as with DVC properties, so Walt Disney World won’t be spending the next few years playing catch-up, but between a few postponed projects and the likelihood of larger-scale reimaginings and new construction, there’s likely a lot on the horizon.
Let’s start with the official announcement from Walt Disney World about the Pop Century room redo:
From late March 2025 to mid-February 2026, guest rooms at Disney’s Pop Century Resort will undergo refurbishment. While all resort amenities will remain available, you may notice construction during daytime hours.
For those keeping score at home, the “new” rooms at Pop Century debuted in 2017. So not exactly new, hence the air quotes. They still feel recently-redone to me. And in the grand scheme of things, these rooms were “recently” redone relative to Walt Disney World’s opening 50-plus years ago or the dawn of recorded civilization. As I get older, it seems time is flying by, but I also blame the COVID closure…it’s warped my sense of what’s old vs. new. Anyway.
It’s a near-certainty that the Pop Century guest room refurbishment will be a smaller scale refresh rather than a top-to-bottom reimagining. You’ve probably seen the term “soft goods” refurbishment. This typically means updating furnishings, including but not limited to wall coverings, flooring, linens, decor, and some furniture.
The definition of a soft goods refurbishment is a bit nebulous, and has meant more ambitious projects in recent years for some resorts. Some resorts have received soft goods refurbishments in the last few years that included installation of the new pull-down beds. Others have swapped out almost all of the furnishings and furniture, giving totally new looks to the rooms.
In some cases, the results were almost unrecognizable as compared to what was there before. Well, within reason. They were hotel rooms both before and after, and did retain some of the fixtures and beds. Still, a lot more than you’d expect for a soft goods refurbishment.
Others have simply refreshed the decor and infused more personality into the rooms by adding character art, more color, and little details. These rooms would very much be recognizable in a before vs. after comparison, but were still incremental improvements.
In my view, that’s the one commonality–that virtually all of the room refurbishment projects in the last several years have improved upon their predecessors. Not all of them have been perfect (far from it), but they’ve been upgrades for the most part. Fans might disagree with this, but we’re often viewing these changes through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.
What’s interesting about Disney’s Pop Century Resort is that the 2017 reimagining was one of the very first ‘modern’ generation of resort room designs. Prior to this, I’d argue that Walt Disney World room redos were heading in the wrong direction with overly generic and homogenized styles and no functional improvements to otherwise justify the bland designs.
Pop Century’s redone rooms offered massive improvements to make them fresh and functional, with a bunch of clever space-saving design features added. While the footprint is still the same, the resulting rooms feel much larger. There’s more storage, one of the beds folds up into the wall to reveal a table, and much more.
For the most part, the new layout has been uncontroversial with Walt Disney World fans. The design improvements have been so well-received among guests that the exact same layout was subsequently adopted at all three of the All Stars. Multiple managers at the Value Resorts, have indicated to us that guest feedback has been almost unanimously positive.
As such, I would not expect Walt Disney World to mess with the layout of the rooms at Pop Century. Between this being a soft goods refurbishment and guest response being positive, I’d have to imagine that Disney will take a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” approach to the layout of the rooms. In all likelihood, the layout of the circa 2025-2026 Pop Century rooms will basically be what you see here.
The style is a totally different story. If I had a nickel for every fan who described the 2017 Pop Century rooms as bland, boring, sterile, hospital-like, antiseptic, bare, or dystopian…I’d have at least $5. Which isn’t a lot of money, but it’s nevertheless a lot of nickels.
While I personally think some of those terms are a bit overly-dramatic (dystopian…really?!) and also require serious sentimentality towards the old rooms, I get the perspective. The current rooms do have a lot of white. They’re kinda like mid-mid-century modern, which is to say that they’re a half-measure for actual mid-century modern design. They could use more pops of color, another piece of art or two, and slightly more stylized furniture. Suffice to say, they’re no Cabana Bay Beach Resort at Universal Orlando.
Given that, there’s room for further incremental improvements with the 2025-2026 Disney’s Pop Century Resort room refurbishment. I’d caution against expecting any sweeping changes, but more color and other changes to address guest quibbles with these being bland and boring is certainly within reason. Painting the wall behind the television red or light blue would alone do wonders. This is what other soft goods refurbishments have done, so there’s certainly precedent for it.
With that said, that precedent is not at the Value Resorts, so temper expectations accordingly. It’s possible that Walt Disney World won’t want to make the Value Resort rooms “too nice” as a means of differentiating the tiers. Beyond that, it’s probable that Disney won’t do anything that increases routine maintenance or upkeep costs. If you have grandiose ideas of elaborate decor that won’t handle wear and tear, you might want to abandon those.
Speaking of which, it’s entirely possible that’s what this soft goods refurbishment is all about–giving the rooms a fresh coat of paint, fixing ordinary wear and tear, and restoring the rooms to their 2017 appearance. It’s entirely possible that there aren’t any aesthetic changes at all. That the current rooms are already well-received, and do a pretty good job of handling guest use and abuse.
These rooms do a great job of concealing wear and tear–there are other resorts with redone rooms that are several years newer but already look worse! Disney did a good job of choosing durable materials, and of the last dozen Value Resort rooms I’ve stayed in, only one has looked worse for wear. (With that said, I’ve been staying at All Star Sports more than anywhere else, and those are several years newer than Pop Century.)
From a practical perspective, it’s likely that the 2025-2026 guest room project at Pop Century will be done building-by-building. This is pretty standard, and has meant that Walt Disney World takes an entire building out of the room inventory, overhauls it all at once, and then reopens that building.
This is done to minimize the construction impact. This way, no one is getting stuck in a room right next to one that’s under active construction. It’s good for guests and also for Disney, as they don’t have to deal with the inevitable complaints and relocating guests. It’s entirely possible that you could stay at Pop Century next year and not even realize there’s construction happening if the building being redone is on the other side of the resort.
With that said, there have been times when they do multiple buildings at a time and take rooms in one of those offline and bring them back online in two phases. Even in this scenario, you may not notice the work in the other half of the building unless you’re staying on the side close to the construction. But you also might! We’ve had reports from some readers who were close to rooms being worked on and could see or hear it during the daytime hours.
As a general matter, though, construction impact of this project should be minimal. Pop Century having clusters of outlying buildings makes this type of project less impactful than it’d be at many of the other resorts. Once the project starts, we’ll also have progress updates as to which buildings are being renovated, so you can make room requests accordingly.
We’ll do this both so you know which buildings to avoid to steer clear of construction, and what to request to increase your odds of getting a new room. As huge fans of Pop, we’ll try to score one one of the first redone rooms here in late May or early June–sounds like the perfect place to stay for Disney Starlight Night Parade’s debut season!
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Finally, perhaps the biggest wrinkle to the Pop Century project is what was not announced: Skyliner downtime.
A few months ago, we gave readers a ‘heads up’ that the Skyliner gondolas were likely in Winter 2025. This was premised on two things. First, that the Skyliner has had annual downtime for preventative maintenance every January since 2021. This is every single year after its one-year anniversary, and is likely a contractual stipulation with Doppelmayr, its manufacturer. Second, Walt Disney World didn’t announce the Skyliner closure until late October last year, leaving guests scrambling to change their reservations.
Even though it’s only a couple weeks later now than when the refurbishment was announced last year, it nevertheless seems like a Skyliner closure is probably not in the cards for Winter 2025. It would be odd to announce this room refurbishment project but not mention the Skyliner at the same time. Walt Disney World likely received a lot of complaints about the last-minute notice, and also, winter has become busier than many other times of year.
Perhaps Disney worked out a deal with Doppelmayr to delay the refurbishment until the late summer off-season, which is slower and when the Skyliner is more prone to downtime, anyway. That’s just our guess at this point. It’s also possible the winter Skyliner closure announcement is still coming, and it’s two separate teams making these refurbishment announcements–a simple case of one hand not knowing what the other is doing.
Ultimately, we’re looking forward to the room refurbishment at Disney’s Pop Century Resort. My personal view is that this has low upside and downside, and won’t be a revolutionary redesign like the prior Pop room reimagining or even the ‘Under the Sea’ rooms at Caribbean Beach.
In all likelihood, this is just going to be a simple soft goods refurbishment. The bones of the room are already good and don’t need to be addressed, so they probably won’t. Hence the minimal upside. On the other hand, there is room for aesthetic improvement, and making the rooms have a bit more personality and pops of color. Recent precedent at other resorts suggests that the style will likely improve at least slightly, but we wouldn’t expect anything revolutionary. Hence the minimal downside.
To each their own, but that’s good enough for us–again, don’t fix what isn’t broken. Pop Century does not “need” improvements to nearly the same degree as other resorts and already punches well above its weight. There’s a reason why it’s so high up our Rankings of All Walt Disney World Resorts from Best to Worst!
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Your Thoughts
Are you a fan of Pop Century’s “recently” reimagined rooms or did you prefer the “old” style? What major changes or incremental improvements would you like to see made during the 2025-2026 soft goods refurbishment? Would a few pops of color and pieces of art be good enough for you, or does Disney need to go back to the drawing board and totally redo these rooms again? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!