Walt Disney World is giving its hotel guests the royal treatment.
Not royal as in the soon-to-be-wed Prince William and Kate Middleton, but royal as in the hugely popular Disney princesses.
Walt Disney World is converting 512 rooms at Disney's Port Orleans Resort into princess-themed rooms complete with ornate beds, fiber-optic special effects and gold and crystal accents, according to the Disney Parks Blog. The rooms will be marketed as places the Disney princesses themselves have stayed, from Princess Tiana of "The Princess and the Frog" to Belle of "Beauty and the Beast" to Jasmine of "Aladdin."
The rooms, scheduled to open in March 2012, are the latest in Disney's specialty room offerings, which also include pirate-themed guest rooms at Disney's Caribbean Beach Resort. The popularity of those rooms allows Walt Disney World to command a $30-a-night premium for them, the Orlando Sentinel reports.
"The more segmented you can become, the more you can match the segmentation of consumer demand," Bill Carroll, a senior lecturer at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, told the Orlando Sentinel. "That gives you the opportunity to price differentially."
Walt Disney World is also planning to launch new health and wellness suites in the fall. The new rooms will debut at Disney's Contemporary Resort and will feature bamboo flooring, rainwater showers and in-room cardio equipment.
Walt Disney World Resort has 23 hotels and nearly 25,000 rooms.
