Carrie - sometime Cinderella makes an appearance on the ground floor of her castle during the day or evening. There's no published scheduled so you have to be lucky to find her but if she's there you don't need to dine in the restaurant. The restaurant is upstairs. She doesn't appear at lunch or dinner in the restuarant proper.

Several years ago we ate dinner at the restaurant. Cinderella was downstairs, we waited about 20 minutes to get her autograph. By the time we saw her, our table upstairs was ready and we were seated at a window seat overlooking Cinderella's merry go round. Dinner was decent. When done, we came downstairs and the SpectroMagic Parade was going by. All in all our luck was very good that night.

The moral of this long story is that you don't have to do a character breakfast to see the characters, though it does make it somewhat easier. On that same trip Mickey selected my girls to take on a personal tour of his house in Toon Town. They spent a good 10 minutes with Mickey as he took them by the hand and showed off his house. Definately the highlight of the trip for them (ages 7 and 4). Again we were lucky, just in the right place at the right time.

Thanks so much for all of your comments, our girls are still so young that I know we have tons of opportunities in the future for the "character breakfasts" so maybe this year we will just get lucky and be in the right place at the right time!! Thanks again...

I am also looking for details about character breakfasts. Has anyone been to the breakfast at the Polynesian Resort as I understand they have characters there too.

I think that Chef Mickey sounds great. Do they dress up in their traditional costumes or as chefs?

Emma jane, chef mickey is wonderful. Our kids loved it when we went several years ago, but the adults liked it, too. You can make ressies up to three months in advance and i would advise you to do that as they sell out immediately. For more detailed info, check out the disboards.com and mousesavers.com for everything disney (and then some! :) ) Have fun!

EmmaJane,
We took our two toddlers to Chef Mickey's back in the fall. Most of the characters are in their usual attire. However, Mickey is dressed in a Chef Outfit. (Maybe Goofy, too.)

The staff did a nice job on making sure that when it was your turn with the character, it was your turn by making sure other kids didn't monopolize the characters time. Both my children got personal attention from the characters and plenty of time for a couple of pictures with each.

We found getting there near when they first opened to work well as we didn't need to wait in line for a table to open.

BTW, assuming your kids can make it to the end of the day, we found Mickey's Toon Town to be fairly quiet by 7:00 p.m. As a result, we had no problem walking right in and getting photos with Mickey, etc.

Another way to go is to do Chef Mickey toward the end of their breakfast. First we had a light breakfast, then hit the parks for the early entry. Did tons of rides with little crowds. At 11am, we left the park, rode over to the Contemporary and had the last seating at Chef Mickeys as more of a brunch. The kids had the characters practically to themselves, including all 5 characters in one photograph together with the kids. There was dancing and all kinds of tomfoolery. Our timing was perfect.

By the way, the posters on disboards.com gave me that tip. That's a sample of information that is available over there. Much more detailed than generally what you'll find at a board like Fodors because of the very narrow topic covered by that board.