favorite character dining at WDW
 

What is your favorite character dining at WDW? I am considering one breakfast and one dinner and would like suggestions. I have 2 preschoolers.

Here's my review of the four we went to in early december (too many for one trip:) My kids are 5, 3, and 1.

Princess dinner at Akershus (Norway in Epcot): Food pretty good. You pick from a menu. The princesses were great (and I have three boys). Atmosphere was peaceful. If you are at Epcot, very nice.

Liberty Tree Tavern at the Magic Kingdom: I read rave reviews, but the food was mediocre. Characters were Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale. We had an early seating, so there was lots of character interaction. Food is served family style. Best part was that it just fit into our day.

Chef Mickey at the Contemporary Resort: THe food is a buffet, a large one. At certain points in the meal, a song comes on and the characters dance, and everyone twirls their napkins in the air and has a great time. For us, after a long day at the park, it was way too much. Also, leaving a park after a long day, and transporting ourselves and the tired kids to another place for dinner was exhausting. I wouldn't do it again.

Breakfast at 1900 Park Fair at the Grand Floridian: 8 am seating is awesome. Less crowds, fresh food, and more time with the characters. Characters are Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter, and Piglet and Pooh. The food was by far the best we had in Disney, and the hotel is gorgeous.

I have dined before at Crystal Palace and Pooh and Friends are there also for breakfast lunch and dinner. For next time, I will eat dinners at the park where I am at - leaving a park to go elsewhere was too time and energy consuming. I will go back to Akershus, skip Liberty Tree. The Grand Floridian is great for departure day and worht a visit. I will book early dinners and early breafkfasts and I won't go anywhere where there is audience interaction, although I admit the kids enjoyed it:)

Check out allears.net for menus. And make your reservations as soon as you have an idea (max. 180 days in advance) by calling 407.WDW.DINE. Preschoolers are the perfect age for these meals - have fun.

We went to the Chef Mickey breakfast with my niece and her husband and children, and it was nice. Although the food was good, but nothing spectacular, the characters and the fun were wonderful. They have the kids do a lot of fun stuff with the characters, and the characters meet and greet on a one-on-one basis at each table.

I meant to add that this was at the Contemporary.

Thanks a lot for the info. It was very helpful. I'll probably do the meal at Contemporary and Grand Floridian (one on departure day and one on arrival day). It should not be too hard to get there given that I will be staying at the Polynesian (and those two hotels are on the monorail).

In my opinion, the overall best character breakfasts are the Crytstal Palace in the Magic Kingdom and 1900 Park Fair in the Grand Floridian. An 8:00AM reservation at the Crystal Palace on a day when the Magic Kingdom doesn't open until 9:00 gets you a walk down Main Street with very few people. I would agree with everything that amcc said. The characters are great at the Liberty Tree Tavern, but the food is less than mediocre, and the place is very noisy. One or two character meals in a 4 - 5 day visit is more than enough. And don't leave a park just to go to any restaurant. There is no restaurant in Disney that is worth the effort of moving 2 adults and three young kids from one park to anywhere. Stay where you are and go to a counter service restaurant instead.

If you are staying at the Poly, the character breakfast at O'hana's can be fun. The food is not the best, but they do some silly things with the kids that are fun. I sometimes have a breakfast there on the last morning. We usually have to leave around 10:00AM and there isn't enough time to do much else. Its a nice distraction from the going home blues.

I can't make any recos - but just suggest that you prepare your kids for the experience. You don't say their exact ages - but some characters turned up at breakfast at the Hilton and 2 of the kids - about 2/3 years old were not happy.

One was very shy and crawled onto her mother's lap and hid her head - but a little boy was petrified and began screaming - and his family had to leave to calm him.

(The characters - Mickey and Pluto - weren't doing anything scary - just going table to table and talking to the kids - but the kids may not have expected it.)

My kids are going to be 3 and 4. It is hard to know how they would react to something like a character breakfast. I think I may have to tell the character not to hug my daughter as she is a bit shy.

It might be better to schedule one character dining experience instead of two since as one of the posters had stated, it might be a scary experience.

my kids were terrified of the characters until they were about 4 yo.

whichever one you decide to do, try to make the first reservation of the meal. if it opens at 8am, get the 8am reservation. there are only a few tables filled then and the characters spend a lot more time with your kids.

Most of the characters are well-trained and they know how to approach young kids. They will let the kids come to them, and if your child stands back, they will usually just wave and try to engage them without getting too close. When I see the screaming kids, it's usually a nitwit parent pushing the kid towards the character. You can get some awfully cute pictures at the character meals. If your child is not comfortable, you can just hold her while you pose with Winnie the Pooh, or whoever. If you don't get your reservations made 3 months in advance, (you can make them 6 mos in advance), it gets to be hard to get the times you want. You can always cancel a second reservation if the first does not work out.

We just came back from WDW with our 6 yo twin grandkids. We took them to the Chef Mickey dinner.

If you can stand a few pictures, this is what they thought about it:

http://www.worldisround.com/articles/340778/index.html ((*))

Jed -- Great pictures! Thanks for sharing.

Consider doing a character lunch. We did the Crystal Palace first seating. We had entered the park and taken advantage of the lighter morning crowds to maximize rides. At 11ish as the park was filling up and lines were growing, we were setting down to a relaxing lunch. Our kids were a bit older but if they had been preschoolers a trip back to the hotel for a rest before returning to the park for the lighter evening crowds would have been my choice. We did three character meals (all lunch) last time. The only one that was really not well ran or very magical was the one in Hollywood--Think it was called Hollywood and Vine.

Personally with kids that age I would schedule one character meal for later in the trip. After seeing how the kids did with the characters that are in the parks, I would then decide whether or not to keep the "reservation". If the kids aren't digging the characters then I wouldn't waste my time.

I also would suggest going to a late time at Chef Mickey on a day that the Magic Kingdom opens early. Tour the park for awhile and then, when the kids are ready for a break, take the monorail over to Chef Mickey and have a late breakfast/early lunch. We did this once and it worked great plus we got a picture of our girls with all of the characters in one photo - better than the one they try to sell you.

Another suggestion is to take a peek into Cinderella's Castle around dinner time. Just past the check in desk, there is a waiting area where often Cinderella or another Princess is holding court. You do not have to have a reservation for dinner to go into this area. You can take a picture and get an autograph without having to pony up for dinner. And generally its very unhurried and relaxed as so few people know she is in there. I have seen her (Cinderella) interact with toddlers for much longer than would have been tolerated under different circumstances (ie long lines of anxious parents impatiently waiting for their kids moment in the sun). Sometimes its the Fairy Godmother who is in there.

We also did a character breakfast at Chef Mickey's and it was great. As someone else said, the food is fine. It is actually a very large buffet with everything you can imagine for breakfast (and quite a few things you probably never thought of -- peanut butter & jelly breakfast pizza?). The characters will all come around to your table, there is singing and dancing. My girls loved it. One other thing I love about Disney dining is that they are GREAT with food issues, like allergies. My daughter's nut allergy was listed in our reservation, the chef came out and talked us through the buffet and even offered to make her fresh french toast since it was next to the peanut butter pizza (in case of drips).

We did the Crystal Palace breakfast with Winnie et al when my son was young. He loved it, food was fine (give a kid a pancake, they are happy) and the advantage with very young children is that it puts you in the Magic Kingdom at the beginning of the day. I can't imagine schlepping to a non-park location with a young child just for a meal.