Disney buffet breakfast or dinner

eeyorefanuk

eeyorefanuk

DIS Veteran
Joined
Feb 6, 2009
Hi

Two adults ...... Still love the characters

which do you prefer? More choice?

Can't find the prices .... I am hopeless today

Thanks
 
We did the character breakfast and the Makahiki dinner buffet (no characters) about a week ago.

Once you check-in for the breakfast, you have the option of taking a picture with Mickey. He doesn't come into the restaurant and visit you at your table.
The characters rotate each day. We had Stitch and Chip & Dale during our breakfast. The next day I saw Minnie & Goofy at the breakfast.

I enjoyed both buffets but preferred breakfast. Loved the POG (passion, orange, guava) juice and all the fresh fruits and Hawaiian-style breakfast items.
The Makahiki dinner buffet had wonderful seafood. We especially enjoyed the crab legs and sushi.

If the Menehune dinner had been available during our visit, I would've tried it. I'm sure you'll have fun at either dining experience.
 
In terms of food, we (two adults, an 11yo and a 7yo) really liked both buffets. The one thing that kept us from eating each more than once was the price... very pricey. And my family is comprised of big eaters. Even with all the sashimi DH ate at dinner, and DD eating practically every dessert on the buffet line, we couldn't justify doing dinner there again, esp since an 11yo is an "adult". We would all give the edge to breakfast for the food, just couldn't justify the expense again. We will certainly always do both, once each, on future visits.

We did breakfast our first morning to set the tone for our trip, and we did enjoy the characters. We couldn't get the character dinner timing to work with excursions we had booked already. Note that the breakfast and dinner characters are different, so you won't see a repeat of them. We saw enough characters around the resort that we were ok with missing the character dinner, but if it's important to you to see all of them, go to both. They don't charge any more for the character dinner than the regular dinner there, so no reason not to! If they had released the character dinner schedule earlier, I definitely would have booked excursions around ADRs... they just hadn't posted it early enough for me to do so.
 
ihearthawaii said:
I would assume it's the same dinner buffet but on sun, tues and thurs night they have the Menehune characters.

are the drinks included with the Buffett? The wording is a little vague on the website.
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It is the same buffet. Most of the food is the same every night; a few desserts and entrees change, but nothing that mattered enough to me to try for a specific day of the week when I booked. You'll notice the character dinner is only offered early in the evening, so if you went later in the evening - you'll get the exact same food, just no characters. This is where we had timing trouble - b/c it was pretty early for dinner for us to book the character dining.

Drinks weren't included with breakfast or dinner, if I recall correctly. I feel like I had a conversation with DH about how that made it even pricier. We had just done the Plaza character breakfast at DLR the prior month, with all the juice, coffee, etc. included, so it was something we observed. And I definitely remember telling the kids they were getting water only at dinner, and that they could get something else with the refillable mugs after, b/c it was silly to buy drinks there when we had the mugs to use.
 
cmph said:
It is the same buffet. Most of the food is the same every night; a few desserts and entrees change, but nothing that mattered enough to me to try for a specific day of the week when I booked. You'll notice the character dinner is only offered early in the evening, so if you went later in the evening - you'll get the exact same food, just no characters. This is where we had timing trouble - b/c it was pretty early for dinner for us to book the character dining.

Drinks weren't included with breakfast or dinner, if I recall correctly. I feel like I had a conversation with DH about how that made it even pricier. We had just done the Plaza character breakfast at DLR the prior month, with all the juice, coffee, etc. included, so it was something we observed. And I definitely remember telling the kids they were getting water only at dinner, and that they could get something else with the refillable mugs after, b/c it was silly to buy drinks there when we had the mugs to use.
Click to expand...

Great... knowing my husband, his drink check will cost more then the buffet...
 
ihearthawaii said:
Great... knowing my husband, his drink check will cost more then the buffet...
Click to expand...
Ha! We saved a LOT of money by "pre-partying" on our balcony most of the time. :) A bottle of hard liquor and a mixer from Safeway cost about as much as 2 or 3 Aulani cocktails, no joke. If you don't have a car, the ABC across the street has a good selection (not my preferred Hawaiian coconut vodka that Safeway has though). We basically told our kids they had to use the refillable mugs only, b/c by the time you pay for those - buying MORE soda elsewhere is pointless added cost. If you use soda for your mixer and have the mugs, you can even avoid to buy that with your hard liquor. It makes me a bit weak-kneed to think of how much our already-insanely-high credit card bill post-Aulani would have been if we bought our drinks at the bar or in the restaurants nightly.

We also had water bottles with us that we used to fill with our cocktails and bring to the beach or the lawn for the Starlit Hui or movie. I'm making it sound like we did nothing but drink in Hawaii, LOL!! But really, it was a matter of drinking when we were NOT at a meal simply to avoid restaurant drink costs.

If you only meant NA drinks, then definitely get the mugs. They're pricey, but if you use them enough, make tons of sense. We bought two and we adults used them for coffee, washed them, then passed them of to the kids for soda/lemonade for the rest of the day.
 
We bought adult drinks at Costco and did the same on our balcony too!! Saved so much!! I think the bottle of rum at Costco was $22. At Aulani, it was $14 a cocktail!! We brought big plastic cups for our adult beverages in the room and at the pool, though we only brought them to the pool a couple of times. We bought one refillable mug basically for our kids, but my dad bought them each their own, so they would get their sprunch (Sprite plus Hawaiian Punch a vast member told them to try) and DH and I would share regular ice tea.
 
cmph said:
Ha! We saved a LOT of money by "pre-partying" on our balcony most of the time. :) A bottle of hard liquor and a mixer from Safeway cost about as much as 2 or 3 Aulani cocktails, no joke. If you don't have a car, the ABC across the street has a good selection (not my preferred Hawaiian coconut vodka that Safeway has though). We basically told our kids they had to use the refillable mugs only, b/c by the time you pay for those - buying MORE soda elsewhere is pointless added cost. If you use soda for your mixer and have the mugs, you can even avoid to buy that with your hard liquor. It makes me a bit weak-kneed to think of how much our already-insanely-high credit card bill post-Aulani would have been if we bought our drinks at the bar or in the restaurants nightly.

We also had water bottles with us that we used to fill with our cocktails and bring to the beach or the lawn for the Starlit Hui or movie. I'm making it sound like we did nothing but drink in Hawaii, LOL!! But really, it was a matter of drinking when we were NOT at a meal simply to avoid restaurant drink costs.

If you only meant NA drinks, then definitely get the mugs. They're pricey, but if you use them enough, make tons of sense. We bought two and we adults used them for coffee, washed them, then passed them of to the kids for soda/lemonade for the rest of the day.
Click to expand...

My husband doesn't look at prices when he grocery shops. Once he came home with 3 russet potatoes and he paid $9 for them Soooo... I already pre warned him about the insane food/drink prices there and he's onboard with going to Costco to buy vodka and beer. We will also be buying the mugs for myself and ds. We are bringing a soft cooler from home so hubby can drink at the beach. I have it all figured out so that he can enjoy the trip while I dont worry about his drink tab.
 
Having done the Menehune Mischief Dinner in January, I'd skip it and do the breakfast instead. While the food offerings were good and character interaction was great, the Menehune story part of the dinner was very chaotic. Lots of movement around the restaurant with kid parades and people trying to get tot the buffet. We couldn't even really follow the story Uncle was trying to tell. I think for 2 adults, the breakfast might be more enjoyable.
 
Gorechick said:
Having done the Menehune Mischief Dinner in January, I'd skip it and do the breakfast instead. While the food offerings were good and character interaction was great, the Menehune story part of the dinner was very chaotic. Lots of movement around the restaurant with kid parades and people trying to get tot the buffet. We couldn't even really follow the story Uncle was trying to tell. I think for 2 adults, the breakfast might be more enjoyable.
Click to expand...
This doesn't surprise me, now that I read about it.

OP - when you go to breakfast, ask for an outside table. The characters go everywhere, but the Aunty parade stuff seemed to all be inside. Maybe that's true for the Uncle stuff at dinner? not sure. We were outside, so the Aunty stuff didn't bother us, but my kids had no interest in joining and if we'd been inside - I could see it being loud and annoying. You could still here it plenty while you were outside, but nothing obnoxiously loud and no one was walking past our table for it.
 
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