Disneyland Character Meal?

[WDWFANCBIIIME]

What is the best Disneyland Character Meal?

Looking at Food, Atmosphere, and Character Interaction?

I've been to all of the Character Meal's in WDW but haven't been to any in Disneyland hoping to go to at least 1 or 2 on my next trip out west! Its something that my whole family enjoys!

 

[sherilaine]

This comes up a lot on this board - there are likely several threads you can find where people have given lots of opinions and many of them vary. We like the Plaza Inn with Minnie and we like Surf's Up with Mickey - but we would never go Surfs Up on a day we are going to the parks as it's a nice way to have some Disney on a day off. So hard to pick just one.

 

[ktlm]

We are WDW vets and for us it is absolutely Minnie's Breakfast at the Plaza Inn. We think it is better than any of the character meals at WDW. You never know who you might see. We have seen a minimum of 7 characters, and we have seen up to 12 characters. I think we have always seen Minnie, Fairy Godmother, Hook, Max (Goofy's son), and a Pooh Character or two, and almost always Rafiki, but we have also run into characters like Alice, Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dum, Mary Poppins Penguin, Pinocchio, Gepetto, Brer Fox, and more. Goofy's used to be a lot of fun with surprise characters, but a year or so ago they standardized it, so it is just Goofy, Pluto, Chip and Dale and Minnie. There are no additional surprise characters anymore. We skipped it our last trip because of that. So far, they haven't ruined what is special about Minnie's Breakfast. If you are interested in Princesses, Ariel's Grotto is the only Princess character meal (I think we saw a princess pop up one time at Minnie's, but that was years ago). Unless they have changed the lunch menu in the last 6 months we are not fans of lunch (it used to be good, but since the last menu change we have not liked the food), but breakfast is still great. Unlike WDW where the princesses are standardized, at Ariel's there is some variety in who you meet. Unless there is a problem, you will meet Ariel in the lobby for a formal photo. As far as the Princesses who visit the tables, we have always seen Cinderella and Belle (yellow dress), but the others have varied. We have seen Tiana, Rapunzel, Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan and once we even saw Pochahontas, which we were told was very rare.

 

[SMD]

Different ones are better for different reasons. Here's another thread a few posts down on page 1 of this forum that asks about the best breakfast for kids of a certain age:
http://www.disboards.com/threads/best-character-breakfast.3481540

For character meal advice, what would probably be more helpful than a survey would be ages of people in the party, whether or not you'll have park admission and what you like about the meal, food, interaction, specific character, etc.