Garden Grill or Crystal Palace for breakfast?

[5kidsmommy]

My teenage daughter and I are planning a mother/daughter trip for this November. We have never done much table service dining and this trip will be special because we have the dining plan.

I have our ADRs done but have one table service that I need to drop and it comes down to either The Garden Grill or Crystal Palace. My daughter loves Mickey and friends and isn't a huge Pooh and friends fan. But I love the atmosphere at Crystal Palace but I've never been to the Garden Grill. So pros and cons of both, although I know either way we will have a blast just being there.

 

[StirlingSilver83]

well both are our favs. We love Garden Grill dinner...breakfast is new and I don't think they are actually starting it til November so I don't think you will be able to get reviews on how the food is until then. Crystal Palace is always a must do breakfast for us. We like to get the 8AM slot for pre park entry. The food I think is pretty good for a buffet and I love the pooh puffed french toast. Honestly I would stay with Crystal Palace only because no one really knows how Garden Grills breakfast is going to be or what their menu is going to consist of bc it has not been uploaded to the Disney website yet. Also at garden grill they just have Mickey and Pluto from the sensational 6 and then Chip and Dale as well.

 

[Nancyg56]

What is the cost of GG breakfast? I might keep it no matter what if the prices is reasonable because my family really likes walking into a relatively empty Epcot. Of all three meals, breakfast is the least expensive so if we are overbooked, and we usually are, we pay OOP for breakfast.

 

[StirlingSilver83]

Garden Grill hasn't released their breakfast menu yet. If its like dinner it will be served Family style and there will be a price similar to a buffet I am assuming. Maybe the price will be similar to Ohana bc thats a family style served breakfast where they bring the food to you. Do you have an breakfasts that aren't buffets or family style? I would pay OOP for them bc it might be cheaper than the buffets/family style. We are hopefully going in April for a short trip and we are over 1 credit on our dining plan so we are going to be paying OOP for Kona Cafe bc thats our cheapest meal.

 

[courtneybeth]

Depending on the time for the Crystal Palace, it may help you with crowds at Magic Kingdom. We loved the breakfast and while we're not big fans of Pooh it was still fun to see different characters not normally seen through the park.

 

[5kidsmommy]

Depending on the time for the Crystal Palace, it may help you with crowds at Magic Kingdom. We loved the breakfast and while we're not big fans of Pooh it was still fun to see different characters not normally seen through the park.

My CP ADR is for a little later in the morning, 9:55 but it's on our checkout day so that's actually not too bad but alas I also have a lunch CP ADR that day for 2:55 which might actually work better so we could lounge around the hotel on our checkout day. So many decisions. Oh and our GG is a 8:15 time but mid trip.

 

[courtneybeth]

Yikes - two buffets in the same day is a lot. We usually can eat one buffet and be full for the rest of the day until dinner. What time is your departure from WDW? It may make more sense to keep the buffet breakfast and eat heavy (we love doing this) -- your time warrants a great brunch experience. You can then pick up a few snacks during the rest of the day to fill in. I can't imagine doing two buffets in one day.

Keep the GG mid-trip, as this will be fun too and fill you up until you can munch around the world on the afternoon

 

[5kidsmommy]

Yikes - two buffets in the same day is a lot. We usually can eat one buffet and be full for the rest of the day until dinner. What time is your departure from WDW? It may make more sense to keep the buffet breakfast and eat heavy (we love doing this) -- your time warrants a great brunch experience. You can then pick up a few snacks during the rest of the day to fill in. I can't imagine doing two buffets in one day.

Keep the GG mid-trip, as this will be fun too and fill you up until you can munch around the world on the afternoon

Oh yeah, no we wouldn't keep both. We would choose one of the CPs certainly not both. Sorry I should have clarified that. I think I am leaning towards the later CP that way we can checkout close to our checkout time and maybe go visit the pool one last time.

My daughter sort of answered this question, she said she wasn't sure she wanted to do Garden Grill so I guess it's Crystal Palace.

 

[yooperfan]

Can you ale ADR's for Garden a Grill for breakfast yet? We are going in January.

 

[mom2cgj]

Can you ale ADR's for Garden a Grill for breakfast yet? We are going in January.

Yes you can make ADRs for breakfast at GG in January. I made one today for our trip on 1/25.

 

[KangaFan]

We've done both for lunch and GG for dinner--we found CP to be noisy and were always worried about missing characters while we were up at the buffet. GG is much smaller and served family style so you don't have to worry about missing characters and since its smaller, they spend more time interacting and you often see them twice. We had a bunch of teens with us the last time and they still enjoyed the interactions with Mickey, Pluto, Chip & Dale. It depends on your daughter's preference, but I'm not sure our group would have enjoyed the Pooh characters as much.

 

[yooperfan]

We did GG for breakfast years ago when they had it. It was served in a big skillet family style something like Whispering canyon at WL has. The food was good. I remember my nephew was 6 at the time and very polite. He went to cut a big fat sausage and it flew off the table. We try to request the outside booths as you don't get the effect of slowly rotating in the inside booths.