6 days in WDW - how MANY character meals would you do?

[ejsmomma]

How MANY character meals would YOU do for 6 days at WDW?

 

[trappednabox]

Me personally, I LOVE character meals

I would do, Ohanas breakfast, Chef Mickey's, Crystal Palace, Garden grill, and Princess Storybook Breakfast

I know a lot of mine have some of the same characters, but these are some of our favorites

 

[MarinaD]

We are doing...
CRT, Crystal Palace, Epcot Storybook Dinner, Tusker House Breakfast,
Hollywood & Vine, and Chef Mickeys.... after all we're going bc of my daughter... so why not?

 

[suz_cute]

I'd say no more than 2 or 3. They do eat up a big portion of your day, because you are waiting for each of the characters to make their way around the restaurants. I say, limit yourself, and enjoy the rest of the time in the parks since you don't have a terribly long stay in WDW! Have a wonderful trip!!!

 

[maddiesmom0116]

As many as you can. I usually do Ohana's breakfast, Mickey's BBQ, CRT, Princess at Akerhaus, Crystal Palace, Donald's breakfast, Hollywood and Vine (skipping this year DD5 not interested anymore), LTT ( hopefully they will go back to Character before September), 1500 Park Ave and Chef Mickeys.
We do the DlxDDP so we have plenty of TS credits to use.

I think it is worth the extra time, because you would just be spending time sweltering in the sun waiting for meet and greets, at least you are in air conditioning for character dining.

 

[dina7]

We're staying for 7 nts & we're doing 2 character meals...Chef Mickey's for dinner & Crystal Palace for dinner.

 

[stitch34]

This upcoming trip we're doing 6 nights... and 10 character meals. Have done up to 13 in the past on trips!
We LOVE the character meals - especially since we love buffets, and love having the deluxe dining plan. Just works for us with kids having meals as like a break time, breaks up the day for them and helps with them a lot. Is nice not having to run around locating characters in the parks - since we see them all at the meals.
The only downside... after so many meals, the constant interruption starts to get a little annoying to me, but it's not too bad. Just trying to eat and okay, grab the camera, grab the vid cam, grab the autograph book, here comes another character. So we do enjoy having some noncharacter meals, too.
But my kids, 6, 6 and 9 love all the character meals and each trip they request doing them again.

I was going to list our favorites.. but actually, they ALL are our favorites!
NONcharacter meals the kids love are Mama Melrose, Sci Fi, Whispering Canyon, Planet Hollywood

 

[dato63]

We are going for 7 nights - and shooting for 8 character meals while we are there. Our viewpoint is - we have to eat at some point, this way we can combine entertainment for our DDs with a nice meal. The autographs/pics are very important to our DDs - and this is a nice way (to us) than character lines.

We'd have no problem doing more. . .but the ones we have picked would cover the characters we need/want - and there are other neat places to try too.

 

[jenseib]

I think it depends on the person/family and if you have kids or are big on seeing characters. We did a 6 night trip and did 5 character meals and one night at Hoop Dee Doo. We have a 4yo with us, but I love the meals just as mcuh as she does. If you are on the dining plan, then you are going to do a TS each day anyways, so if you like characters, go for it. Never too many.
I have a dining report going about my character meals. The link is in my signature if you want to stop by and read it.

 

[llqool]

the plus side of character meals is that it is a painless way to see (and get autographs from!) the characters. One experience of waiting in line in Toontown to see Donald Duck and Snow White, and my husband was ready to lose it!

the down side of the character meals is that generally the quality of the food at the buffets is not as good as at the other TS restaurants (the only buffet we really like is BOma, and that doesn't have characters). Plus, I find that our daughters, ages 4 and 6, get so excited by the characters that they eat NOTHING of their meal. No sooner do we get out of the restaurant and in line for an attraction then they say "I'm HUNGRY, mommy!"

So we try to achieve a balance. We do a couple of character meals, and a couple of other TS meals at restaurants that we know have good food and are kid friendly (like Kona Cafe or Boma).

 

[chocolateMinnie]

We stayed for a week in February and did CRT breakfast and dinner, Akershus breakfast, CP dinner, Ohanas breakfast and as previously posted we had a deal with DD. If we do a character meal that day we don't stand in line for characters. Saved us lots of time overall.

 

[robandkelly13]

We do character meals everyday. We'll be there for 11 nights in July/Aug and we're doing character daily. Our DD loves it and we really feel it's part of the experience!

 

[MickeyNicki]

For just DH and I we may do one but if I was bringing my nieces with us I would do a character breakfast every single morning..they ate very well at the character breakfasts and they loved the one on one attention...started our day off very well.

 

[Faldred]

We did a character breakfast every morning (except one, and we did lunch that day) on our recent trip. Of course, it helped that we were on deluxe dining and had the credits to spare...

 

[TheLadyTremain]

We are going for 8 nights. We plan on doing three at this point. I may add one more (Chef Mickeys) only because we are staying at the Bay Lake so it is quick stroller to the CR for that restaurant.

 

[avahoneybee]

9 nights, 2 character meals for us.

 

[disneypolybride2008]

we love the character meals, like breakfast. It's great to start your day eating some awesome food and getting pictures with the characters. If we didnt go to the character meals we wouldnt get our pics w/ any characters since we wouldn't ever wait in those long lines at the parks to see a character. We have some wonderful pictures. That's why staying at a monorail resort like the Polynesian is so great, your breakfast in a quick monrail ride away. It was WAY more time consuming when we stayed at POP and CB. We're planning breakfast everyday.. 1900 Park Fare, CM, CP, Ohana's, and Tusker House. The food is great!! I say go as much as you can!

 

[arielmomma]

We do nearly all character meals. On our upcoming 10 day trip, we are hoping to only do 2 table service meals that aren't character meals.

 

[sluggozmom]

For our 1st trip with our dd6, lasting 10 days we will be doing 4 character meals.

CRT for dinner on our arrival day.
Crystal palace breakfast.
Princess Storybook breakfast
And a dinner at Chef Mickeys

 

[juliebride]

We are leaving in 19 days for our first trip to WDW. We are on the dining plan and will be doing 6 character meals for our 8 day/ 7 night visit. I was worried it would be too much but then figured it would be a nice break from the heat for the kids (DD 3 and DS 5) plus me (6 months pregnant) and we'd get to see a lot of characters. Right now my concern is that we're overloaded on princesses!!!

Here's our schedule....

5/23 Chef Mickey's (dinner)
5/24 CRT (breakfast)
5/26 Tusker House (breakfast)
5/26 Askersus (dinner)
5/27 Ohana (breakfast)
5/28 1900 Park Fare (dinner)