We recently returned from DL and my son celebrated his 9th birthday whilst we were there. His favourite character is Stitch, so went to the Lilo and Stitch character meal at the Paradise Pier hotel. (Daisy, Minnie, Goofy and Max were also in attendance).
The day before, I had visited the restuarant and ordered a 'Celebration' pop up card (about $5 I think), a goodie bag (crayons, colouring book, etc), plus a Mickey bucket (contained a few collectables such as a small stuffed Mickey, magnets, badge, etc) and it also contained a small birthday cake ($22). All these things were sitting on the table when we arrived at the restaurant. The cake was about the size of a giant cupcake. I can't tell you what it tasted like as we never got round to eating to it, but it looked really nice. (We brought it all the way home here to Australia with us a few days later but it got so squashed we ended up throwing it away).
The waiters also sang 'happy birthday'.
Later that day we went to the Pat-E-Cake birthday celebration at the Plaza Inn. $16pp, book in advance. It's run at certain times of the day. Each person in attendance received a cardboard party hat with mouse ears, a drink of lemonade in a sipper cup, and giant cupcake to decorate with sprinkles and icing.
Pat-E-Cake comes out and interacts with everyone and is quite funny. Towards the end Mickey and Minnie arrive and there is a chance for each family to have their photo taken under a sign that says "My
Disneyland Birthday". It lasts for about 30-45 minutes and felt quite rushed at times, but was still a lot of fun.
We also made sure DS received his birthday badge and we had also purchased the mouse ears hat that says 'It's My Birthday' at WDW a few weeks earlier for my birthday, so he wore those too. I'm 99.9% sure they are also available at DL. A lot of people wished him a happy birthday when they saw the ears and/or badge, and I'm pretty sure wearing them helped in our family getting to ride in the front of the monorail on that day.
