Best Character Dining Experience?

[PeggyPup]

This is sort of a two question in one thread.

1) What would you say is the best Character Dining Restaurant in all of WDW. Consider Food Quality, Character Interaction, Service, etc.

2) What is your greatest memory from a Character Dining Experience(personal stories). For example, when we ate at the Garden Grill in Epcot and Pluto stole our salt, making us chase him around the entire restaurant and putting on quite a show for everyone else eating there.

 

[MickeyNicki]

For characters and food at the same place the best of the best is Cape May Breakfast...not only is the food awesome but the place is never that busy so you get a lot of character time.

Others we have experienced:

CP for breakfast and dinner, great food at both but better character interaction at dinnertime

1900 Park Fair breakfast, lousy food and non existant character interaction.

Chef Mickeys for dinner, horrible food and fantastic character interaction.

Donalds for breakfast, good food and great character interaction.

Princess Breakfast, awesome character interaction for kids...the princesses totally ignored us but we were ok with that...nice food selection.

 

[PeggyPup]

Wow, I should check out Cape May, never even thought of it.

 

[bradk]

i had the most fun at 1900 park fare breakfast, but i had the last seating which helps anywhere tremendously.

best friends was good too, even though i didn't see lilo

 

[dana1003]

where is cape may

 

[byoung]

Wow, I should check out Cape May, never even thought of it.

They ment Chef Mickeys.

 

[byoung]

where is cape may

Cape May is at the Beach Club Resort. Charactors only for breakfast, Dinner is a clam bake OUTSTANDING.

 

[MinnieCandi]

The first we ever went to the World we went with DH's whole family. His mother and father are really hard to please and some aspects of the vacation were acutally pretty tense. However, one evening we had dinner at CM and Pluto noticed that DFIL was alittle grumpy, well, he went over to him and actually got him to laugh! Then Pluto must have said something to Mickey, because he came over and did the same thing! Then, you guessed it, Chip and Dale came over. All the kids loved the characters as well, but nobody had a better time that night than DFIL. He passed away a couple of years ago, so those pictures of him laughing at Disney World with Donald and Mickey are priceless! Because of that, CM is always a "must do" for us. We Love it there.

The Princess Story Book breakfast in Norway is also great, we went last year and will go again this year. Both DD's had a great time, the interaction with the characters was great and DD loved the food.

This year we are also trying for the first time dinner at 1900 Park Fare and breakfast at Cape May.

 

[princess-rn]

Chef Mickeys....

My son's first WDW trip..he was 2. He was in LOVE with "Minnie Kickey" (aka Minnie Mouse...he called Mickey "Kickey Mouse") and she spent ALOT of time at our table to "flirt" with him. I have the CUTEST picture where she is kneeled down eye level with him and he is just looking at her with this little "You are so Awesome" look on his face.

Too cute!!!

 

[daisyduck123]

Chef Mickey's is our absolute favorite...and we've also done:
Crystal Palace
LTT
1900 PF
OHANAS
Garden Grille


Last year at CM...Chip "stole" DS8's large stuffed Chip he'd brought to dinner.
He took it right off the table & paraded around the restaurant with it, while DS8 paraded behind him. It was way too funny!

 

[IWISHFORDISNEY]

Last year at CP we had an excellent dinner. The food was great. The hot food was hot and the cold food was cold, all of it was fresh and just put out. The character interaction was out of this world. Tigger and Pooh played peek a boo with our son. It was so amazing to see them interact with the kids. They came by twice and spent alot of time with us. They also had a little parade. The desserts were out of this world. Great place and we are going back this year.

 

[tigercat]

It all depends on the time and the experience. I keep reading about CM's being so good so last time we went. It was the worse experience we had with characters. They came quickly around us at the end of our dinner and left. And not all of them came to see us. It was a quick, take the picture I am going on break kind of time. The food was really not that great. Then only thing that was a hit was the dessert part. Our TA added that to our dinner arrangements but we may when we get there decide if we want to keep it or not. There are a lot of other places that interest us a lot more. We enjoy The Garden Grill. They food has always been really good and the character experiences have been really great.
tigercat

 

[Mommymcgee]

We loved the Park Fare breakfast. We loved the food (strawberry soup and fresh custom made omelets) and the characters were very attentive. Mary Poppins spent several minutes talking to my DD and Tigger was great. He pretended to steal my DS's drink, which cracked him up (he's 2 so that was very funny to him) and he danced and twirled with my DD. We got much more character time there than any other character meal we did. Maybe it was just luck of timing.

 

[kittymarcy]

So another question - where is 1900 Park Fare? I want strawberry soup! It doesn't have to entirely be about the kids, right? We went to b'fast at the Poly last time and had great interaction and good/normal food.

 

[momtimesone]

Chef mickeys passable food but great character interaction .My son was all smiles as he waved his napkin and danced with goofy We are going again just for that LOL

 

[Here'sTigger2U]

The best meal I can recall was at 1900 Park Fair. We only have 2 pictures of that evening, one of me w/ Tigger (my hero) and my wife w/Pooh. We remembered that the food was excellent, better than many of the sit-down restaurants we went to that trip (Jan '02).

My fondest memory was the Dec '05 trip I took with our family of 5, my mother, and my father-in-law (along w/the new gf, don't ask ). We had breakfast at Cinderella's on my daughter's 5th birthday, and the princess that she is, was of course all dressed up as her favorite, Aurora of Sleeping Beauty. What was most memorable, however, was that since their sister was all dressed up, my 3 and 4 yead old boys also wanted to be dressed up as well. So, In Buzz Lightyear costumes sat two young boys, and when Cinderella herself came to visit, my 4-year old was so smitten by her that he asked if a Space Ranger could rescue a Princess !!!

What a wonderful world.

Bob.

 

[LisaBi]

We think Chef Mickey's is the best all-around. Food good - not great, but great atmosphere. Crystal Palace is my favorite for food quality. The character interaction was OK. The one in Norway was good character interaction, but a little rushed, and we hated the food. Didn't like the food or character interaction at Ohana's. (All breakfast).

The only non-breakfast I've done is CP - good food, but not as good as breakfast, and lousy character interaction - but it was a group of all adults.

 

[kittymarcy]

Sorry to repeat, but where is 1900 Park Fair?

 

[dana1003]

Sorry to repeat, but where is 1900 Park Fair?

i think its in the floridian?

 

[Lostgirlz]

We liked Crystal Palace it was good food, and decent char interaction. eyore was a bit slow comming but others came by at a good rate.

The other places we tried was Donalds in AK did not care for this cramped seating, chars bearly went through, and the bufft selection was smaller and more cramped than others.

We also did 1900 park fare, this was good not a huge buffet like chef mickeys, but it was very good mary popins was right there when we walked in, and pooh, mad hatter, and alice hung out with us a lot.

We did Cinderellas royal table for breakfast and it to was very good, and they were very nice to us.

Last Chef Mickeys this was a big buffet compared to some of the others, but it was ok I wouldnt say great, but ok. The char interaction there was slow we did meet some, but they were so slow moving we did not get to meet them all. Over all I would have to say I really enjoyed Cinderellas, crystal palace, and 1900.