Best Character Meal for 4 y/o Birthday Girl

[LekiaHall]

Hi All,

My family will be in Disney this December. My daughter will turn 4 while we're there. She loves Mickey & his pals but she's not into princesses (yet).

What restaurant/character meal would you recommend for her birthday meal? I'm looking at either a late lunch or dinner.

Would like to pick a place where they will acknowledge her birthday and maybe bring her a cupcake/cake out (even if I have to pay for it). Singing Happy Birthday would be a HUGE plus.

TIA!

 

[minnie mum]

Well, if she wants to meet the Mouse, and Breakfast is out, then Chef Mickey's for dinner is probably your only choice.

ETA: oops. Forgot about Mickeys backyard BBQ at Fort Wilderness.

 

[Disneymadhouse]

Hi just wanted to say that my DD will have her 4th birthday while we are at WDW this year. Its on Christmas eve, and we are planning to eat at CRT as she is quite into "the castle" and the fact that Cinderella lives there! She doesn't know about the trip yet - I am going to make her a scrap book to give her 10 days before we go (we fly out on 13th Dec) to let her know about the trip. Then the next day in her advent calendar she will receive an invitation from Cinderella to have lunch at the castle on her birthday!

Hope your DD has a lovely birthday

Claire

 

[starrysky]

We love crystal Palace with pooh and friends but we have only done breakfast there. Can be a bit of a long wait for all the characters but the food was always good.

Tusker house has Mickey and friends but only at breakfast time, we went for the first time last year and loved it. Great interaction with the characters and the food was excellent. We are planning a return trip this year.

I would say probably your only option would be Chef mickeys or Garden Grill if you don't want the princess thing. Read lots of good reviews about character interaction there.

Make sure when you book that you tell them its her birthday and make sure you get one of the birthday buttons for her.

 

[LekiaHall]

Thanks for the great feedback. Looks like we're going with Chef Mickey. We're not morning people, but we could do breakfast if that's our best bet. Most of the comments that I recall reading on the boards are about breakfast at Chef Mickey. Will search around to see what folks think about their lunch/dinner.

Disneymadhouse,
Maybe our paths will cross. My daughter's b-day is 12/20. I've been checking out Etsy and am debating if I want to buy her a Minnie outfit. They're super adorable, but my DH will probably balk at paying $60 for the outfit! Hope you and your family have a great time!

 

[AshleeH]

Lekia, we did dinner at Chef Mickey's two years ago and were very impressed! We'd heard a few bad stories before we left (subpar food, kids running wild, short character interactions) but we were impressed with the quality of the food. A few kids ran to the buffet, but that didn't bother us - although it was very loud in there. And the character interactions were shorter than other places we went (Cinderella's Royal Table was wonderful - Ariel actually doubled back to ask her "two little princes" what they wished for in the wishing segment and then gave them each a kiss so they had her lipstick print on their faces all day! And 1900 Park Fare was a slower pace, but that was also breakfast for us).

We would do Chef Mickey's again though, and even though the characters didn't stay very long, the interactions more than made up for it! Pluto chomped my oldest son on the head (adorable photo op!) and Minnie flirted with my youngest who was too bashful to look at her. I wouldn't mind eating there again - we might even work it into our next trip since we'll be staying in the hotel.

 

[kathyell]

There is actually a character lunch at Tusker House in AK now. Everything I've read says it's hosted by Donald and Daisy, but I bet some of the rest of the fab six will be there too. The breakfast there is hosted by Donald, but we also saw Daisy, Minnie, Mickey, and I believe Goofy when we were there for a breakfast a year or so ago.

http://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2011/...nces-new-character-lunch-starting-december-4/

Any time we've been at a WDW restaurant and there's been a birthday or other special occasion noted on our reservation, it's always been acknowledged by the restaurant in some way. (Usually with some small extra dessert and sometimes a card.) I can't ever recall anyone singing to us at the table, though.

I've also been to Garden Grill for dinner (we actually got a walk-up right when they opened the check-in desk at 4:40pm) and we had a lovely time and nice interactions with the characters. We saw Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale there. Some people seem to dislike the food here, but we liked it just fine and our server was really great about bringing more of just the items we wanted more of instead of the fully-loaded family style plates.

Have a great trip! My daughter also had her 4th birthday dinner at WDW (she loved the princesses by then, so we went to Akershus) and we had a wonderful time.

 

[Tamar]

Read the Garden Grill thread. You will get lots of character interaction (including Mickey) and good food, to boot.