Café Mickey - awful time. Anyone else had this?

[Holstar]

I'll write up a proper report later on, but I just wanted to get your opinions on something that's really been upsetting me for a few days now!

On Saturday we took the girls to Café Mickey as a big surprise for our last night at Disneyland, thinking that it would be something special for them to remember. But, it was possibly the worst experience I've ever had in a Disney restaurant!

Firstly, they sat our group of 6 at a five seater table, it took us 20 minutes and three people to get an extra chair for one of our group, who by this point was about as stroppy as a ten year old can get! We had gotten there early, but waited way past our reservation time - but, in all fairness, this I'd expected given it was a Saturday.

The bread wasn’t brought to our table, yet it was to everyone else around us and with a 40 minute wait before they took our drink or food order (making it almost 10pm before we got our drinks, and an hour of sitting about!) – the girls were starving.

When the food did arrive, it was either over cooked (fantasia mushrooms burnt to a crisp) or stone cold (Pluto’s steak). The dishes weren’t cleared between courses, and on a small table with six people on it, it meant the girls didn’t have room to colour in their activity books.

We were seated upstairs and felt completely out of the fun and excitement. It was actually incredibly quiet upstairs, but as they were busy down stairs we only got to meet Pluto and Eyeore. Tigger and Mickey popped up for a few minutes but barely made it around two or three tables before the birthday song started and they had to go, never to reappear.

Due to how slow the service was, it was almost midnight before we got back to our hotel, meaning we’d been in Café Mickey from 8:45pm!

All in all, it was a horrid experience. The girls hardly ate their food as it was mostly cold, but we felt like we couldn’t complain as it’d taken us about an hour and a half to just get our main, we didn’t want to risk being sat waiting for another hour. The girls were almost in tears when we had to leave when she saw all of their favorite characters down stairs that hadn’t come up to see them like we’d promised.

I don’t like to complain, but I felt so let down! Especially given it had cost us an absolute fortune!

Has anyone else experienced this? I’ve read so many good reviews – I wasn’t expecting this. Maybe I was just expecting too much?

Hollie x

 

[PoppetK]

Sorry to hear you had such a bad experience in Cafe Mickey. I really hope it didn't spoil the end of your holiday.

We've been to Cafe Mickey twice. On our first trip we were sat downstairs. It was a brilliant trip, food was good (not the best I've ever had but acceptable) character interaction was great and we throughly enjoyed it.

On our 2nd trip I decided to book a table there again. This time we were sat upstairs. I was a bit put off at first as it was quieter and there didn't seem to be as many characters around. Unfortunately I was right to be hesitant as I found we missed a lot of the characters, they were called off for the birthday song, few even skipped our table as they got rushed off by their minders. I was really annoyed as my son (who was desperate to see Tigger and Eeyore) watched them pass us by At this point I did complain, loudly, to the restaurant manager. To be fair they dealt with it very well, they were extremely apologetic, we got free drinks whilst waiting for the characters to come back and when they did Tigger & Eeyore came straight to our table and spent ages with us.

For me it wasn't an ideal experience, but they CM's did make up for it after I'd complained. We were lucky as we've always found the food ok.

In your situation I don't see how an email over to Disney can hurt, explaining what you have here.

Good luck

 

[DLPdaft]

I would have complained at the time, to the manager.

Definitely let Disney know of your awful experience at Cafe Mickey - if they're not made aware they can't rectify the situation.

We usually make Cafe Mickey one of our dinners every visit, have been seated both upstairs and down, and haven't missed any of the fun or characters. I think you were very unlucky with your experience, but I'd definitely be complaining about it.

 

[Dad2Buzz]

We had eaten there four times - twice it was brilliant, once was ok, but the other time was not good. We had a similar experience to what you have described, the waiter was poor and we spent a good couple of hours waiting for (cold) food to arrive. We had to ask for things multiple times before getting them.

It is the only time I have not tipped in a Disney restaurant and I told the waiter why before we left. The bad experience was the third time we went, so we have been back since and had a great time, so I put it down to bad luck getting a rubbish, rude waiter.

 

[Happy Tappy]

I've only sat upstairs once but I saw loads of characters. There were 4 characters at any given time, 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs. There would be a 5 minute gap between character swaps but other than that there were always characters about. If the birthday music started downstairs, the upstairs characters remained upstairs.

This was in August so maybe they're better staffed during the peak season?

I actually preferred it upstairs as it's quieter and you get a great view over the lake to SL and NPB.

 

[jillrobinson]

That's such a shame, I've lost track of how many times we've visited CM now, but I can't complain about any of them and we've sat upstairs and down.
No harm in letting DLP know about it, not saying you'll get anything in return this time other than an apology but hopefully it'll go a long way towards improving your next visit.

 

[tinks_1989]

we were sat upstairs and still had a brilliant time we were also there neary 3 hours but didnt think any thing of it we enjoyed the fact we were there so long made a brilliant night out for us all

I don't think they can win though if you were to have your orders taken quickly meal brought out quickly and no wait between people would complain it was rushed and they just wanted to get them out for more money from the next table!

I loved having a wait for us when we go out for a meal we like to make the most of it! x

 

[Cyrano]

Our singularly worst restaurant experience has been at Inventions whereas like others Cafe Mickey was a firm family favourite because of the enjoyable previous experience.

I would have complained to a manger at the time also. It could have been a kitchen problem, lack of staff or just your waiting staff were having an off night.
Had you said something on th night Disney could have attempted to make things better.
Sorry to hear you had such a dreadful time at CM

 

[Laura678]

I had a really bad experience in Cafe Mickey. Our waitress was so so rude...

Here is a quote from a trip report I wrote on another forum a few years ago

After a quick refresh we went to Café Mickey for our reservation at 9:30. In short, food was great and service was awful! Suffice to say we didn’t leave a tip! We waited about 15 minutes with our menus sitting in front of us...closed to signify we had chosen might I add. Our waitress came over and didn’t say “Avez-vous choisi?” actually she didn’t even say “Bonsoir”. She just said “What you want?” We were all taken aback by this and said “Pardon?” in case we had heard her wrongly. She then said “So you are not going to eat anything??” She was so rude. We all made it a priority to speak French on our holiday but here we weren’t given a chance. Our waitress decided to just talk down to us in English.


Service aside (for now) our starters were lovely. Mam, Barry and I had a warm goat’s cheese starter with parma ham and salad. Jason had the Fantasia mushrooms.
After our starters were cleared we waited an hour for our main course. We hadn’t noticed it until I looked at my watch and checked the time. We had been distracted by the characters and we were also deep in conversation that time flew by. However sitting in a restaurant for an hour waiting for your main course is bad form.

We asked our “friendly” waitress where our main course was and she made a funny face and walked off! She came back 5 minutes later with our 2 carbonaras, a pizza and a steak! The main course was just as good as the starter and Jason even went as far as to say his rare steak was easily one of the best steaks he has ever had!


Unfortunately our lovely meal had been tainted by awful service! We decided to skip desert as it was 11:30 when we had finished our main course. We were going to get Ben & Jerry’s at Annette’s but it was late and it had been a long day. We walked back to the hotel and had a good night’s sleep.

Another time I was short changed by about 15 euro! I said it straight away to a manager and not the waiter and it was rectified straight away

 

[JohnnySharp2]

I have never been there but I can only echo what others have said, definitely complain.
For the price it just isn't good enough.

 

[tinkertaylor05]

That's such a shame, we've had two good meals there both upstairs, I confess I don't think the food's anything to write home about but the atmosphere's great. We did once sit in the conservatory bit at lunch time the waiter was utter rubbish, totally agree it makes a difference what the wait staff are like but it sound like they were just uncoordinated all round, write and complain.

I wonder if the time makes a difference ? Both times we've had reservations around 6pm and never had much of aa wait.

Out of interest what time reservations have others had?

 

[DLPdaft]

I've had reservations for 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30pm - and have had a good service every time (I had one fairly disinterested waiter one evening on an early reservation, but the orders and food didn't take ages to get done).

 

[Princess Jayne]

We've been twice before (once upstairs once down) and its been brilliant both times. Went on Thursday and it was the worst experience i've ever had at Disney. Because we'd had such good times in the past i think it was even more of a let down. We saw two characters the whole time we were there. It went for about 45/50 mins with the same one character! I've never known anything like it! Service was ok but for me the characters are the main attraction. There was no music, no dancing and no characters!

 

[Isila]

It wasn't so bad at our visit, but I won't go there again

 

[staceylc]

We went last year and were sat upstairs. We had an early dinner at 6.30 so we were one of the first in there for the sitting. Our waiter was also quite rude and had very slow service. We thought the food was nice until we all suffered from food poisoning that night. We think it was the mushrooms or the birthday cake as those were the only things we all ate the same of.

Our buggy also got stolen from the designated buggy area. The manager was very good about it but they were trying to get us into a private area so no other guests could hear what had happened. i did go outside though & told everyone that was waiting that if they had a buggy to either lock it up or fold it & take it to the table with them.

So from our experience we will definitely NOT be going there again.

 

[emanlu]

I have had good, bad and mediocre experiences there - first time was good we were right in the middle of everything and had loads of characters, second time we were out in the new bit and it was terrible this is from my trip report at the time:

this was our main disappointment of the trip – we had a fab time here in April and I was really looking forward to it but we were seated in the new extension and there was no real ambiance out there – you seemed to be cut off from the main action - the characters did come along but there were so many birthday cakes coming out they kept running of to go to whatever table the cake was going to. We managed to see Mickey, Minnie, Eeyore, & Gepetto.I think there were others about but I can’t remember who else was there. Anna had ordered the kids fish and it was like rubber so she ended up sharing with me – Mum and I both ordered coffee at the end – the coffee was freezing and we had to send it back to get it heated and even then it wasn’t hot hot. I was dissappointed and would be very hesitant to go back

We did go back again the following Sept and we had a fantastic time - we were the first people to be seated upstairs and had wonderful interaction from the characters the highlight being mickey chasing ds under the chair and being down on the floor with him!

When we went last November we were a group of 5 and were squeezed into a table for 4 we had to wait ages to actually get in despite having a reservation (I think about 30 mins!) Characterer interaction was good and the food must have been ok but it all felt a bit rushed!

We ate there again last Thursday and were seated in the outside bit but it was still early so we got plenty of interaction from the characters - we got our bread as soon as we sat down (I think we were on our 3rd visit before we got bread!) and the food came relatively quickly - the girls meal was nothing spectacular but I had the meatballs and it was lovely there was loads of it and I couldn't finish it all!

I really think it can be hit and miss as our visits have proved - I really don't like sitting in the outside bit - this was really noticeable this time as it was early evening and people were coming up to the window behind me so they could see whatever character was there!

It is worth an email to let them know how disappointed you were

 

[wmoon]

Hi

What a shame.

We have been 3 times and it's always been ok, we have been upstairs twice an downstairs once. The last time I asked for a table upstairs as I felt it had a better atmosphere.

I would email them, it's obviously impacted on your overall view of your holiday so best to do something rather than stew.

Am I right in thinking this cafe mickey was not run by the Disney park but that it is now?

Wendy x

 

[Vala]

Complain, in writing. Restaurant manager wouldn't have done much good, at least I've mostly been ignored when I complained on the day.

I always liked Café Mickey, but it has been going straight downhill in the last months. Food horrible, characters bypassing me us and extremely rude staff. When I complained that I was being ignored by the characters the reply was: "Is that a problem?" and the only staff I ever saw after that was a bus boy dropping off my food and the bill. Yeah... I book here for cold pasta and being thirsty.

The last 4 times I went my reservation had disappeared - when I went last week my boyfriend had been so sweet and booked a good bye breakfast... only to have me arrive and not have my name in the system again. I definitely would not have gone back on my own.

Aftera pretty severe complaint - "costumer service" had simply ignored me twice before - they sent me a half board food voucher to "make it up."

 

[Chatterbox1169]

We've been there once for lunch and it was the best meal of our holiday. Characters around loads and Donald even fussed about our baby and wanted to pose for a photo with her. We have booked again for our November trip and have booked a cake etc so fingers crossed we get the same level of service.

 

[Ware Bears]

What a shame.

We've eaten here (although admittedly more than 3 years ago) for lunch and both early and late dinner and have only good things to say.

I wish you'd complained at the time but can appreciate why you didn't, sometimes it's not as easy as it should be. I'd definitely write and complain now. DLP needs to know and it'll make you feel slightly better too.

I hope it won't put you off dining there again. How was the rest of your holiday?