Character Dining...favorites

[savs]

My family and I have been to Disney World many times and love trying new character meals. Our favorites are Crystal Palace and Chef Mickeys.

We will be heading to Disney Land in 2 weeks and was wondering which meal you would choose as your not to miss character meal.

My sons are 8yr, 6yr and 1yr and would enjoy seeing any and all characters

 

[CalGal]

You won't have nearly as many choices for character meals at DL as you do at WDW. Best all around character meal IMO (and, I believe, the opinion of many DISers) is Goofy's Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel. It is a buffet and offers breakfast/brunch or dinner seatings. Goofy hosts, and is joined by a variety of characters that vary over time. Some characters that you might see there include Chip and Dale, Pluto, Max, Genie, Aladdin, and a princess. It's probably the most like Chef Mickey's. I think the food at Goofy's is pretty darn good for a buffet.

The other 2 hotels each offer character breakfasts. I don't think the character variety is as good at these. I believe that both will give you the option of buffet or menu items for breakfast. These breakfasts are described a little more on the Disneyland.com web site.

At Disneyland, there is a character breakfast at the Plaza Inn. This is most like the Crystal Palace, although its buffeteria style, not buffet. Currently, they offer a princess breakfast, but that is changing to a Miinnie and Friends breakfast in mid August. I haven't been to the Plaza breakfast lately, but I hear that it's gotten so popular that the characters had had difficulty making the rounds to all the guests in a timely manner (not unlike Crystal Palace from my experience). The recommendation is to get a very early seating if you want to dine here.

At DCA, Ariel's Grotto offers character lunch and dinner. Currently, Mickey is your host, but that will become a Princess lunch and dinner mid August. Ariel offers lovely outdoor seating, but I'm not a big fan of the food. It's a set price menu, with a handful of offerings including meatloaf, pasta, cheeseburger... I can't remember what else, but it includes some fair deserts, a salad and beverage. You can find the menu online at www.dlresortinfo.com.
Some people really like Ariel's food, I'm just not one of them. (I prefer healthier choices).

PSs are recommended for all character meals!

 

[iceskatejen]

You pretty much can't go wrong with Goofy's Kitchen. It's in the DLH and is a lot of fun.

 

[KMH1]

We are also WDW veterans, and we love character meals!

We went to all five character meals at DLR in May. It was the two of us and our fourteen month old daughter. Our meals usually lasted between 1 1/2 and 2 hours (we don't rush character meals).

Based on our experiences, this is our favorite order of the meals we went to:
1) Lilo and Stitch at Paradise Pier's PCH Grill: Lilo, Stitch, Minnie, Daisy, and Pluto (a smaller restaurant and five very attentive characters, very good breakfast buffet)
2) Ariel's Grotto at DCA: Captain Mickey, Pluto, Donald, Chip, Dale, and Max (again, a smaller restaurant and attentive characters (and very cute costumes), good dinner, the kid's meal prices are high $13.99 but kids could easily share one meal because it includes soup, entree, and dessert--way too much for a one year old though!) We also used our Disney Visa to get a free 5 x 7 picture here before 11:30 a.m. and we posed with Mickey and Goofy, so Goofy may be at the meal too. I've also seen pictures of Minnie, but we never saw her.
3) Goofy's Kitchen at DLH: Goofy, Geppetto, Aladdin, Donald, Chip, Dale, Cinderella, Aurora and Pluto (a bigger place, but the characters were quite attentive, though we did miss Aurora in the rotation somehow, very good dinner buffet, but expensive)
4) Storyteller's at GC: Chip, Dale, Meeko, Baloo, Kenai, and Koda (this was a decent breakfast buffet and this might rank higher, but this was our first character meal and Alyssa was a bit hesitant with the big bears, it also seemed that too many people were getting up from their table to see the characters and nobody seemed to be controlling that)
5) Plaza Princess breakfast at DL: Cinderella, Fairy Godmother, Perla, Belle, Snow White, Jasmine, Aladdin, and Mary Poppins (good food, but you couldn't serve yourself and sometimes the lines were long, too many princesses and we had the mentality that we wanted to see them all, so we were there too long. Don't get me wrong though...we still enjoyed ourselves, but since Alyssa isn't princess crazy yet, this just wasn't our favorite.)

Feel free to PM if you have more questions.
Amy

 

[tlovesdis]

We've done them all and my families favorite is Lilo & Stitch at the Paradise Pier Hotel!

 

[Amy&Dan]

Another vote for Goofy's. My son is 10 (almost 11) and my daughter is almost 9 and they still love and look forward to getting out there and dancing with all the characters. We also think the food is very good. One of the reasons we like it so much is that it always has a wide variety of characters to please most kids of all ages and genders. We like dinner the best because we like to hit the parks in the morning when its not so crowded. It is pricey though.

 

[missmulan]

You pretty much can't go wrong with Goofy's Kitchen. It's in the DLH and is a lot of fun.

i agree! i also liked the Lilo & Stitch Breakfast!

 

[savs]

Thanks for all the responses. It seems to be a toss up over Goofy's Kitchen and Lilo & Stitch. Decisions, decisions, decisions

I will have to call and see what is still available. Since we are planning this as a last minute vacation (we took our annual 10 day vacation in May to Disney World).

I would be very happy if there were any opening at this late of date for any of the character meals. We will be in the Anaheim area for 6 days, so wish me some luck

 

[gary403]

Are your favorite character meals because of the particular characters or the food & interaction with the characters?

 

[tlovesdis]

Mine is both! The food at the Lilo and Stitch breakfast was very, very good and we had super character interaction! We saw Lilo, Stitch, Goofy, Max, Pluto, Minnie, and Daisy Duck. My niece got to play a game of musical hawaiian islands (think musical chairs) with stitch and she had a blast! She also got to do the hula with Minnie and Lilo!

We were very disappointed with the character interaction the last time we ate at Goofy's. Only Pluto came to our table and the place was not even busy. We did see Aladdin and Baloo walking around, but they never came to our table. Those were the only 3 characters there the whole time we were there and it was probably a good hour to hour and a half. The food is good at Goofy's, but when we do a character meal we want great interaction for the kids!

 

[savs]

Are your favorite character meals because of the particular characters or the food & interaction with the characters?

We like our character meals for both reasons.

At Chef Mickeys I love the atmosphere that they create there....plus Mickey and the whole gang is there....and the food is pretty good too.

At Crystal Palace we love the food and they have great character interaction. Tigger always has some fun with you and I never get the feeling that they have to move along and get there rounds done.

We never have a problem at either place gettting to see ALL the characters.

We have been to many of the other ones and these two make us want to go back every time

 

[CalGal]

savs: Here's a recent thread showing a poll for favorite character breakfasts.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=810596&highlight=breakfast

This showed GK a clear favorite for breakfast, however, based upon what tlovesdis says, it may be that they've added some characters to the PCH grill recently. We go to GK every trip and have always had outstanding character interactions there. However, we rarely go at breakfast. If you can't decide, why not have breakfast at PCH and brunch or dinner at GK? (Yes, it's expensive, but if you love character meals, you just might find it worth it),