Character Meals for 18 month old

[Jasmineandrajah]

I have some awesome dining reservations for character meals and am starting to put our schedule together with Fastpasses. I just read an article about how they are starting to switch over to giving out cards with signatures instead of letting the characters sign books. Our son will be around 18 months when we go for the first time. I have no idea whether he'll enjoy the characters at all and was looking forward to getting signatures/pictures with characters without having to stand in line. Now I'm wondering if it will be worth it at all! I know for sure that he would enjoy meals with music and dancing, like HDDR and raglan road. Should I switch my reservations over to those types of meals instead? I'm torn!

 

[LongLiveRafiki]

There's a thread over on the dining board about this called "We knew it was coming..." I'm on my phone and don't know how to link to it, but it shouldn't be too hard to find. It seems like they tested this at a couple of restaurants for a short time in August, then started letting the characters sign again. I went in late August to CRT, Garden Grill, Bon Voyage breakfast, Tusker House, and Crystal Palace and characters signed at all of them. The thread I mentioned has more recent reports of characters signing as well. To my knowledge, no one has posted recently that the characters wouldn't sign when they went.

My DS was just shy of 2 and we had no idea how he would be with the characters either. A couple months before the trip, I started showing him videos on YouTube of different character meet and greets to give him an idea of what the characters would like. He absolutely loved watching them- they seriously held his attention better than any cartoon and he'd get upset with me when the videos were over. When we got to Disney, he loved the characters. He had no interest in the princesses (he's not really familiar with them anyway), but he loved the animal characters (Mickey, Pooh, etc). Some of them he had never seen before in cartoons or videos, like Pooh and friends and Chip n Dale, but he went right up to them with big hugs too, and he's normally a very shy kid. He doesn't even like his dad hugging him half the time!

Anyway, the character meals were great for us. Garden Grill had the best character interaction. We saw Mickey, Dale, and Pluto twice, Chip once and the second time Pluto came around, he played with DS for around 10 mins. They played peek-a-boo, gave each other a million hugs, pointed out scenes from Living with the Land, and had a conversation only the two of them understood (DS babbling incoherently and Pluto making gestures). I doubt we would have met many characters had we not booked the meals.

All that being said, DS did really enjoy HDD, Raglan Road, Ohana (dinner), and TRex as well. I don't know how many restaurants you're booking, but I would personally go for a mix of character meals and others like HDD. Also consider showing him YouTube videos of the character meets to familiarize him a little with the look and size of the characters. If after going to your first character meal you find that he is afraid of the characters, you can always cancel the others and try to book something else.

I really hope it all works out for you and your son loves the characters as much as mine did.

 

[Jasmineandrajah]

I really hope it all works out for you and your son loves the characters as much as mine did.View attachment 269235

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for your very thorough reply!! I will definitely show him some videos before we go, and I'm going to try to mix up the dining reservations. At this point, we mostly have character meals. I had thought about doing Akershus to meet the princesses, but really, he'll have zero idea who they are. I do have a HDDR and plan on adding raglan in there too! I think it'll be more fun for all of us this way. Thanks so much for the insight! Hope we can snag some cute pics like yours on our trip!

 

[LongLiveRafiki]

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for your very thorough reply!! I will definitely show him some videos before we go, and I'm going to try to mix up the dining reservations. At this point, we mostly have character meals. I had thought about doing Akershus to meet the princesses, but really, he'll have zero idea who they are. I do have a HDDR and plan on adding raglan in there too! I think it'll be more fun for all of us this way. Thanks so much for the insight! Hope we can snag some cute pics like yours on our trip!

For Raglan, I strongly recommend asking to be seated near the stage when you check in. There's of course no guarantee, but even if you have to wait a few extra mins, it's worth it. We didn't ask and were sat behind a chest high wall in a secondary room. We could hear the music but couldn't see anything. A couple of the dancers did come over to our area at one point and danced with all the kids, and that was nice, but it wasn't the same as being able to see everything.

 

[Jasmineandrajah]

For Raglan, I strongly recommend asking to be seated near the stage when you check in. There's of course no guarantee, but even if you have to wait a few extra mins, it's worth it. We didn't ask and were sat behind a chest high wall in a secondary room. We could hear the music but couldn't see anything. A couple of the dancers did come over to our area at one point and danced with all the kids, and that was nice, but it wasn't the same as being able to see everything.

oh my!!! I would have been so sad if we had been placed somewhere where we couldn't see! Thanks for the tip!!

 

[KrazeeK120]

We took our son on his first trip in May, when he was 18 months old. I had Garden Grille booked for the first day of our trip. He absolutely loved the characters. Whenever they left the table, he would turn around and try to reach for them. I will never, ever forget the look on his sweet little face when he saw Mickey coming for the first time.

A few days later, I managed to snag a same-day ADR at Tusker House for lunch. The characters were a hit once again! He would smile and clap each time someone came to our table.

He also met the talking Mickey at MK and also Aladdin & Jasmine (the line was so short, we had to hop in). He had a blast meeting them too.

I will say that we didn't get an autograph book. I don't think my son would have been interested. We just took lots of pictures to remember these special moments.