Character meals

[jothp]

I was just thinking about all the character meals on offer and looking at some of the reviews. It seems that apart from the Auberge for princesses all the other meals have a very similar selection of characters so if you did two or three meals you would only see a couple of characters that were different. I was just thinking that it might be nice if the different meals as well as having different food had a different selection of characters too and was wondering what your thoughts were?

 

[Disney-fan]

I totally agree!!!!

We did Cowboy Cookout, mainly to meet Jessie and Woody, but Jessie wasn't there instead we met Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy. On Day 2 we had lunch at Cafe Mickey and met Mickey, Pluto and Goofy again which was fine, but it would have been nice to see some different ones. Also at Cafe Mickey was Gepetto and Friar Tuck - who were great, but a bit niche (although Robin Hood is one of our fav films so it was great for us ). Meeting a few of the Princesses was one of the highlights of our trip - but just Cinders (on the door), Belle (and Beast), Aurora (and Prince Phillip), and Ariel. So really only 3 Princesses coming round the room..... where was Snow White???!!! For that money I would have liked to see one or two more...

 

[jothp]

We chose the cowboy cookout hoping to see Woody and Jesse too. Woody was there along with mickey minnie pluto and goofy but Jessie wasn't but we then saw her at cafe mickey later in the week. When we go again I don't think we would bother to book more than one character meal (other than the Auberge) because one of the main reasons we do them is to collect autographs without the scrums/queues in the park.

 

[DLPdaft]

in my opinion, if you only want to do one character meal and get as many different character autographs as you can in that one meal, do Cafe Mickey in the evening. We have always met at least 8 different characters there in the evening, we met 12 once .

that and being in the right place at the Stars n Cars parade a couple of times can easily provide loads of autographs without any scrumming or queueing.

 

[jothp]

We will definately do cafe mickey again, it was our favourite meal of the trip. I was just thinking that if some of the other meals centered around different characters we would probably do those to

 

[mum2threemonsters]

We turned up at Cafe Mickey at around 5:55pm and caught a few characters at the end of one visit. We hung around for just over an hour and caught the characters coming out again and we were surprised that the characters were different to the previous hour so perhaps if you are visiting hang on just over the hour but it seems they come out on the hour (ish)!

 

[Ware Bears]

I really like the way that at DLP (apart from at Auberge) you never know precisely who's going to come out at the meals, unlike at WDW where it's all set in stone beforehand. We only did one character meal last month at Inventions and saw Mickey, Pluto, Pinocchio and Launchpad McQuack. I think Launchpad must live in the DLH as he's always present whenever we eat there! On previous trips we've seen more characters there so perhaps they were a bit short-charactered as in short-staffed The Lucky Nugget used to be good for random characters but of course it's no longer a character meal.

I would agree Cafe Mickey is the best one for 'less predictable' characters and like Elaine, I think we've always seen at least 8 characters when we've eaten there at night.

ETA: Just looked at my photos from 2008 when we ate at Cafe Mickey at lunch-time and we have photos with 9 characters - Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Chip, Dale, Pinocchio, Gepetto and Gideon.

When eating there at night before we've also met Robin Hood (love him ) Baloo, Genie, Sheriff of Nottingham, and Tigger.

 

[jothp]

When we have eaten at cafe mickey we have always met around 8-10 characters which is great

I don't think I would want to know exactly who I was going to meet but perhaps it would be nice if one of the other meals centered around Donald and Daisy instead of Mickey and Minnie or perhaps one of the meals could be for the newer characters? I'm sure this won't happen but it was something I was thinking about after spending hours reading character meal reviews and seeing mostly the same characters at each meal