Character Meals

[wendlle]

We will be at Disneyland for 10 days in November (10 - 20th) just Myself and my 4 year old are visiting this time from Australia (Husband and baby staying at home) My Daughter LOVES all the characters and loves character meals.
I am going to do some at Disneyland and we have never done character dining here before, only at WDW.
We will most certainly do two, possibly three.

Which ones are the best in your opinion?
We aren't adventurous eaters, my Daughter is picky and I am to an extent but we've always found plenty to eat at the WDW buffets, and let's face it, you're paying for Character interaction not food.

We have 10 day park hoppers so meals can be in or out of the park.

 

[tenneycjt]

I love storyteller's Mickey is a;ways there in his indiana jones outfit minnie chip and dale and pluto. I think this is the only one where mickey is guaranreed, I also like Goofys kitchen alot, PPh i hjavent done in many years, Minnie and friends i;ve never done but has alot of xtra charactors. I like to do mine early in the morning so I like theones at teh hotels

 

[PoohsFan1]

We too love character meals at both WDW and Disneyland, mind you my family consists of my hubby, myself and 2 daughters ages 18 and 16. With that said, our favorite must dos are Minnie's Breakfast at the Plaza Inn mainly because of the amount of characters that you see. We couldn't believe how many characters that kept coming to our table when we ate there for the first time, it was awesome. The best part was, they kept coming around to our table....we always have great interaction with the characters there. The other character meal that is a must do is Goofy's Kitchen. Again the character interaction is great and the food is good too. This year we are adding Surf's Up to the mix, it's been a while since we ate here and I thought eating breakfast with Mickey and the gang would be a great send off before we have to go to the airport to go home.

 

[wendlle]

Fantastic, thanks, sounds like they are all good!
I think we have to do Minnie's Breakfast, the characters sound so good there - and plenty of them.

Now, I am considering doing the Princess Breakfast, I know it is expensive at $125 per person and that includes my 4yo (she will be almost 5 when we go) but I have some questions if anyone knows.
I've seen the menu and the desserts and buffet portion look fine, but the starters have quite a bit of meat in them. I am a vegetarian. Any chance they can give us the ham and cheese sandwiches without the ham? I'm sure they can If I ask but would be good to know for sure.

I think that it would be a great opportunity to do it, next time we go we will be back to 4 of us and no way could we afford this with 4 people, 2 is do-able even with the Aussie dollar hovering around US60c

 

[midnight star]

For the princess breakfast, they should have no problems accommodating you. When making the reservation, put down vegetarian. And when you check in remind them again. I did it with my friend and she does not eat pork due to religious reasons. They brought us the big tower, then she got an extra plate with the accommodating food.

 

[mouschievous]

Definitely Minnie. We did it a little over a year ago a d the kids LOVED it. Oh, who am I kidding, the adults did too! There were so many characters - Eeyore, Rafiki, Fairy Godmother, Hook, Max, Tigger, Chip and Dale...I think there others but I can't remember now! We got tons of great photos and wonderful memories. The good was ok - nothing amazing, but adequate and filling.

 

[azdisneylover]

We will be at Disneyland for 10 days in November (10 - 20th) just Myself and my 4 year old are visiting this time from Australia (Husband and baby staying at home) My Daughter LOVES all the characters and loves character meals.
I am going to do some at Disneyland and we have never done character dining here before, only at WDW.
We will most certainly do two, possibly three.

Which ones are the best in your opinion?
We aren't adventurous eaters, my Daughter is picky and I am to an extent but we've always found plenty to eat at the WDW buffets, and let's face it, you're paying for Character interaction not food.

We have 10 day park hoppers so meals can be in or out of the park.

What kind of foods does your daughter like? You will be surprised with the counter service foods in both parks, the hotels and DTD. You won't have to leave the Disney bubble unless you want.

 

[wendlle]

For the princess breakfast, they should have no problems accommodating you. When making the reservation, put down vegetarian. And when you check in remind them again. I did it with my friend and she does not eat pork due to religious reasons. They brought us the big tower, then she got an extra plate with the accommodating food.

This is great news, I'm ok with all of it just not the meat on the sandwich.

Definitely Minnie. We did it a little over a year ago a d the kids LOVED it. Oh, who am I kidding, the adults did too! There were so many characters - Eeyore, Rafiki, Fairy Godmother, Hook, Max, Tigger, Chip and Dale...I think there others but I can't remember now! We got tons of great photos and wonderful memories. The good was ok - nothing amazing, but adequate and filling.

WOW, that is a lot of random characters. I'll be booking this one for sure.

What kind of foods does your daughter like? You will be surprised with the counter service foods in both parks, the hotels and DTD. You won't have to leave the Disney bubble unless you want.

You know typical kids "not so healthy" food, we've been to Disneyland and WDW before so know the drill, we usually get QS at DL but I'd like to try some Character Meals this time. I see most offer normal "kid food" so we should be good

 

[Diszona]

We like Minnie’s a lot. The food is pretty good and there are a lot of characters and usually some unusual ones. We were there last Thursday and saw: Max (Goofy’s son), Fairy Godmother, Peter Pan, Chip and Dale (who seem to be at every character meal), Rafiki, Captain Hook, Honest John, Tigger, Eeyore, and of course Minne.

 

[wendlle]

I think that's why Iike the sound of Minnies the most, the randomness of the characters sounds hilarious to me. Just a giant mix of everyone.

 

[Disco Lemonade]

The only issue I had with the Plaza Inn breakfast is that they don’t do anything to make sure that kids get to meet all of the characters. This was the first character meal we took our daughter to, and she was a bit shy and overwhelmed. She got skipped over by most of the characters as other kids kind of seized their time. The one saving grace came from the Captain Hook CM, who sat down with us for a long time and was very good with her. I think that the CM noticed that she was not getting any time with the characters. Our daughter has been partial to Captain Hook ever since and seems to struggle with him being a “bad guy”.

 

[gelatoni fan]

Given that you are going for 10 days, you could go to all of them. The characters are different and even if Minnie appears in multiple buffets, she will wear different clothes.

Also, have you priced out getting annual passes instead of tickets? A deluxe pass comes out cheaper than 10 days of park hoppers for adults and comes with discounts. Plus, you can get Maxpass which includes digital photopass for the entire trip for $125 instead of $200 with tickets.

 

[ktlm]

Minnie's breakfast is our absolute favorite of both WDW and DL for the number of characters you see and the variety of characters. I think the minimum number of characters we have seen is 7 with the maximum on a non-busy day where every character came to our table at 11. We love the fact that you may have a surprise as to who shows up at any given time. We love the fact it is not a constant set rotation like WDW or like some of the other DLR meals have no switched to being. Goofy's Kitchen used to be like that- but then they went to a set rotation of 5 characters (Goofy, Minnie, Pluto, Chip, Dale) and Mickey no longer was even there so we quit going there. It went from feeling special to feeling like any WDW character meal. Although with a 4 year old- if she likes those characters it would probably still feel pretty special to her! At Minnies, pretty much Every time we have been there we have seen Minnie, Hook, Fairy Godmother, Chip or Dale (or both), Max, and a Pooh Character (Pooh, Tigger, or Eeyore and sometimes more than one), but we have seen a ton of other characters there over the years too. Rafiki is there quite a bit- but we have not seen him every time Over the past several years, on different visits we have run into Alice, Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dum, Brer Fox, Mary Poppins Penguin, Pinochio, Gepetto, Susie (mouse from Cinderella), Perla (mouse from Cinderella), and probably a few others I have forgotten. As one poster mentioned, sometimes you will spot a character on the other side of the restaurant or in outside seating (or inside if you are outside) that will not make it to your table- we have seen this with Rafiki and Eeyore when we were there. The characters follow a set rotation--- but I think there are times that they switch characters out-- and also busy times where one character might be doing only the outside area- or maybe only 1/2 of the restaurant while a different character does the other half. If the character is in your area of the restaurant, they should make it to your table. If you spot the character out a window-- or if you are in the center and see the character on the half of the restaurant where your table is not--- there is a change that one may not get to you. If you are inside and see a character outside or inside in the other half of the restaurant that is an absolute favorite--- I would ask a CM or handler (usually we see one standing between the two sides of the restaurant) if that character is coming to your area and if not that if there is any way your child can see them as it is an absolute favorite. They may say no- but we saw a family with a little one ask that once and the CM took the child and parent over near the other side of the restaurant and had the character come see them.

 

[Kender]

Also, have you priced out getting annual passes instead of tickets? A deluxe pass comes out cheaper than 10 days of park hoppers for adults and comes with discounts. Plus, you can get Maxpass which includes digital photopass for the entire trip for $125 instead of $200 with tickets.

The 10 day ticket available to Australia and New Zealand residents is usually quite a bit cheaper than a Deluxe without the block outs that the Deluxe has. I don't know current price, but in the past it seems to have been not too much more than the cost of a 5 day ticket.