Crystal Palace Experience

[Cold in Saskatchewan]

We ate at the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom for dinner on January 3, 2006 and were very dissapointed with the experience. First of all we had to wait a long time to get in even though we had made an reservation. Our server was not overly friendly, and the food was not that great in our opinion. We were supposed to have four characters visit our table but by the time we ate our meal and had our dessert only two characters had briefly paused at our table. We sighted the other two characters at the far end of the opposite side, but they never even appeared on our side of restaurant. We could have waited another half an hour or so and maybe seen the other two characters but we wanted to take in the Cinderella show in front of the castle so we didn't stick around. Who wants to sit around in a restaruant in the Magic Kingdom when there is so much to see and do? Our meal cost $90 for a family of 4 which in our opinion was a lot of cash for the food and characters we saw. This was our first character meal and as a result we cancelled some of our other character meals after this experience. On a positive note, we did have good meal and experience at the character breakfast in Animal Kingdom and at the CRT for lunch with the princesses.

 

[tjmouse]

So sorry you had a bad experience. I have eaten there 4 times in the last year and a half and not had anything but great experiences. You should have said something to the manager. They need to know when guests aren't satisfied so they can make changes accordingly.

 

[dismom9761]

I was also disapointed in the dinner but am very glad that I did it.The food wasn't to my liking but I am a very picky eater so that wasn't a surprise.The service was horrible and we had to wait a long time to see all the characters.One great thing did happen-my DD6 got to help lead the parade and still talks about it. I am glad we did it but probably won't do it again.

BTW-we also loved CRT and Donald's Breakfast.

 

[Tinkerbell10403]

We LOVE Crystal Palace...So Sorry you had a bad time! I will say this...alot of other guests were confused about how the characters will come to your table. Perhaps they should make that info more clear to guests...

 

[Cass]

Hi Cold in Saskatchewan

Sorry your family had an off night at the CP, thats really a shame.

 

[Slapster]

We've eaten there twice and enjoyed it both times. We had reservations as well but still had to wait for a short time, but that's par for the course at most restaurants. We just struck up conversations with some of the other folks on the porch there and the time just flew by. I really love the salmon they have there with the pesto (guess? It tastes like pesto and it's green). The kids like making their own deserts.


The only complaint I have about the place is that the walkways to the buffet are small, and with the characters there it's usually a traffic jam. Otherwise my family and I like it a lot!

 

[wendypooh]

I'm sorry too......... it is one of our FAV's and we have an ADR for it on this trip......... we've always had excellent service, and excellent character interaction. I do have one pet peeve though............ I totally agree with Tinkerbell10403, some people would get up from thier table and try to interact with the characters........... or SHOVE thier kids over to the characters instead of waiting thier turn.......... the characters make it to each table, and in our experience spend plenty of time....... taking pics, giving autographs...... etc..... in fact last year, the characters came to our table 3 times...... each!!!!!!!!

It just makes me nuts when people can look around and see how it works, yet totally disregard and disrupt the process...........

Again, sorry you didn't have a better time....... I would've talked to a manager as well, I'm just glad we've never had too.

 

[MrsLady]

Sorry you had a bad experience. I hate to hear that though, because we're going to be eating there in a week! We have a character breakfast before the park opens. Anyway...sorry it hear you were disappointed!

 

[monte]

Sorry to read that you had a bad experience at CP. My neice and I had breakfast on the morning of Jan. 5th and had a wonderful time. We found the food to be good, the service attentive and the characters always hit our table. Tigger was there 3 times during our meal. It was great.

 

[KPeterso]

Sorry you had a bad experience. I know exactly what you are talking about. We ate there in October before MNSSHP, and it was sooooo slow. We saw all the characters, but it took about an hour and a half. We were told the pattern that the characters take, and that it should be about 45 inutes to an hour to see them all. Guess what, we were there 40 minutes before the first character made it to our table. We always leave one person there, so it is not like we missed them by getting up to get food. There were a lot of unhappy people around us due to the slow character movement. Many people who were done eating and just waiting. That was the case on all sides of us. I refuse to go back there. I just felt the whole experience lacked for us.

 

[Mandabella]

We had breakfast there in late October and had a similar experience character wise. We finally gave up and left. I didn't see the point of waiting another 30 mins for Eeyore to get to our table (we were seated in the last table on the left side).

We did enjoy the food, but LTT and CM's (which I don't like foodwise) have much better character interaction in my experience.

 

[The Sweetness]

I love the CP but also had 1 bad exp there. One day at lunch, dd was very excited as usual to get a hug from pooh and friends. Tigger and Eyore were no prob. DD had seen Pooh far away from us and started asking when he'd be comming to our corner. We even asked our server. Once Pooh finally came remotely close, dd was getting very anxious, after waiting, we had already finished eating... Pooh was led away to another section of the restaurant. DD . She was so disapointed. The server told us that Pooh **had to** go back to the other section for an engagement Thats lovely, really, for them, but no excuse to cheat a 5y old out of her turn to see Pooh. However, like I said, this was our one bad character meal memory. And I am a bit more picky than DD, and DH

 

[Jalva22]

Give it a shot at breakfast. We booked the earliest seating in June (I think it was 8:00 am but can't remember now for sure) and got seated promptly, had a great server and great character interaction. The food was also very good (pretty hard to mess up breakfast). We ate at a leisurely pace, enjoyed all the characters at our table (and Piglet up front) and were out of there in time to be the first ones in line at the rope drop on the adventureland side of the park. I liked it much better than our dinner at Chef Mickey's (but then again I also am a somewhat picky eater).

 

[tracyerin]

We just returned from a great weekend at Disney. We live in Florida so we go about about every 6-8 weeks. We always go to a few character meals which are the highlight of our visits for our 3 year old twins. I think we have been to all of the character meals over the last year. Our girls love Tigger and Pooh so I figured that we should eat at the Crystal Palace on this trip (along with 1900 Park Fare--Cinderella, and Liberty Tree Tavern). The Crystal palace was by far the worst character meal we have been to. The food was actually quite good although the kids buffet only had mac'n'cheese and chicken fingers. I clearly remembered mini hot dogs from a prior visit but not this time.
We were seated without too much of a wait. We ate our entire meal including two trips to the dessert bar without a visit from any of the 4 characters. In fact ,75 minutes passed without a character coming anywhere near our section of the restaurant. After an hour, I asked our waiter if something was wrong. He went to ask the character handlers what was wrong---he really didn't get an answer. We noticed that Tigger ad Piglet kept visiting the same 4-5 tables and actually spent about 15 minutes at one particular table. Then just as we were hoping that they would head in the direction of our section....they went on break!!!! Other people in our forgotten about section began to complain to the hostesses who seemed to be very frustrated as well. I then got up and went over to one of the handlers who replied "You must have had at least one of the characters by now....I just got back from my lunch" .
I then asked to speak to the manager. She assured me that this was not a typical experience and she offered us a breakfast the next day. When i explained that we were leaving after lunch she finally took my girls over to each of the four characters for a picture. The handlers seemed quite bothered by this.
We will never go back. We will stick with Chef Mickey's, Garden Grill, and 1900 Park Fare. Another parent at another table told me he had the same experience last time he was there (and sat at our exact table).
I am now thinking of reporting this meal experience to guest services so that perhaps someone else doesn't have to go through the same thing!! Especially for that kind of money!!!!

 

[MinnieMom]

Well, we leave for WDW March 2nd and we have ADRs @ CP on 3/7. This is our first time dining there and I'm really hoping we like it. We have always done Chef Mickey's (and we're doing that again this trip), but we wanted to try something a little different too. I read so many good reviews about CP that I decided to try it.

I hope you just had an off night, but I'm still sorry that you did!

 

[mainewmn]

We went to CP on our arrival day January 11th and like OP felt disappointed with the character interaction. We tough it was due to the fact we had no little ones with us. The food we tough was fair but nothing fantastic, and since we used DDP we wore OK with it. However had I been paying out of pocket for $100 + I would have been quite disappointed. Overall we thought the CP was towards the bottom on the list of restaurants we dinned at on our visit and we all agreed to skip it next time.

 

[vhoffman]

So sorry for those of you who have had bad dining experiences. We have had fairly good experiences dining at WDW, however, that was about a year ago. It really seems like everything is going down hill. From what I've been reading, the prices are up, the service and attitude is down, and the "magic" just isn't what it used to be. We are seriously considering just not going this year. We have good memories of WDW, let them be. We don't want our last experience of WDW to be a negative one.

Insofar as writing complaints to management, WDW, etc., save the effort. If you even get an answer, it will be a form-letter type. Face it, WDW really doesn't care about negative comments and bad experiences. They aren't looking for repeat business, anyways. They put the majority of their money, efforts, etc., into marketing themselves. The whole idea is to get you there. Even if you just loved every minute, you're not coming back next week, so what difference does it make to them? The place is always crowded with new visitors who are attracted by the marketing hype. Your "comments" could matter less--what matters is to keep the parks packed, which they always manage to do.

So, if you have a bad experience, just cross it off your list and go on. Oh, but it does matter to us here at Disboard to read negative comments. We know which places to avoid and thus increase our chances of a "magical" time!

 

[kelleigh1]

Sorry you had a bad experience. I hate to hear that though, because we're going to be eating there in a week! We have a character breakfast before the park opens. Anyway...sorry it hear you were disappointed!

Hubby and I were there last month for breakfast. We thought the food was very good. And we got to see each of the characters...some more than once, but this was mainly because we had a late seating and they were changing over for lunch so there is that downtime. And our wait to get in was practically non-existent.

One thing to remember is that ADR's are not your typical reservations. They guarantee you a seating, but they do not guarantee anything else. And everything I've seen says that there may be a wait to be seated.

Oh...and while I'm thinking about it, make sure your entire party is there when you check-in. There was a woman in front of me who was trying to check-in for her party of 20 and they weren't all there...some weren't even in the park. It was 10:15 and they had a 10am breakfast seating. Because not everyone was there, they weren't able to check in and they ended up losing their space because the entire group didn't show up before the last breakfast seating which is at 10:30.

 

[Eeyore2003]

I would have to agree, I was not overly impressed with Crystal Palace and would really only go there to see those characters.

 

[Linzybrooke]

My DH and I ate there on our Honeymoon and were also rather unimpressed by the experience. We got to see all of the characters eventually, but only because we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere else and didn't have any young children getting antsy. Our biggest complaint was the service...we were seated next to a couple with 2 toddlers in the booths that go around the edge of the restaurant (placed WAY to close together). The toddlers were totally out of hand and the parents could have cared less. One of them threw a chicken finger at my DH and started laughing, parents ignored this as well, then the other jumped up to run at Tigger who was about 5 tables back and knocked over my soda, again parents did nothing. We asked three times to please change seats and were told that the restaurant was full. It was, but they could have at least said something to the other couple. The table behind us got angry because they were trying to take pictures of their children with the characters and these two brats kept jumping in front of them and grabbing the characters... It was so obnoxious...our character experience was good but slow and the mean was alright, but you can get better food almost anywhere in the park.

If you are looking for a great character experience I would not recommend CP.