Crystal Palace - how long to plan on for dinner?

[gardengirlco]

I've never done character dining before, so I was wondering how long I should plan on the whole experience taking between eating and the character interaction. Our ADR is for 5 p.m. if that makes a difference.

 

[annie1995]

I want to say we were there about a good hour and a half to two hours. Now I have a slow eater, so that might account into it a bit.

 

[ROEDISNEY]

I would say 1 & 15 to 30 mins. It sometimes depends on you. We are fast eaters so we have been out of there in a hours time if need be.

 

[B-Ride]

Typically buffets are faster as you control the tempo. However, the character element can vary widely. The first time we ate at Crystal Palace the characters came by very early in our meal. The second time the characters hadn't arrived after an hour.

If the characters are important to you, I would allow 1.5 hours but don't get upset if it takes longer.

 

[SmallWorld71]

Last August we were there 1 and 1/4 hrs. I agree that the biggest variable is the characters. We saw 3 pretty quickly, 1 about an hour after we arrived as we were eating dessert. Also, they do a parade with the characters each hour which takes up some time.

 

[Amy&Dan]

I would allow two hours total. First you may have to wait, the last time we ate at CP, we had to wait around twenty minutes for our table. Then once in, we ate but had to wait for the characters to make their rounds. We had just missed them (they rotate together going around the whole restaurant) so we had pretty much finished by the time we had our first character come by. It was a great meal, but it did take a chunk out of our day.

 

[Hootch]

is a big issue with CP. It has a large seating capacity and the characters can take awhile to get all of the way around. The last two trips we have a bit of a wait past our ADR time. I would estimate 90 minutes or so.

 

[megthewonderful]

The buffet part of the meal can go real fast if you want it to. However, the characters take quite awhile to make their rounds at the Crystal Palace. You probably need 1.5-2 hours if you want to see all whole Pooh gang!

 

[gardengirlco]

Thanks for all of the helpful replies! I'll plan on two hours and if it's less than that, fine. We're just going to head down Main Street afterward and scope out a place to watch SpectroMagic, which starts at 8, so this should work out great. If we're done earlier, more time to browse in the shops or maybe ride a Main Street vehicle.