The walk through Downtown Disney to the parks is very easy. I think it took us about 10 minutes. During peak hours, this sometimes seemed shorter than waiting for the monorail. Even though the return entrance from Tomorrowland has a dedicated line for hotel guests, this was sometimes still a very long line (for example, after the fireworks). For getting into the park, if you get there a little before park opening, you'll get a bit of a jump on everyone entering through the main entrance.
Your princesses should love Goofy's kitchen, at the DL hotel (based on several experiences with my DD5). It has characters for all 3 meals. There's one character waiting outside the restaurant for staged photos, and then a variety inside going around the tables. The great thing about Goofy's kitchen is that the characters vary. So you can eat here multiple times and see different ones. Every time we've eaten there, either Snow White or Jasmine was there - sometimes both. We've also seen Belle and Alice. Chip and Dale, Max, and Goofy are also common. We've seen Genie outside the restaurant several times. Another perk is that a couple of times during the meal, kids get to go up and dance with the characters.
When we were there over a year ago, the restaurant seemed reluctant to tell us who was going to be there when we called. When we finally did coax the info out of them, there were lots of disclaimers like "we can't guarantee that any character will be here when you arrive, because they can leave at any time". But on our most recent trip last month, we didn't experience this. They always seemed happy to say who was there. I'd be interested to hear experiences of others on this.
For prime dining hours on busy days, you'll want a PS. Although it seems like it's not strictly necessary if you don't mind waiting an hour or so for a table. On our last trip, on weekdays we showed up a couple of times without a PS and got right in. This was usually for an "early" meal (7:00am breakfast, 5:00pm dinner). On the weekend, however, we missed a few meals here because we didn't have a PS and the wait was too long.
If your girls like Ariel, you'll want to make a PS at Ariel's Grotto (California Adventure) for lunch. We've done this several times, and every time there was a huge wait for people without PS's. Ariel sits up front several times during the meal and the kids go up and meet her. Other characters go around the table (Chip and Dale, Goofy, Pluto). Perodically the kids also get to follow these characters in a line around the restaurant shaking maracas and banging sticks.
There's also a Pooh breakfast at the
Disneyland park. We had a PS but it didn't seem busy when we arrived right as the park opened. Another post on this board confirmed that this is usually easy to get first thing in the morning.
There's a couple of other character meals that seem to require PS's (when we were there and called a day in advance they were already booked). One of these is at the Grand Californian. I can't remember the characters. The Paradise Pier has a breakfast that, if I recall correctly, includes Minnie and a couple of others. Like some of the other meals, the kids get to periodically dance or march around with the characters.
