Garden Grill prepark adr

[AndiMarie]

I thought we were all set with a Akershus breakfast but now I'm thinking Akershus dinner and Garden Grill breakfast. This is dd's birthday trip so hitting as many character meals as we can

Has anyone here done an early breakfast? I was able to snag an 8am adr for day the park opens at 9am. How long does breakfast take? Where do you go after breakfast if it is before 9? I imagined hopping on the Land or trying to get to Character Spot...

We have a 10:00am Test Track FP to tackle as well.

How was the breakfast? Any vegetarian options? We love the restaurant but have only had dinner there. Do all the characters come around or is it sporadic who you see? We didn't get to see farmer Mickey for our dinner last year and my kids were kind of bummer (and yes, mommy was too lol).

Thanks!

 

[ariane37]

We did the breakfast last Nov. and LOVED it. Have you looked at the menu? There's the sticky bun cake, fruit, "potato barrels", eggs, and I think we had Mickey waffles, too, so that should be ok for a vegetarian. Since we're not, I don't know if they offer anything else for those who are. But what we did have was delicious!
Our ADR wasn't until 10:15 so I can't speak for what to do when you're done, but if I was done before park opening and had a FP for TT, I'd head right to Soarin'. If you aren't interested in that, character spot would be my next choice, unless you wanted to get another ride in on TT in addition to using your FP. Our breakfast took less than an hour BUT, we didn't get to see all the characters. However that seemed to be a result of our ADR being right at the end of breakfast service (ends 10:30). There were only 3 more families seated after us. We saw 2 characters. When we were just about finished I mentioned to our server that Mickey and Pluto hadn't been by so she tried to find them, but they'd already left. She felt horrible and was very apologetic, and ended up giving us a "golden fastpass" for character spot. Since my boys are older we were ok with this but I was a bit disappointed as I wanted to see Mickey in his overalls just like you lol. Doing a pre-park or even an early breakfast ADR I'm sure you'd see all the characters. In the event you were about finished and someone hadn't been by, all you'd have to do is mention it to your server. The same 4 are always there - Chip, Dale, Pluto and Farmer Mickey

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Just got back from a trip two weeks ago. Had an 8:05AM ADR at Garden Grill and LOVED IT. It was arguably one of the better charachter breakfasts we have done from both a food and charachter interaction perspective. We were among the first 10 people let in the park for the ADR crowd. We were the first to check in at Garden Grill, didn't see anyone else for a good 10-15 minutes (it was the last week in Feb, a slower time of year). Within 5 minutes of sitting down the whole charachter crew came and sat down with us. We interacted with them for what seemed like forever. It was just me and DS5, he was in heaven. All of the characters returned at least another 3 times during breakfast. We had more charachter interaction here than any other breakfast by far.

Food was typical Disney mass-produced Disney fare, but was perfectly fine and the service was very quick and attentive. The decor of Garden Grill is getting long in the tooth, but it was OK and not a big deal. The spinning restaurant is fun for little ones.

We are pretty quick eaters and were out of there by roughly 8:45AM. I hadn't planned this but since it was still pre-rope drop, we headed over to Test Track to get a jump on the crowds. By that point people were trickling in but they hold you at Innoventions until around 9. We joined the masses once they started walking towards TT and were among the first 25-50 folks in line. Like you, we had a 10AM FP for TT as well. I was pretty stoked to be able to ride twice in a couple of hours with no wait!

Soarin was closed, otherwise we would have hit that right after breakfast.

Hope you have a great trip!