Garden Grove for Thanksgiving with a timid toddler?

[Miumiu4me]

How's Garden Grove on Thanksgiving? We will be a party of six - four adults and two little kids. My four year old loves the characters (and she's been to a dozen character meals) but my toddler niece is from a small town and hasn't been exposed to crowds or mascots. This will be her first character meal. She has been to Disney once before - at five months - and she was completely spooked and miserable for the entire day. We are trying a character meal with her before attempting AK on Black Friday. I'm hoping she enjoys herself but I'm not counting on it. Is this restaurant loud? Is there a special menu for Thanksgiving? We've tried almost every Disney restaurant except this one.

 

[JerseyJanice]

I think it's an excellent choice for a quieter character meal. It won't be noisy and active like Chef Mickey's or H&V.

Do yourself a favor and reserve it on Open Table so you don't have to deal with Disney's ADR policies. If you have a AAA membership, bring your card for 20% off.

And have fun. We loved the food at this meal. Not the biggest selection, but high quality in everything available.

 

[Wild4Walt]

We had a toddler who wasn't crazy about the characters either but we still did GG. I'd recommend if they can give you a space where she can sit furthest from the path of traffic near an adult it may help reduce her stress. That's how we did it and it helped significantly. She was OK with most characters but Pluto freaked her out. Another thing you can try is showing her YouTube videos of the character meals so she can see others interact - it may lessen her stress.

 

[Miumiu4me]

I think it's an excellent choice for a quieter character meal. It won't be noisy and active like Chef Mickey's or H&V.

Do yourself and reserve it on Open Table so you don't have to deal with Disney's ADR policies. If you have a AAA membership, bring your card for 20% off.

And have fun. We loved the food at this meal. Not the biggest selection, but high quality in everything available.

I reserved on Open Table already. Their ADR policies are a bit much, but I've never been charged for a last minute cancellation (I've always called and explained the situation though).

 

[Miumiu4me]

We had a toddler who wasn't crazy about the characters either but we still did GG. I'd recommend if they can give you a space where she can sit furthest from the path of traffic near an adult it may help reduce her stress. That's how we did it and it helped significantly. She was OK with most characters but Pluto freaked her out. Another thing you can try is showing her YouTube videos of the character meals so she can see others interact - it may lessen her stress.

I suggested my sister show her some videos. We are local and we have soooo many cute videos and photos of our daughter with the characters when she was a baby. But my daughter started going to Disney at 3 months and she's been back at least twice a month since then (she's 4 now). My sister is assuming her daughter will very into the characters cause she likes Mickey so much but I know the crowds and sitimulu are overwhelming to most kids.