Beth ~ I think Goofy's Kitchen is definately the best bet for a character meal. Especially outside of the parks. They usually have the best arrange of characters (both face & costume) & the atmosphere is more party like.
I've eaten at GK several times since my DD was only 10 months old and I only had one experience that wasn't great.
I don't get to do character meals that often anymore, because my kids are only interested in rare characters now. It's sad to say, but after meeting most characters hundreds of times, they don't get that thrill of meeting them anymore

. I made the mistake of making a reservation for Crystal Palace during our WDW trip in November. My DD said to me "Could you ask the characters to stop coming to our table, I'm trying to eat & they are interupting me"

. Does anyone have some younger kids I can adopt

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Just for fun, here are a couple pictures of one time we ate at Goofy's and my DD fell asleep (it was a long day). They actually refunded me the money for her since she didn't eat much

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