hollywood&vine, why so many bad reviews?

[ngvenice]

I have breakfast adr for hollywood&vine (my daughter loves handy manny) but on the boards I see that it gets alot of bad reviews, is it really bad?

 

[clkelley]

My DH and I are two adults with adult children that have NO CLUE who the characters are at H&V and we have breakfast there every chance we get because it is GOOD FOOD!!!

 

[randy2005]

We eat there every trip and we love the food also. It is usually not that busy and the characters come around a few times

 

[whitney37354]

It was my second favorite breakfast only to Ohana. It is a buffet, but it was good food. I liked that they had cold cereal on the buffet for those of us who don't like so much grease in the morning! It wasn't crowded and it was a laid-back atmosphere. DD enjoyed dancing with the CM's while waiting for the characters to come around.

 

[pigletto]

I can only attest to dinner here. It was my least favorite of our last trip. That being said, it wasn't horrendous, just not great.
It was free dining and the place had been very busy apparently because all the tables were dirty and the buffet was low on quite a few things. And the food was just o.k.
My server was great though. Like I said.. it wasn't a nightmare, but wasn't very good.

 

[koolaidmoms]

Remember to take everything on here with a grain of salt. Most people will take the time to print and tell their horror stories but few will take the time if it was a good to average meal.

We went to H&V for the first time in December and it was good, as a PP has said but not great. The food was decent but it was a standard buffet with decent but not great food.

Hope this helps some.

 

[BladeRunner72]

My wife is an aspiring chef and i took here there back in June as part of the Fantasmic dinner package. She was very impressed with the quality of the food. She thought it would be the low point of our meals and it certainly wasn't. I have also had breakfast there on previous trips and have had no complaints.

 

[jlk806]

We had lunch there last year and dinner there a few years ago. Both meals were fine, nothing spectacular, but nothing bad. The food was ok and my son like the characters last year.

 

[Sleeping Becca]

I had lunch there a few years ago and it was disgusting. The buffet was a mess and the food looked as if it had been out for a while.

I haven't been back since, but will be taking my niece there in November (taking one for the team.......again).

 

[Laurin612]

My family and I dined at H&V as part of the Fantasmic dinner package a few years ago. The food was perfectly fine--nothing special, but certainly not bad either. They were extremely busy and the server hardly ever made it to our table for drink refills. We probably wouldn't go back, just because there are better buffet choices in WDW. I think most of the "bad" reviews I have seen have been for dinner.

If your daughter loves Handy Manny, I say do it!

 

[jshuff1]

i didnttry it yet

 

[disneypolybride2008]

we ate there for dinner once and wouldnt return b/c there are better choices. the food was ok. i liked the pot roast. there wasnt that much to pick from.

we ate there for breakfast on our last visit b/c we were on deluxe and we love eating character breakfasts. we got there at 8am. they were not busy at all. the food was fresh and tastey. nothing stands out for me though, like at the other breakfast buffets like CP's puffed french toast or Park Fare's lobster eggs benedict. they did have a breakfast burrito bar but i didnt care for it. the characters were cute, all for toddlers though. We are just 2 adults, but it was funny to get DH w/ Dora the Explorer, lol. The Lion was adorable. If i had toddlers I would go back, and if i was on the deluxe again. It's perfect for the little ones. They even have a special time where they invite the kiddies to get up and go dance with the characters.

 

[Sleeping Becca]

Dora the Explorer is not a Disney character, I think you may have seen June from Little Einsteins.

 

[KatMark]

We have never done breakfast at the H&V. We've done dinner twice -- twice too often. The food was bland, luke warm (and that is when there was actually food at the buffet); the restaurant was filthy from the table tops to the floor to the bathroom and the service was non-existent.

 

[catne]

Ate dinner there a couple of years ago--had no complaints about the food or the cleanliness, though service was lacking...haven't been back for dinner because there's better choices out there. We ate breakfast there in May 2010...and definitely will not return. Food was just OK - though it was the most limited selection on breakfast buffet we've seen at Disney (have also been to Chef Mickeys, Boma and Crystal Palace for breakfast buffet...all had better selections/variety)

Service was attrocious. Juice was served warm -- not room temp, but actually warm...and the waitress says "it's always warm first thing in the morning --would you like some ice for that?" Well, geez, if you KNOW it's warm why don't you tell me that when I order it & offer it iced then? As it was, most of my breakfast was over before she got back with my iced juice. And the place was mostly empty...have no idea why ice took so long. Took her 20 minutes to get our bill figured out -- we were a party of 3, but two separate rooms so 2 separate dining plans. She pitched a fit over that, like it would take a meeting of the board to straighten that out (how hard is this...not like she had to figure out which entree/dessert/appetizer/drink went where--it was 3 adult buffet meals, all exactly the same price. No extra drinks, nothing extraordinary: just put 2 meals on one check & 1 meal on the other check. Done. That was the only restaurant we've ever been to where the server had an issue doing separate checks.

 

[Tiger926]

we ate there for dinner once and wouldnt return b/c there are better choices. the food was ok. i liked the pot roast. there wasnt that much to pick from.

we ate there for breakfast on our last visit b/c we were on deluxe and we love eating character breakfasts. we got there at 8am. they were not busy at all. the food was fresh and tastey. nothing stands out for me though, like at the other breakfast buffets like CP's puffed french toast or Park Fare's lobster eggs benedict. they did have a breakfast burrito bar but i didnt care for it. the characters were cute, all for toddlers though. We are just 2 adults, but it was funny to get DH w/ Dora the Explorer, lol. The Lion was adorable. If i had toddlers I would go back, and if i was on the deluxe again. It's perfect for the little ones. They even have a special time where they invite the kiddies to get up and go dance with the characters.

The characters just changed in March: JoJo, Leo and June (Little Einsteins), and the long awaited addition of Handy Manny. The lion you mention was Goliath, JoJo's partner, but he has been retired from character greets in all of the parks.

Dora the Explorer is not a Disney character, I think you may have seen June from Little Einsteins.

Food is not the greatest here, but the characters do a great job, as do the young hosts, who sing and dance, with the characters, and children from the audience. We haven't gone in a few years, but had to go last month, as kids love Handy Manny, and lunch was fine. Not the greatest buffet on property, but it was clean, not busy, and the characters were great!

Tiger

 

[tcoopman]

Put my family on the list of people who won't be going back to H&V. We were there for a character lunch with JoJo and Goliath from JoJo's Circus and Leo and June from Little Einsteins. My dd4 had seen Little Einsteins a bit but it wasn't one of her favorite shows. The characters do a great job of getting kids involved but if you don't know them, I'd avoid it.

The food is the reason I won't go back. For lunch, the highlight for me was the cold cut sandwich I had to make for myself. Buns, cold cuts, and condiments on the buffet. They also had some warm selections that didn't interest me and I'm not that picky. I thought it was ok but disappointing compared to every other meal (including counter service) I had that week. By Disney standards, there are plenty of better options.

 

[aussietravellers]

We were at WDW for 21 nights and ate two to three TS meals a day (so we had 63 meals in a row at WDW that trip) We went to H&V once and of all the meals we had at WDW this was our least favourite! I have friends who went for the same length of us and they too went to H&V and it was their least favourite too. We are going for 22 nights in a few weeks and we will not be going anywhere near H&V.
There are so many fantastic restaurants at WDW we would just not waste a meal there when there are so many great restaurants.

In saying that, character meals for us are all about the characters and we don't go for the food. If H&V changed to get some characters that appealed to us (my DS is too old now for the H&V characters) then we would be there in a flash. So if your children enjoy those characters then I say go there as they will love it. If you are going there for a delicious meal and have no interest in the characters, I would go somewhere else. But that's just me, everybody has different tastes which is why WDW is so wonderful with so many meal choices

 

[jenjersnap]

Breakfast is better than dinner. Dinner is atrocious and breakfast is serviceable. We'd return for breakfast but not dinner.

 

[asdfghjkl13]

Dinner was not good here. Service was great but the food wasnt that good.