My answer to the OP is yes, yes it is. We used to go several times each visit until our last one in 2009 or10 and that was so purely horrendous, it finally just made us stop our tradition. I'll define my "horrendous". Food was blah to not palatable and cold and we do the first seating times so nothing should have had a chance to get cold or grow a hard "skin" across it. Characters were incredibly rushed and spent maybe 15 seconds at our table and we only got about 3 of them. Our server was hurried like crazy and never stopped back to see if we needed drink refills, not even once. It also seemed like they didn't have enough staff cleaning and clearing tables because it got messy is a huge hurry. We all walked out hungry and that is something you should never do at a buffet. Sad too, some of our fondest memories happened there. But I'm just not paying about $200 for a meal we leave hungry. Character interaction is worth money, but not that much. Do we still do buffets? yes. We're not food snobs, we just like to at least like what we eat. It being edible and warm doesn't qualify in our books. Cape May is still high on our list and we'll be enjoying it in a week.
To be fair though, most Disney food has turned us off in the past 6 years, so Chef M's is not alone. I WANT it to get better. IT wasn't only one poor experience that did this, it was the food decline most notably. Until this visit though, the interaction and CMs made up for the food lacking. So that was our final straw.