Is Garden Grill a good character dinner?

dsnygirl2006

DIS Veteran
Joined
Feb 18, 2006
Hi everyone,
Just wanting some input on this one, I have booked this for our first night at WDW, we are going to the Character Dinner....How is the food? Atmosphere? Characters?....We are going to do a test run and do a character meal the first day because I am curious as to how my 3 yo will respond to the characters, because I have about 5 character meals booked for the trip....thanks for the tips and inputs... :thumbsup2
 
We like it a lot. The food is fine--nothing special, but quite tasty. I think that it would be a good "trial run" sort of character meal, because I find it the least chaotic of the character meals, with some of the best interaction. Enjoy!
 
Yes, because it's a small, round resturant, this is one of the best character meals for a lot of interaction! You are likely to see all the characters more than once. Also, you can get pictures without tons of other random people in the background. :)
 
We ate here in January with our then 18 month old DD. It was a fantastic character experience for her. In fact, I called my mom to check on our dogs while leaving Epcot after eating at Garden Grill and couldn't stop giggling when telling her what a wonderful time DD had at this meal!

The food was decent. DD and I are both vegetarians so we didn't eat the normal stuff, but DH gave the food a thumbs up and had a second helping of the catfish.

The character interaction was the best! We ate here on the second or third night of our trip and were spoiled. I think that the other character meals we went to afterwards were a bit of a disappointment. Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale each came around 5 or 6 times and were very good with DD who hadn't been up close with many characters yet (at least without clutching onto me for dear life). By the end of the meal, she was hugging and kissing them. She kept petting Pluto nose and calling him "soft". It was all so adorable in the eyes of this Disney obsessed mother! Needless to say, we are returning to GG on out trip in Sept!
 


dsnygirl2006 said:
Hi everyone,
Just wanting some input on this one, I have booked this for our first night at WDW, we are going to the Character Dinner....How is the food? Atmosphere? Characters?....We are going to do a test run and do a character meal the first day because I am curious as to how my 3 yo will respond to the characters, because I have about 5 character meals booked for the trip....thanks for the tips and inputs... :thumbsup2


We just returned from our trip a few days ago and did our first night for dinner here. It was our first return there in a year and a half (we visit WDW a lot), but stayed away when they made the original menu changes because of all of the bad reviews. They have changed it back to be similar to what it once was with a few small changes (IMHO, I think they were improvements).

The food is very good. Our server was great. I only needed one plate of food to feel VERY full and it was all GOOD!! DD (7) had the mac n cheese and chicken fingers with fries and was very happy. The atmosphere is very low key for a character meal. On this particular visit the characters were very slow to come around to our table because they had just missed us when we sat but it did work out for the better because we got to eat first and they came around as we had dessert 1 at a time allowing ample time with each one before the next. (BTW, dessert is one of the big improvements!!)

If you're not sure how your 3 yr old will respond to the characters this is the BEST place to "test the waters". Ironically I did the same with my dd when she was 2 1/2, as GG was her first character meal. I can tell you it's a great place to start. She was afraid of Pluto and we told him so he just kinda would walk by and wave (he was a little "mopey" :rolleyes2 but it was cute). She loved Chip n Dale and would want me to hold her when Mickey came by but she was fine and eventually grew out of her Pluto fear (she didn't like the characters who had snouts when she was younger).

I do miss the roll of paper towels and country touches they used to have on the tables before...they were cute. But, all in all, wouldn't hesitate to go back again! :thumbsup2
 
I think GG would be a great start for character meals! We've gone there twice before with the CP dinner package & our meals have been very satisfying. I LOVE the new dessert sampler they offer now...a definite improvement IMHO. :goodvibes

Each time we had gone, the character interaction was great...Mickey, Pluto, Chip & Dale each came around a couple of times before the meal was over to spend time for photo ops (& it was just my DH & myself!).

Another plus is the change of scenery that you get in the restaurant...the whole thing very slowly revolves around the Living with the Land ride below, allowing diners to get glimpses of scenes that cannot be seen from the ride.

Enjoy & I hope you'll share your experience with us all when you get back!

Kim :tink:
 
We went in April , DD13 and her friend 12 both enjoyed the dinnner and all of us love the character interaction .. :thumbsup2
 


Thanks for all the good reviews. We're going in a few weeks and I have ADR for GG. Last year we did CP but I thought that this might be a nice change. Now I'm confident of my choice.
 
The character interaction is awesome there, although I haven't had the food since it was still family style but it was pretty good then :thumbsup2
 

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