Well, last year we attended a Star Wars weekend and joined really long lines when we arrived 30 minutes before park opening. They started letting people in about 20 minutes before opening, but held everyone in a big crowd at the ropes there at the first intersection, just like usual openings. So this year, we thought it would be great to get into Hollywood Studios for breakfast before the park opened, figuring that would give us good position at the ropes before 9:00 a.m.
Well, best laid plans, and all that. Hmm
although we checked in right around 7:50, and there was only like 5 families standing there waiting to be seated...they didn't actually start seating people until well after 8:00 due to some computer glitch. Our waitress took our drink order (coffee for all, and cranberry juice for me), we headed to the buffet.
The buffet area devoted to breakfast at Hollywood & Vine was smaller than the Crystal Palace buffet, for starters. OK, I actually only took two pictures because the food was just not worth taking more, sad to say. Not only was the selection more limited, but what was available seemed to rely on a lot of food that was of the canned/frozen/prepackaged variety
and quality control was lacking. Heres Kermies plate:
As always, he had the Biscuits & gravy (good) but the rest was not so good: bacon (really chewy - like jerky), corned beef hash (this had the consistency of canned hash--blech-- with veggies added) and chunky breakfast potatoes (undercooked)
This was my plate (Yodas was similar)
.
Upper right, fresh fruit (very good). On the plate, chocolate croissant (also very good) but unfortunately, that was about it for good
the rest of the plate: bacon (jerky) & sausage (bland), cheesy hash browns (undercooked frozen hash browns with velveeta-like cheese-eww), ham (too salty), egg casserole (rubbery scrambled eggs, with tiny bits of pepper added.) Meh breakfast, for sure. We also had Yoplait yogurt (individual packages) and regular croissants (stale, with the usual rock-hard butter packets.) There was a fairly large selection of small danish pastries, but nothing special there.
So to sum it up, the biscuits & gravy were good, as were the chocolate croissants and the fresh fruit. Other than that, not so much. When we returned to our table, the waitress brought our drinks, including my juice. Which was warm! Our waitress says "its never cold until about an hour after we open
would you like ice in it? Are you kidding me
if you know its warm, why not ice it before serving? I mean, really, how many people actually want to drink it warm? I said yes to ice..and that was the last we saw of her (or any other servers) until we tracked her down to get our check.
This is a character meal, but we really didnt know these characters from the Disney channel. We just said "Hi" when they came around, but the kids around us did seem to enjoy the little get-up-and-dance gig the characters did, along with a singing castmember. Looked cute & fun.
By 8:30, we were pretty much done eating
there just wasnt a whole lot to linger over. We had to track down our waitress (dont know what she was so busy with, because at 8:30 I dont think 20 tables total were being used in there, and there were at least 10 servers/bussers around.) Anyway, when she came to the table, we told her we were ready for our checks - and pointed out that we needed two checks, because we were not all in the same room. It took her more than 15 minutes to get the checks straight (and when she returned with them, she also delivered us a lecture on how difficult we made it by having two cards, and it was a lot of work to split the bill.) Really
you have 3 adult buffet meals, all the same price. No variation at all - no drinks or apps or side dishes that have to go on a specific check. Just how difficult is that to put two meals on one check and one meal on another check? Almost every time weve done the dining plan , weve had parties with 2 different rooms at the table and this was the first time ever that any server said this was difficult. I guess she just needs some practice ringing up dining plan tickets. When she was done with her little spiel about how much work it was, we did tell her this was the
first time ever in 20 or 30 Disney restaurants that splitting checks was an issue
Anyway, we finally got out of there at about 8:50...to find that they had already let the waiting hordes in, and there were now multiple ropes set up through out the park
all of which were about 20 people deep already. So not only was it a mediocre breakfast, but we didnt even get any rope-drop advantage by getting there so early. (We still managed to have a nice morning at DHS
though the crowds were insane by about 10:30 a.m.)
So, final thought: this breakfast ran $26.62 each (with tax) making this place about $5 more per person than Crystal Palace
WTH? They were both character meals, in parks
and H & V had far less variety (not to mention worse quality.) I just dont get why the price was higher? Anyway, it was covered by the DxDP. But start to finish, this just did not work...slow to seat people, mediocre food & service. Id give it one point for the cute characters, and one point for the biscuits & gravy, chocolate croissants, fruit - so a rating of 2 out of 10. Would we return: no way.
Love to read you review of Tony's...always good to see the different experiences people can have at the same time at Disney!
Not too shabby!
