Pakey, I have never done the meal plan, however, I do have a lot of experience traveling with:
A) Groups
and
B) Short people, aka Children
Character meals are great - I like killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. Once you have seen them in a restaurant, no need to wait in a line in the park to see the same one, right? With Clayton being 3, I would think he would be ok with the characters, but you never can tell. My 3 year old didn't go near the characters until the 4th day!
Then she loved it! 
If he is the only child on the trip, I would pick one or two that appeal to you the most. After that, it might get a little tedious! Early breakfasts are nice with little ones (they are usually up and raring to go anyway, it's us adults who are usually lagging) plus you can get those nice empty park pictures and the kids can see so much when the park is empty! Crystal Palace and Chef Mickey's would be my choices for an early bkfast on MK day!
They are always going to try and seat large groups at times that are closest to opening of the service time or closing. So with children in tow, that works out anyway! Once they are actually hungry, they will get grumpy fast! Better to beat them to it! They will usually offer 7:30/8:00 for bkfast; 11:00/11:30 for lunch; 5:00 for dinner for early seatings for large groups, after that it will be late in the evening (not usually great with kids) You might want to get used to that time change before you do an early bkfast though - yikes!
On our last trip, we had one TS meal a day (we weren't on the dining plan, but I still found it much better to have that one meal where we didn't have to worry about wandering around with trays and kids, looking for tables, pushing them together, etc, etc, etc). It's just nice to have them come to you. Our TS meals were for 2 breakfast seatings, 2 lunch seatings, and 3 dinner seatings. A good variety.
We stayed offsite, so we didn't really need a lot of breakfasts in the parks (ate at the vacation house), but we had to have a Princess Bkfast (6 little girls with us
) and our other bkfast was our departure day at Chef Mickeys, so we had checked out of the house that morning without eating! As far as buffet vs. non-buffet, that's hard. With kids, sometimes buffets are a lot of work - you're up and down, up and down
but then again...buffets provide instant gratification for a hungry child! No waiting for their food to be brought out. 6 in one, 1/2 dozen in the other. With only the one child, I would think the aggravation of getting up and down would be minimal. My favorite type of dining (by far) with children is family style. The food comes fairly fast, and you don't have to go anywhere to get it! You just have to make sure you like the menu beforehand!
LTT, PSB, Garden Grill, HDDR, are all family style.Hopper vs. non-hopper:
I like the flexibility of a hopper, but it adds a lot of expense when you're talking about a large # of tickets. It also adds a lot of time into your day of traveling to and from one park to another. But it is nice to know that if you go somewhere and it's way more crowded than you anticipated, you can go somewhere else.
I felt pretty good about my park choices this last trip (thanks to UOG and mostly TGM), but we still had to get the park hopper in order to work in two of our events we wanted to do.
I would not have purchased the hopper this trip if it hadn't been for those two scheduling issues. Just would not have been worth it for our large group to mobilize to another park mid-day - it just eats up too much time. For an adults only trip, or with older children, I think it's probably worth it just to have some flexibility. As far as resting goes, I think park touring in the AM, eating lunch, and leaving for "rest" is usually the best thing. Then return to the park for dinner, parade, shopping, and fireworks (with a child who is hopefully a little less cranky).
And if you are there early and stay ahead of the crowds for those first few hours, you won't feel like you are missing out on something, when you leave to go "rest". IF you come in around 9:30 or 10:00, ride 2 rides and then eat lunch, you won't much feel like leaving for a "break" ya know?
Granted, I say this, HAVING NEVER DONE IT!
So take it with a grain of salt. I always thought it wouldn't be wise to do it, but sometimes those meltdowns (adults and children) can be avoided with a little down time. It doesn't have to be sleeping, per se, just a dip in the pool, or watching a little TV, just being away from the constant stimulation can do wonders for a child's temperament! (Like I said though, I have never done that - my kids have always napped in the stroller
but there were a couple of days there that I thought it would have been nice). And the kids still ask how come they didn't get to spend more time in the pool. (I'm just saying... sometimes we think staying in the parks the whole time is what the kids want, and then when we get home, they talk about playing an X-box, or swimming. Um, hello? You have every video game imaginable at home and your grandparents who live 10 minutes away have a pool! ) Where are you staying? Those monorail resorts sure do look like easy places to be able to get back to for a "rest", especially on your MK and Epcot days! I also think if you are paying a lot for a resort room, why not take advantage of what the resort actually has to offer for the kids! Some of those pools look amazingly fun!
I don't know if that was much help, but seriously, I could go on and on about traveling with a big group, lots of children, and now, since our Thanksgiving trip, at a busy time of year!
Yes, we were a little crazy this last trip! Herding cats, I tell ya! But also some fantastic memories! So ask away and I will be glad to help wherever I can. Sara
You're the ones I'd want to talk to about this anyway.
Disney's restaurants that is! I know you want to go to a party so that's settled. No Sunday night. I wish you could get on my flight, but I alredy booked the window seat!
So, Thursday or Friday it is!
What's "normal" chicken, BTW? 
