Recently at Chef Mickey

[SillySallySews]

We recently did a late breakfast on our checkout day at CM. I broke my own cardinal CM rule lol. Normally I would only ever eat here if I could snag the very first ADR for whatever meal it is. Not that the food here is ever fantastic, but at least if you are some of the first people through the buffet it is fresh and not picked over. That just did not fit into our plans this time and this was the one place my kids (they are all young and don’t give a hoot about food quality) requested we eat. We had a 10:40am ADR. We checked in around 10:30am and they said that they were running about 20 minutes behind. Got a text that the table was ready at 10:50, so not too bad. Some of the food was literally inedible. There were sprinkles in the scrambled eggs on the buffet. Not one or two, but like an entire clump. They were still there 15 minutes later. I had both burnt and raw potato on my plate in the same dish. I tried to put bacon on my son’s plate and it literally just disintegrated into bacon bits. The bread they used in the eggs Benedict tasted like they stole it off the dusty haunted mansion dining room table. It is one of only three things I have ever actually gagged on and spit out while eating at Walt Disney World. It took 12 minutes for the toaster to lightly toast a bagel. My toaster at home is 19 years old and can toast faster than that. The cream cheese was gone and when I asked for fresh cream cheese I stood there waiting for another 10 minutes before I realized the guy was not coming back. To their credit, the Mickey and Minnie waffles were actually some of the best I have ever had, but all the toppings were such a mess and remained a total disaster during our entire meal that I just ate my waffles plain. I thought I could at least salvage the meal with a giant brownie or rice crispy treat, but after I walked over and saw an unattended child sneezing and coughing into the desert display while taking random bites of things and putting them back, I passed. At the end of our meal we found out we were one child TS credit short because of a mistake that had been made at our dinner the night before and there was nothing the server could do to fix it, so we had to pay out of pocket for inedible food. The characters were great! As we were getting ready to pay the bill someone came around to make sure all the characters had gotten around to meet us, which I thought was very nice. And we definitely took advantage of the “free” alcohol you can get now on the dining plan, so there’s that. It helped. No, I did not say anything to management or anyone because honestly I knew going into this the meal was probably going to be a disaster. My kids were thrilled with the experience. They are already asking how soon we can eat here again. I mean, I’ll probably give it another try sometime next year because they’re only little once, but these kids better put me in the good nursing home someday.

 

[freshmanjs]

Yeah it’s bad. The only places worse are 1900 park fare and crystal palace.

Tusker house is much better.

 

[Beer Me]

I would send your experience to someone at Disney (not sure of the right avenue).

That sounds awful and they should know.

I know people kind of expect it from chef mickeys but it shouldn’t be that way.

 

[maxiesmom]

I'm not sure why you would expect that sort of mess at any meal. You pay $50 a person for food, and it had at the very least better be edible.

 

[SillySallySews]

Yeah it’s bad. The only places worse are 1900 park fare and crystal palace.

Tusker house is much better.

CP lunch is usually ok for us, but on this trip the service was just awful! The characters weren’t all that either. Food was fine though. I’ll 100% agree on 1900. One of the worst meals I’ve eaten in my entire life. I’m usually willing to give most places a second chance but that one is probably a hard no repeat for me lol.

I'm not sure why you would expect that sort of mess at any meal. You pay $50 a person for food, and it had at the very least better be edible.

Well, lol, I mean, I’ve eaten there enough times to always go in with low expectations. We have had much better luck when we go early in a meal, especially for dinner. We don’t stand in the line to have our picture taken with the fake plastic Mickey, so if we go right at 5pm and are some of the first people at the buffet, it’s been ok. I figured the end of breakfast would be chaotic and maybe they’d run out of things, but this was just exceptionally bad.

 

[Mousemom234]

We haven't gone back to Chef Mickey's in the last 4 trips, having experienced about what you did. It was also a late breakfast, about 11:00

Characters were good - which is more than I can say for the food and the service.

Spillage from adjacent pans, burnt & nearly raw, like pans had been scraped into one big pan, rock-hard dried out sausage...
I don't think we had the 'sneeze & sample' but we had the 'toucher' picking up every pastry.
Service was pretty much non-existant. Nobody refilled anything, nobody came by to check on us about the food, nobody took away the used plates.

Shame, because it used to be a pretty good place that we felt we could recommend to others.

 

[Nancyg56]

I like CM for dinner and have also enjoyed breakfast, but if I walked into that mess I would walk out. Bring those characters over to me for a M&G and then we are leaving. There is no excuse for a dirty restaurant, burnt and old food, or anything else that makes a meal inedible.

 

[verleniahall]

we have never had a bad experience at any character meal- food is always fresh and good. sorry u had a bad time

 

[NickC]

Buffets never work out in our favor. I usually eat one plate of eggs and 2 slices of bacon. I don't make a second trip. I'll have a glass of water and usually drink espresso in the morning, so, no coffee. My family is similiar, though there may be some Mickey waffles involved. It's the worst value ever. Still, we do one or two every year for the characters. As long as my kids are young enough to still get excited by that or BBBoutique or Pirate's League, etc...I will keep shelling out the money. What a sad day it will be when they are too cool to meet Mickey.

 

[chris benton]

I've been to Chef Mickey's for dinner, and had no real complaints. That said, the myriad of complaints I've heard about this place would seem to have to be legit, because of the sheer number of them, but I have no first hand experience.

What I DO have experience with is the awesome customer service at Guest Relations.

People - please take pictures of this stuff, and email it to them! I'd suggest taking pictures that make it 135% clear that you are at the place you say you are. CM is not cheap. Many of the folks at Guest Relations are well aware that WDW has extreme prices, and I've read plenty of stories about Guest Relations trying to "make things right." I also have had 1st hand experience of them making things right for us.

Be reasonable in your complaint(s.)
Also, comment on any positive experience (if you hopefully had any) in your email to let them know you are not some snarling, unreasonable, requestor just looking for $$. Maybe you are really just looking for a full refund, however, if your issue was 100% horrific, in which case, go with your gut.

Seriously, I've had great experiences with guest relations, please keep this in the back of your mind. For the prices we are paying at WDW, reasonable expectations should be met. Sprinkles in the potatoes? Come on - even if a CM took the tray of potatoes in the back, scooped out the sprinkles, then re-arranged them or scooped the clean potatoes into a new tray - that's totes reasonable.

We all know (i think) that Chef M's is not expensive because of the food, but come on, Walt, can we at least have a decent meal with ice cream sprinkle free potatoes?

TAKE PICTURES, and let em know!

I bet a CM would notice and maybe take a peek at what you are taking pictures of, and then at least think about taking some action.

 

[Ginger R]

I agree it's TERRIBLE! We ate breakfast there 2 trips ago and the coffee was burnt. It was not good. Seems over the years it has gotten worse and worse. The food doesn't even look inviting. I too, don't do well at buffets and know I never really get the value from what I actually eat at them but some are better than others. Chef Mickeys is just bad. It's way to too chaotic and busy for my taste. I do however like the cape May cafe buffet character breakfast as an alternative. But I'll take a regular sit down meal over the buffets any day!

 

[butterscotchcollins]

Have never eaten there but in my experience the rest of the food on property with few exceptions is just as stale and borderline inedible and it breaks my heart - just because you can get away with charging those prices for cafeteria food doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I resign myself for paying too much money for subpar food every time I go and it's the only thing about the Disney experience that makes me sad.

 

[kiford]

Yeah it’s bad. The only places worse are 1900 park fare and crystal palace.

We ate at CP for breakfast on Christmas Day. We generally avoid buffet at WDW other than Boma and I'm not a big character meal fan but our friends really wanted to eat there. I was actually quite impressed with the variety and quality of the food. I thought it was really good. Expensive, but good. And the staff was great as were the characters.

 

[NYCgrrl]

Thank you for reminding me of another reason I avoid most buffet restaurants. I dislike eating food that has been touched by too many people in an uncontrolled area.

 

[MomOTwins]

I've been to Chef Mickey's for dinner, and had no real complaints. That said, the myriad of complaints I've heard about this place would seem to have to be legit, because of the sheer number of them, but I have no first hand experience.

What I DO have experience with is the awesome customer service at Guest Relations.

People - please take pictures of this stuff, and email it to them! I'd suggest taking pictures that make it 135% clear that you are at the place you say you are. CM is not cheap. Many of the folks at Guest Relations are well aware that WDW has extreme prices, and I've read plenty of stories about Guest Relations trying to "make things right." I also have had 1st hand experience of them making things right for us.

Be reasonable in your complaint(s.)
Also, comment on any positive experience (if you hopefully had any) in your email to let them know you are not some snarling, unreasonable, requestor just looking for $$. Maybe you are really just looking for a full refund, however, if your issue was 100% horrific, in which case, go with your gut.

Seriously, I've had great experiences with guest relations, please keep this in the back of your mind. For the prices we are paying at WDW, reasonable expectations should be met. Sprinkles in the potatoes? Come on - even if a CM took the tray of potatoes in the back, scooped out the sprinkles, then re-arranged them or scooped the clean potatoes into a new tray - that's totes reasonable.

We all know (i think) that Chef M's is not expensive because of the food, but come on, Walt, can we at least have a decent meal with ice cream sprinkle free potatoes?

TAKE PICTURES, and let em know!

I bet a CM would notice and maybe take a peek at what you are taking pictures of, and then at least think about taking some action.

After waiting 40 minutes after our ADR time for dinner, the roast chicken I had was raw inside. I brought it to the attention of a manager because it was a major health risk. The manager actually argued with me that I must have been mistaken but I know raw chicken when I see it. They just don't care there. After declaring we would never go back, we did once try it for breakfast on the logic of "well, they can't screw up breakfast" and the kids really like the characters. We had pretty much the identical experience of the OP, except that on top of that, the characters skipped us several times before I had to point it out, and then we had a very rushed set of interactions from all the characters one after another once they realized we'd been skipped in the rotation and tried to jam us in.

It really is the worst--I have now moved it into the NEVER never again category. ​

 

[KenHutch]

OUCH sounds like you had one disaster of a meal. We have eaten there several times and always had a good meal but we tend to follow your rule. All of our CM meals are very early in the rotation.

 

[Kae]

I think places have off days and night because our last trip Boma breakfast was horrible from food to service. And it was alway a must do for us. Chef Mickeys was alway pretty good back in the day still a buffet. I sure miss Chef Mickey's when it was not a buffet and it was at the DownTown Disney . So good and fun.

Kae

 

[leebee]

We gave up on CM's years ago. The food was barely edible, and the place was a pit. Food spilled all over the place, food in other food, on the floor, and it smelled like garbage around the buffet tables. I think part of it is parents letting their young kids go up to the buffet alone. They might want their kids to be independent, but if your arms aren't long enough to scoop and serve, we are all gonna suffer. CM's is off our list for good!

 

[butterscotchcollins]

I think part of it is parents letting their young kids go up to the buffet alone. They might want their kids to be independent, but if your arms aren't long enough to scoop and serve, we are all gonna suffer.

I've said it about letting your 2-year-old walk down the subway station stairs at rush hour and I'll say it here: THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO PROVE TO YOUR CHILD THAT THEY'RE A BIG GIRL/BOY NOW. Save it for when you're not massively inconveniencing a hundred other people.

 

[chris benton]

I've said it about letting your 2-year-old walk down the subway station stairs at rush hour and I'll say it here: THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO PROVE TO YOUR CHILD THAT THEY'RE A BIG GIRL/BOY NOW. Save it for when you're not massively inconveniencing a hundred other people.

But, but, but...
How can you be inconveniencing other people if you don't have the mental capacity to comprehend that other people actually exist outside of you and your kid?