Congrats on booking your first family trip - how exciting!!! Planning is lots of fun but can also be very overwhelming... trying to plan out your park schedule, dining places, show/rides to do!!
The character meals are awesome, it's a great time to visit with characters, take lots of pictures and get a bit to eat. Some suggestions on getting started...
- Get a listing of all the character meals, which meals they offer B/L/D, where it's located and what characters are there.
- Try to identify the characters that your family is really interested in, and cross out the ones you can't do or don't like (my boys aren't interested in princess meals so those were out). Pick out a few favorite, knowing that you can't get to all of them.
- Think about your location logistics and travel. Can you do an 8am breakfast ADR before the park opens at 9am? Try to minimize your travel between the meals, parks and your hotels.
- Factor in your budget, character meals are a bit expensive. Can you only do 1-2 per trip or do 1-2 per day?
For us, we are early risers and always do an 8am character breakfast before the park opens at 9am. We've done H&V before DHS, Tusker House before AK, and CP before MK. The schedule works out great for us and it's a fun way to kick off the morning. For traditions, we do Chef Mickey dinner on our last night and Cape May Cafe breakfast the morning we leave (eat first, pack, do DTD for shopping, head to airport)
Our first trip in April, we tried out Chef Mickey dinner, Crystal Palace bfast, LTT dinner, H&V lunch. Our second trip in October, we did CM dinner, CP lunch, LTT dinner, H&V bfast, Ohana bfast, Cape May, tusker house bfast. For our summer trip, I want to try out 1900 park fare bfast and garden grill dinner as 2 new meals. I've got lots of pictures of the meals in my oct trip report, link in my signature.
Have a great trip!!