My wife and I have done the
Disneyland Family Thanksgiving Feast for the last four years, the past two with our daughter. I would normally recommend this event to anybody, and I got my sister and brother-in-law to join us last year. But after last year, I have some mixed feelings recommending it.
Last year, we waited over and hour and a half past our reservation time to be seated! Every year, you check-in in the hallway outside of the ballroom, they find your ticket, pass it onto another CM who takes you in to pay (APs and gift cards accepted, gratuity included), you pay ahead of time (and get event buttons!) and then you're taken into a waiting room where they call you when your table is ready. The waiting room has refreshments, typically water, hot chocolate, coffee, tea, and lemonade. There's also some Disney movie playing for the kids, fall decor setup for pictures, and some seats for people waiting. In past years, we usually waited 15-20 minutes after check-in. Last year, like I said, we had to wait over an hour and a half! We usually grab the latest reservation time, as the feast runs from 12 pm to 6 pm (check-in time), and we like to eat this feast as a Thanksgiving dinner. We were told at check-in that there was about a 30 minute wait. Not a big deal. But when half an hour passed, and nothing, we started to get worried. No other party who checked in around the same time as us had been called either. We started asking around and the room was full of people who had waited for over an hour at that point. I went up to a CM and she was obviously slammed, apologized, but couldn't tell me when we would be called. What was infuriating was either the front end CMs were lying to incoming guests about the wait time or the backup in the dining room was not being communicated to them. At an hour past our reservation, we thought the feast must be winding down by now, and I was worried for my wife and child, who expected to be eating by then, and deeply embarrassed to my sister who was pregnant and also hungry at the time and her husband since we always talked up Disney's quality of service. It was only later reading the post mortem on various message boards that we found out wait times slipped disastrously as the afternoon went on, and they had to extend the feast, characters and entertainment to accommodate all the guests who had been kept waiting outside, which was never communicated to us! I actually filled out a complaint to Disneyland about the experience (my first ever complaint to Disney) and a nice CM called me back, apologized profusely, said they had received other complaints and that she would forward my comments to the food & beverage and special events people in hopes of improving the experience this year.
As you said, the buffet menu is fantastic as there is a very wide selection of food. The quality has always been a notch above all the buffet dining restaurants in the parks and hotels. We felt the quality of the food took somewhat of a dip in 2013, but Disney really redeemed themselves in 2014. Large parties are usually seated on round tops, and smaller parties are seated at long rows of tables but with some spacing between different parties. There are several serving areas including a salad, seafood, bread and cheese station; a kids' station; a traditional holiday items and carving station; a made-to-order pasta station; and a desserts table. The same stations are mirrored on two sides of the ballroom for ease of access. Soft drinks and refills are included. Parking at Downtown Disney is also included with your receipt (I can't recall if there are limitations, but we've never had to pay anything extra).
There are several character stations set against seasonal backdrops throughout the ballroom. In past years, there have always been Pocahontas and Meeko, Pinocchio and Geppeto, Chip and Dale, Koda and Kenai. Last year, I believe they replaced the Brother Bears with Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. Last year's feast also had Minnie playing host with her own dinner table for the first time in the many years we've attended. The characters do rotate around in pairs and you can take pictures with all of them. There are character attendants who can take pictures for you. The lines are never too long. Unfortunately, we didn't get to take pictures with Minnie last year because we were starving and ate first worried they'd close down the feast soon. By the time we got around to taking pictures, they had closed the line for Minnie.
There's also a live band on stage that plays ballroom music, holiday songs, and renditions of classic Disney songs.
We won't be attending this year because we have a trip to WDW planned for the week after Thanksgiving. I'm interested to find out how the feast is this year because it had become a kind of family tradition for us. The feast itself is wonderful and I'd like for us to do it again but not if we have to wait like we did last year.
So I hope all that helps. Be aware that if you do plan on attending the feast, ADRs historically open up exactly 60 days before Thanksgiving, which would mean September 27 this year, and they fill up FAST (especially the later dinner time reservations). ADRs may have opened up differently last year and I recall the news was posted on the Disney Parks Blog in advance so keep an eye for Thanksgiving announcements. I've always had better luck with reservations by calling Disneyland Dining than with the website.
Good luck on your decision.
