Timing character dining on a park day

[hehillier]

Looking for thoughts on the best timing for character dining (so that we can still get the most out of a full day in the park). In past visits we've done character dining at the hotels on non-park days, but that's not going to work for our upcoming trip as we have off-site plans. We love the dining experiences but don't like to interrupt the flow of our park day too much. Any experiences/thoughts?

 

[Geemo]

When we stay off-site and don't have a magic morning to use, we book the first time during EE/MM.
That way we get to have a character breakfast without taking up too much of our park time.

Geemo

 

[bluebirdie]

This might not work if your party likes to eat early and it depends on the park hours, but we usually try to get into DCA at rope drop (we've also done this entering DL first, but DCA is closer) and then schedule a 10:30-ish reservation at Storyteller's Cafe. This gives us a few hours to get some rides out of the way early while the park is empty, take a little break for food and then head back to one of parks. We usually are pretty full afterward and only need a small snack before dinner. If it's off-season and the park opens later then we schedule a 7:30/8:00a time to get it out of the way early.

 

[are you ready]

how does it work for in park character dining during the off season? If the park doesnt open until 10 is that the earliest time to get a reservation?

 

[bcwife76]

We book Plaza Inn for breakfast with Minnie & Friends, that way we don't have to leave the park ;-)

 

[MinMou]

bcwife, what time do you schedule that breakfast? I've read 2 different opinions and I am curious to see what works for you.

 

[jina]

Reservations for Plaza Inn are typically whenever the park first opens - we did not have a MM so we had a reservation for 8:05 on a day the park opened at 8 for MM, regular open at 9. It worked out perfectly for us as all the characters came to us first and we were out just in time for rope drop so we hit the left side of the park when everything was just opening up for everyone.

Ariel's does not start reservations until after regular open I believe so when we did Ariels' we either did lunch or got the last breakfast reservation so we could take advantage of the early park hours.

Storytellers opens at 7 regardless of when the park opens since it's in a hotel - we ate there at 7 once on a day when there was an 8am EE/9am regular open. It was a little crowded with resort guests trying to get out in time for EE but we relaxed through the whole thing and had no problem getting to the 9am regular open. We had just done the Neverland 5K and it was a nice break as we'd been up since 3:30am.

I don't know about Surf's up but I'd assume it's similar to Storytellers in terms of hours.

We also did Goofy's once for dinner -first reservation (5pm) which worked well for us. It gave us a little time to stop in DCA afterwards to do an art class at animation academy before bedtime for DD4 (at the time -now she's 5).

 

[bcwife76]

bcwife, what time do you schedule that breakfast? I've read 2 different opinions and I am curious to see what works for you.

Our last trip (August 2013) we had a 10am reservation which worked out wonderfully - saw ALL the characters, eventhough we were sitting outside on the patio. Tons of food.
This time for our upcoming October trip we are hoping to book somewhere around the 9:30-10am slot again. The hotel we're staying at does not offer breakfast so we'll grab some granola bars and get a few rides under our belt before heading to a yummy breakfast and lots of our fave characters!

As an aside, I wanted to also do Goofy's Kitchen for dinner this time around but then I looked at the map yesterday to pin point exactly where it is - clear across the far end of Downtown Disney by the DLH. Too far for my liking! So we nixed it. If we were staying longer this time then I'd probably do it but unfortunately our visit this time boils down to 1 full day and 2 half days (depending on park hours) as we won't be getting into Anaheim until almost noon on our first day and must leave the parks around 5/5:30 on our third day in order to get to LAX for our 8:45pm flight home.

 

[calilou]

Plaza Inn often opens early (before official park opening) for Minnie's Breakfast. So if DLP opens at 9am you can get a reservation for as early as 8am. I have not figured out if there's a consistent amount of time it opens early, but it seems like an hour. If you have an early entrance reservation, you go to turnstile #1 marked Character Breakfast and CMs have a list of reservation names to admit you early. This works great for getting in an early breakfast and not cometely sacrificing quiet morning time in the park. Great for off season hours too when the park opens a little later.