To do or not to do character dining with young kids

[MommyMK]

I posted this on the restaurants board too, but I figured I might get a different opinion from DVCers since we all go frequently....

For those of you with young kids who go often, do you do character dining every trip? We are DVCers and go once a year, we've done all the character dining experiences that we are interested in over the years, many before we had kids or when our first child was very young and none have made it onto our favorites/repeats list. They are ok, but we prefer the non-buffet restaurants for the food, the better value and the less hectic dining experience. It just occurred to me that our upcoming trip will be our last parks trip where our oldest daughter will be considered a disney kid for pricing and so that is making me rethink our current ADRs and possibly adding in some character dining experiences "one last time" since there is no way I am paying adult pricing for my tiny, picky eater to eat at a Disney buffet.

I feel guilty that my youngest DD has no character dining experiences that she will remember, the last time we did any character meals was when she was only 1 year old.

So do you do character meals "for the kids" and should I suck it up and book a couple this next trip? Are they important to your kids? Do they enjoy them? The kids in question will be 4 and 8 on this upcoming trip. They very much love characters and we do plenty of meet and greets each trip.

Looking at possibly doing either CRT or Akershus, Hollywood and Vine and Tusker House. Thoughts?

 

[srabius]

I posted this on the restaurants board too, but I figured I might get a different opinion from DVCers since we all go frequently.... For those of you with young kids who go often, do you do character dining every trip? We are DVCers and go once a year, we've done all the character dining experiences that we are interested in over the years, many before we had kids or when our first child was very young and none have made it onto our favorites/repeats list. They are ok, but we prefer the non-buffet restaurants for the food, the better value and the less hectic dining experience. It just occurred to me that our upcoming trip will be our last parks trip where our oldest daughter will be considered a disney kid for pricing and so that is making me rethink our current ADRs and possibly adding in some character dining experiences "one last time" since there is no way I am paying adult pricing for my tiny, picky eater to eat at a Disney buffet. I feel guilty that my youngest DD has no character dining experiences that she will remember, the last time we did any character meals was when she was only 1 year old. So do you do character meals "for the kids" and should I suck it up and book a couple this next trip? Are they important to your kids? Do they enjoy them? The kids in question will be 4 and 8 on this upcoming trip. They very much love characters and we do plenty of meet and greets each trip. Looking at possibly doing either CRT or Akershus, Hollywood and Vine and Tusker House. Thoughts?

I would do Akershus if the children are into princesses and I vote Tusker House as well. We are doing Hollywood and Vine because of Disney Jr but I would think your 4 year old would be the only one to enjoy it since Disney Jr is geared towards preschoolers. But maybe I am wrong since my DD is only 3.5 and on her 4th trip! Maybe I have ages wrong and what they like.

 

[Geomom]

My oldest DD turned 14 on our Feb. trip, youngest was 9. We still do at least 1character meal/trip. DD9 enjoyed doing Akershus breakfast back in October and we did Hollywood and Vine last August for the first time (kids were a bit old for it, but it was fun to do once.) DD14 would prefer to do Mickey/Minnie characters over princess characters at this age--but still gets into the autograph/photos with any of them. We tend to choose our character meals for that trip based on which resort we're at. In February we stayed at VGF and did 1900 Park Fare for both breakfast (Alice/Mad Hatter, Mary Poppins, Pooh, Piglet?) and dinner (Cinderella, Prince, Stepsisters, Stepmother) and we did breakfast for the first time at Ohana at the Poly (Lilo, Stitch, Mickey, Pluto?). If we're staying at BWV or BCV we might do breakfast at Cape May Café (beach Minnie, Goofy, Donald). When we stayed at AKV, we did late breakfast at Tusker House for the first time last August.

Luckily DD14 has been an eater all her years as a 'Disney Adult'. DD9...glad she's been at a kid price! We've used TIW at all the sit down meals in the past year, so that helped!

 

[nalajms]

My 4yo loves them. My almost 2yr does not. We have at least 2 character meals booked for each trip. I tend to pick breakfast since it's cheaper and the fares are mostly the basics.

Our reasoning for doing this is so I don't have to stand in line to take pictures with the characters. If the character line is more than 4 families, we do not go. That's with a 4yo son.... not sure what's going to happen when my DD gets older

CRT and Akershus are pretty pricey because you pay for the pictures. I would probably pick CRT over Akershus, it's a different experience to eat in the castle.

 

[Leveretttltl]

My DD (age 7) loves character dining and frankly so do I. We typically do at least 2 meals with characters each visit. Lately it's been Tusker House and either Akershus or CRT. In October we have yet again booked Tusker House and Akershus. I will continue to book them until she informs me that she is too old to see the characters

 

[DisneyRegulars]

I was never a big character meal fan before I had kids. My husband and I went to Disney almost 10 times before we had our son and never went to a single character meal. Fast forward, to a couple of trips ago we did 4 character meals with my then 3.5 year old son. He liked them alright, but I discovered that I LOVED Crystal Palace and the furry Pooh Characters. The food was great. Lunch was very reasonably priced, and the characters were wonderfully furry and marvelous. I would eat there again even without my son.

I would definitely book at least one character meal, your 4 year old will love it!

 

[AirGoofy]

I posted this on the restaurants board too, but I figured I might get a different opinion from DVCers since we all go frequently....

I feel guilty that my youngest DD has no character dining experiences that she will remember, the last time we did any character meals was when she was only 1 year old.

So do you do character meals "for the kids" and should I suck it up and book a couple this next trip? Are they important to your kids? Do they enjoy them? The kids in question will be 4 and 8 on this upcoming trip. They very much love characters and we do plenty of meet and greets each trip.

Looking at possibly doing either CRT or Akershus, Hollywood and Vine and Tusker House. Thoughts?

The dds are 12 & 9, been once or twice a year since 2005, and have been to most all the character dining at all the different meals. So, we plan at least one character meal per trip. We've ruled out CRT now. We finally had a bad meal at all three times, and they changed the stuff French toast breakfast menu.

I agree with the Crystal Palace. It was really good. I really like Akershus and Tusker House for breakfast. Hollywood n Vine was terrible - extra loud (like an echo effect) and greasy food - doesn't get return trip. We plan resort days only, and usually do a character breakfast one of those days as a way to have fun with the characters, but not at the resort.

 

[kam1011]

At 4 and 8, absolutely! (We toned it down a little when they went through the scared-of-characters phase usually somewhere between 2-3yo. We love CRT, Akershus, H&V, and Tusker House! My top picks. H&V is my number 1 favorite. We go there for breakfast every year. It's never too crowded (although I don't know how much different that will be now with Sofia and Doc) and the food is good. Both princess experiences are great, but usually one is enough for me. We did do both in a day once, Akershus for lunch and CRT for dinner. We usually do Tusker House for lunch. Tusker House, like H&V, has a lot of extra experiences besides just the characters coming to your table. The kids get up and dance with the characters, they do a conga line, etc. We are not Chef Mickey people. Way too crowded and rushed. This summer we are going back to H&V (breakfast), CRT (dinner), and 1900 Park Fare (breakfast - at grandma's request).

 

[disney212]

We do them on solo and trips with the kids (DD25 and DS26). We have always enjoyed them.

 

[Kidanifan08]

Our son is 8 and loves the character meals. We generally do at least one per trip. Our next trip we have dinner at Chef Mickey. Our go-to places have been Chef Mickey, CP, and Tusker. We did H&V once, which was just OK. We have not done any of the princess only experiences. One that often is not mentioned, but is very good, is Garden Grill at the Land pavilion. You get Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale and very good food. We have only been there once, but it would definitely be worth a return. We love Crystal Palace for breakfast!

Your youngest deserves a character meal or two! Go for it!!

 

[MommyMK]

We have added Crystal Palace and Hollywood and Vine to our schedule. Thanks for all the input! My kids have never been to either of these (we burned out on Crystal Palace before my oldest was born and we've never been to Hollywood and Vine) and next year when we are doing a resorts only trip we'll do 1900 Park Faire and Chef Mickey's.

Thanks all!

 

[bonrea]

Our take on Character dining is; if your kids like meeting the characters do it. Choose the restaurant that has the characters they like. The meals are much the same including breakfast so it only matters which characters they want to see.

Tip: Make sure you sit with your backs toward a wall and away from the main walkway where the characters come though to meet with people at your table. The adults can continue to eat and take pictures while the kids mingle with the characters. You will be in the perfect position to watch and take pictures. Of course you can also get up and join is but the majority of the time you just sit and enjoy the show and your meal. Kids don't eat that much anyways.

 

[lovin'fl]

When my kids were young I always booked at least 1 character meal. They are all teens now and I still book the character meals once in awhile (Garden Grill in 2013 and will be doing Akershus in Aug). They are kind of past the characters, or so they say, but when the characters walk up they do like to interact with them and we get some nice pics.

 

[AmyB2006]

So do you do character meals "for the kids" and should I suck it up and book a couple this next trip? Are they important to your kids? Do they enjoy them?


Looking at possibly doing either CRT or Akershus, Hollywood and Vine and Tusker House. Thoughts?

Yes we do character meals for the kids. To be honest, I think they are less important because we actually do too many. They do enjoy them, but I think they wouldn't "miss" it a whole lot if we didn't do any one trip.

I kind of spoiled my kids with character meals once they got old enough to know what characters were. And since then we've done multiple character meals per trip. We go three times a year all crammed between October and April. So it's a lot, all at once. We've now gone down to one character meal a trip.

Chef Mickey's has become my son's favorite. They still enjoy it, don't get me wrong, but if we went through a whole trip without a character meal, I don't know if they'd even notice.

I actually enjoy them myself. LOL But I totally understand not wanting to pay those prices. That's another reason we cut down to one a trip. We also prefer the non-buffet restaurants. We usually do our character meals for breakfasts. It's kind of hard to screw up a breakfast buffet. But dinner from a buffet? Not for me.

We've done dinner at CRT, Breakfast at Akershus, Breakfast and Dinner at Hollywood and Vine, and breakfast at Tusker House. Of your choices the breakfast at Tusker House has the most choices and different fare and theme. Akershus and CRT are fun because of the princesses. I would choose Akershus over CRT for price alone, with regards to breakfast.

Hollywood and Vine is fun if they are into the Disney Jr. characters. My kids are already getting a little old for those characters. My 7 yo already tells me that Disney Jr. is for "babies".

Anyway, if you're not that into them maybe just book one or two. One of my main reasons for doing character meals, too, is that we don't have to waste time waiting in line to see the same characters in the parks.