What's the Deal with Garden Grove?

[lyra2007]

So, looking for character dinners...Garden Grove is ALWAYS available. You never read about it on this site. Is anything wrong with it besides its location?

Just curious. If it weren't an ADR option, I never would have heard of it!

And, no, I didn't book it--getting my Chip and Dale at Garden Grill. Just for extra confusion!

Thanks

 

[Nature Mom]

I may be in the minority, but I think Garden Grove is a hidden treasure. We don't really love buffets, but hands down the seafood and Mediterranean buffet nights are some of the best buffet meals I have had anywhere on property. I think maybe because it is at a non-Disney hotel and may not take the dining plan (I'm not sure, I always use Restaurant.com or Groupon certificates there) it gets less notice. Fine with me, I'll eat my lobster and DD can continue to be waltzed around the room by Chip, Dale, Goofy and Pluto with less people to worry about.

 

[TheoDawg]

I agree Garden Grove is a GEM. We love the fact that they have different buffets throughout the week.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Interesting and timely question, OP. We had decided on Garden Grove for one of the southern BBQ nights on our upcoming August vacation. We are not staying onsite and have no park tickets (just waterpark AP's) so we wanted to do a character dinner and needed one that wasn't in the parks. Breakfast is not preferable as our 17 year old prefers to sleep in (as do we!!) and we get way more from a dinner than b'fast. We have done Chef Mickeys and the character dinner at the GF on previous trips, and had hoped to try something different (Chef Mickey, in particular, did not impress). Add in the fact that GG is very affordable at $29.99 pp (20% less with our CAA discount ) and we thought we had a winner.

Then we read TripAdvisor reviews and were afraid . We thought maybe we'd scratch our character meal off the list and do Planet Hollywood instead.

Now this thread gets two glowing reviews to start things off.......so maybe we should give it some consideration after all? Hmmmmm.....I will be staying tuned for more replies.

 

[TDC Nala]

The Swan and Dolphin resorts are not Disney resorts. You can't use a Disney room charge or Disney gift cards or Disney Visa Reward Dollars at their restaurants. More significantly, the Disney Dining Plan can't be used there. Throw in the charge for parking even if you are going to the restaurant (I know the "high end" restaurants at the Swan/Dolphin validate parking, but I'm not sure about Garden Grove) and that there are generally fewer characters featured than there are at Disney-operated character meals and it doesn't get much press.

I certainly haven't heard a lot saying the food is bad, but neither buffets nor character meals interest me much so it's been many years since I've been to Garden Grove.

If you're interested, take note that they have a character dinner nightly, but character breakfasts are only on the weekends.

 

[Disney_Princess83]

They used to have a great character rotation, including Timon and Rafiki. How there is generally onto Pluto and Goofy

I certainly haven't heard a lot saying the food is bad, but neither buffets nor character meals interest me much so it's been many years since I've been to Garden Grove.

If you're interested, take note that they have a character dinner nightly, but character breakfasts are only on the weekends.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Well, scratch that one off the list. I just called to confirm that they will accept our CAA card for the 20% AAA discount offered at Garden Grove (CAA is the Canadian branch of the American Automobile Association) and........the answer is no.

With no drink included in the dinner buffet price, no discount on the meal, parking at an additional charge, and fewer characters offered, a character meal offered by one of the Disney resorts is a far better option for our family.

 

[Mommyof3inVA]

We will be spending the day at Hollywood Studios so the plan for our family is to take the boat to the Swan & Dolphin for our dinner reservations at Garden Grove! I am really excited because we are going on BBQ night and we love some good BBQ Also, our friends just went and said it was wonderful!

 

[MinnieLee]

We love Garden Grove. One of our favorite restaurants for breakfast - and we always ask for Sue to be our server - she is great. Relaxing atmosphere, egg station making eggs anyway you want them, the buffet is always being re-stocked and hot.

The breakfast price is less during the week than on the weekends because of what they consider a character meal - Pluto and Goofy

Dinners are also great but I did not know they participated in Restaurants.com. They do take the DVC discount and AP discount.

 

[princess pooh]

We ate there on Southern BBQ night on our last trip and loved it. I wasn't expecting much but I saw it on restaurants.com and figured it was worth a shot. We all ate very well and the character interaction was great. I lost count of how many times Goofy and Pluto visited our table! We'll definitely be going back on our next trip in September.