For us, our all time family favorite and one we ALWAYS do is Chef Mickey's. The food is good and the characters are WONDERFUL!!!! To us, nothing is quite like Disney like CM!
I love both of the previous two choices but I would recommend Chef Mickeys for the 1 year old. CRT is pricey and worth it if your princess is a little older IMHO.
My wife and I enjoy Cape May's character breakfast. The food is very good and the atmosphere is extremely laid back. Now that Donald Duck is there, you'll get to meet Minnie, Goofy, and Donald. Enjoy!
We love Chef Mickey's and always go there once for dinner. For breakfast though, we enjoy the Crystal Palace with the Pooh characters. Breakfast is delicious (the adults' favorite in our family) and we like being able to walk out of the restaurant right at MK opening.
We've always done Cape May (we stay at the YC) and love it. As pp said, it just seems more laid back there...but this year we're branching out to CRT for the 1st time. I figure we've never done it, and will probably never do it again, so what-the-hey. We've never done breakfast at the CP, but have done dinner twice, and we enjoyed that as well.
We love Chef Mickey's and always go there once for dinner. For breakfast though, we enjoy the Crystal Palace with the Pooh characters. Breakfast is delicious (the adults' favorite in our family) and we like being able to walk out of the restaurant right at MK opening.
Crystal Palace....great food, beautiful location in MK, and very friendly characters for a one year old. DS, at 14 months, did much better interacting with the characters with soft fuzzy faces instead of the "Plastics" as DH and I started to refer to them!
Over the years we have done just about every character meal, many of them many times. We have never been disapointed in any of them. I still stand by Chef Mickey's as the best, but was also do CRT every trip, there is nothing like eating in the castle and the food is yummy!!! I think no matter where you end up you won't be disapointed...
Another vote for Chef Mickey's. CP is nice if you get a reservation before the park opens and get there early to take photos in front of the castle without anyone in the background. If I had to choose one it would be Chef Mickey's the atmosphere is fun and the food is good with plenty of choices.