Which character meal?

[slo]

I would go to Chef Mickeys.

The place is such great fun and there's good interaction with the characters.

The food is just okay (the desserts are the great), but the fun is what takes us back there every year!!!

 

[MeLaNie9]

We loved Garden Grill (dinner). It is relatively quiet, the food is great, nice setting with revolving restaurant, and the character interaction is fabulous. We did not like Chef Mickey's (breakfast) - it was way too crowded and loud, we had to wait forever for a table despite reservation, food lines were terribly long with rude people cutting in front of others, table service was really slow, and characters were slow to come around (we left without seeing them all). Crystal Palace was enjoyable - fun to see Pooh and friends, food was OK, setting is really nice, service was good.
I don't think we will go to CM's again but will likely do GG every time we go to WDW!

 

[HLDisney]

We just got back on Wednesday and we did 3 character meals. Cinderella's Royal Table, Crystal Palace and Chef Mickey's. If you're looking for the classic Disney characters, I agree that Chef Mickey's is great for that. I will admit that it's hard to do a buffet for a character meal because you're never sure when the characters will come by. We got lucky at Crystal Palace because all the characters came by within the first 20-30 minutes so we just waited until we saw all of them before we went for food. It was much harder at Chef Mickey's since the characters arrived at much more spread-out intervals and we ended up missing Goofy the first time and then had to wait quite a while for him to come back. My friend and I had to take turns getting food for our girls and my friend's DD5 was so anxious to see the characters that I don't think she ate at all.

Breakfast at Cinderella's Royal Table was better since we didn't have to get up to get food and the princesses and fairy godmother (since they didn't have a full body costume on) had an easier time taking the autograph book from the girls, signing the autographs and posing for pictures. For the other 2 character meals, I usually needed to take the autograph album and pen and sort of wave it in front of the characters before they knew to reach out for it.

The Pooh characters at Crystal Palace were very much in character so it was fun watching Tigger bouncing around everywhere and in general, being much more hyper while Eeyore was much more subdued.

Since this was the first trip for my DD4 and the other little girl, I think having these 3 character meals was a great way for them to interact with all of the characters. In the future, I think we'll probably only have 1-2 character meals per trip.

HLDisney