102 thoughts on “Character Dining”

1. Great list! I can’t wait to go to Ohana but its always good to know the alternatives if that plan falls through. I havent been to a character dining in a while but this list is super concise and makes it easy to see where we can dine and who we can meet there. Thanks!

2. We just returned from our Disney vacation this week. We were a group of 8 family members including our 3 granddaughters,4,11 and 13. While we loved all of our time at Disney, the best time was when we had breakfast at The Royal Table in the Castle. We felt like royalty from the minute we stepped inside the castle. We were greeted by Cinderella in the lobby. Pictures were taken and we were seated in the royal dining room. The service was fabulous and the food was delicious. The best part was the visit to the table by each of the princesses. We cannot express how much we enjoyed this breakfast. I was definitely worth the cost. Memories were made that will never be forgotten !!!

3. We went to WDW in November 2012 with some friend of ours, they have 2 girls and we have 1 son, we definitely wanted to get some character dining experiences in there. So for the girls we did the Cinderella’s table inside the castle and let me tell you that I cannot rave enough about their food and service!! It was excellent! For my son we did the Donald’s breakfast at the Tusker house. The kids had fun dancing around the room with the characters and instruments but no one was impressed with the food, it was ok but nothing to write home about.

4. My adult daughter and I love doing character dining. We have done Crystal Palace and 1900 Park Faire and had a really great time in both places. We are hoping to do a couple more on our next trip!

5. Mickey and Minnie are my most favorite characters. My daughter loves Belle and the Beast.

6. Character Meals are the best. I think Akershus is better then Cinderellas Royal Table. But The Royal table is a must do at least once. Crystal Palace my families favorite.

7. If i had it my way we would only eat at places that have the characters!!! it’s a wonderful way to get 2 things done at once. My favorites are Chef Mickeys, Tusker House, Cinderella’s Royal Table, Ohana, Mickey’s Backyard BBQ, Cape May Cafe (in no certain order) There are only 2 we still wanna try 1900 Park Fair with the Wonderland characters and Garden Grill in the rotating restaurant

8. I love that this is all in one place and organized. It will make it much easier to decide where to go based on the characters and the meal. Thanks!

9. Chef Mickey’s is our favorite!

10. Chef Mickey’s, Ohana, and Cape May Cafe. We had to see the Fab 5. =)

11. My granddaughter LOVES Chef Mickey.. even though Pluto did get a little close and almost knocked her down with his nose… but she took it in stride and said he was just giving her a Pluto kiss…!!!

12. Chef Mickey’s is a favorite for my family, and of course my little princess loves Cinderella’s Royal table. I can’t wait for our next trip.

13. We always do Chef Mickey’s when we go to Disney ever since I was a Little girl we would Eat breakfast there and then ride the monorail into Magic Kingdom, this past year we even did it with our children. They asked us everyday after that if we could start out at Chef Mickey’s! That made it all the better

14. We recently went to Tusker House. The food was good and we were very lucky to visit with Mickey too. He was making the rounds!!! We recommend it.

15. Going to try Tusker House this November. The menu looks very good! I like Chef Mickey’s for the characters and Ohana for the atmosphere and Stitch! If you stay at the Swan, they have a great character breakfast as well.

16. We just came back and we loved Chef Mickey’s!! Definitely planning our next trip!!

17. We have only Done 1 character breakfast so far, and the was at Ohana! We are HUGE Stitch fans! It was great! The food, our server, kids had a blast walking in the parade! Will go again! Our next one to try in a few months is Chef Mickeys!

18. Akershus is our absolute favorite!! Not only is the princess interaction fantastic, but the food is to die for!! We have an ADR scheduled to eat there again in September…can’t wait!! 8:)

19. character dining is a must when we go.
    always chef mickey and ohana.

20. I can’t wait to try a character meal!

21. Character meals at the resorts tend to be easier to get reservations for than those in the parks. My fave is 1900 Park Fare and um…can’t remember the name of the one at Old Key West. MUCH easier to get reservations for. 🙂

22. We love 1900 Park Fare!!

23. We are doing lots of character meals on our next trip! Chef Mickey’s, Akershus, Tusker House and Crystal Palace. I love not waiting in lines to meet our “friends”, having great food is a plus too!

24. We are looking forward to having a few character dining meals during our 2014 trip also.

25. Thank you for the information! Looking into booking a character meal for our trip in April.

26. I love all your helpful tips

27. We are booked to go to WDW 4/2014 and this is quite helpful. It will be our first time there. We have gone to DL several times and have dined at Storytellers Cafe in the Grand Californian and at Goofy’s Kitchen at Disneyland Resort Hotel. Food was better at Storytellers but characters were better at Goofy’s Kitchen

28. Trying Chef Mickey’s and 1900 Park Fare for the first time. We’ve done Crystal Palace, Hollywood and Vine and Askershus several times so I’m excited to try some place new.

29. We have booked our very first character meals for September and we are SO excited! This list is so helpful for what to expect.

30. Would love an opportunity to this with my family

31. Looking into character meals next year for our trip. This info is very helpful!

32. Love the reviews- I hope to someday eat at one of these. I think seeing mickey would be the best!

33. ‘Ohana is our favorite character breakfast. The food is amazing. Our kids love it!

34. Cannot wait to take my 3 yr old daughter to dine with the princesses. Thanks so much for the info !

35. Safari Donald is by far my daughter’s favorite!

36. I can’t wait to character dine with my kids!

37. Oh Thank you for this list!!!! I’m excited to go for our first trip and wanna do “Chef Mickey”. LOL 🙂

38. always do 1900 park fare for breakfast

39. Im so excited to try Chef Mickeys in December

40. I’m so excited about trying Tusker House!

41. I haven’t been to WDW but did do character breakfast and DL. We went to Breakfast with Minnie and friends and it was a blast.

42. my husband and I are planning our first WDW trip and we’ve been reading through these <3 woot!

43. Cinderella’s Castle is most definitely the best!

44. Thanks for the great information!

45. We hope to return to the Magic Kingdom in 2014 and to experience character dining with our daughters for the first time!

46. We got the dining plan (A MUST) so we were able to do a LOT of character dining experiences. We loved Akerhaus as a Royal Table alternative with Princesses!!! And Ohana was great for our last day there!!!! The kids loved EVERY ONE!!!

47. I loved when we did the character breakfast with my daughter! It’s truly magical!

48. I can’t wait to try a character meal sometime with my children!

49. Our family favorite is the Crystal Palace. The environment is so bright and friendly – the food for Breakfast and Lunch are great – and who doesn’t love Pooh Bear and friends! So worth the visit and really made our day special.

50. Ohana is by far my favorite character dining experience. The breakfast is awesome, and the characters are a lot of fun!

51. We really enjoyed 1900Park Place last time for a character meal

52. So I think my family and I would be those people who plan on a character dinning experience for every meal if possible… Thanks for the heads up!

53. I rememebr when I was in third grade (a very long time ago) having breakfast and meeting the characters on the Empress Lily. I believe a paddle boat? When my family finally saves enough to go to Disney I want to do a character meal with my kids

54. I’ve never character dined before! I gotta do it now

55. The next character meal on my wish list is Cinderella’s Happily Ever After dinner. We love Akershus and CRT was okay but not worth 2 table service credits or the price, IMO.

56. I am proud to say that I believe we have now done all of the character meals! Still some shows to do yet though!

57. Is the Chef Mickeys breakfast the best character dining option for a 2 year old?

58. OMG! The character breakfast at Chef Mickey’s was one of my ultimate favorite character dining experiences ever!!! I highly recommend it. We did it multiple times throughout the duration of our stay. I can’t wait till I get to go back again, hopefully some day soon to go again. 🙂

59. We are looking forward to several of these in October! It will be our first trip to Disney!

60. We love The Crystal Palace and Chef Mickey’s!

61. Dining with a character would be very fun for the kids.
    Amie Olson
    alolson1@charter.net

62. Love the awesome reviews. You have covered all the character meals. we are having a hard time deciding on which ones to attend in September.

63. We love 1900 Park Fare! Great interactions!!

64. Garden Grille was our favorite for dinner! So fresh and delicious!

65. Our favorite character meal so far has been at CRT. Planning for many more different ones in the future!

66. AWESOME reviews. My favorite character meal is the Princess dinner at akershus. It blows Cinderella’s Royal Table out of the water.

67. My daughter would love to eat with Cinderella!

68. Awesome reviews!! We can’t wait to have breakfast with Jake!

69. thanks for the reviews..still deciding on which one works for our group!

70. Akershus was our favorite character dinner to meet the princesses.

71. I can’t wait for my girls to eat with the characters!

72. Dining with the Princesses is a must for anyone with little girls!

73. Thank for sharing. There looks like a few more places we need to try out.

74. I can’t wait to take our daughter to WDW for the first time in September 2013. This will also be my first time. THanks for such a great blog.

75. O’hana is my favorite!!

76. Absolutely loved 1900 Park Fare

77. Ate at Chef’s Mickey so we could see Donald Duck.

78. We love character breakfasts! They are always my favorite meals of the trips!

79. Thanks for the info…cant wait to book our breakfast for my daughters 1st trip this year to Disney! 🙂

80. Thx for all the info 🙂

81. Geeat recap. helped me make rezzies for our trip in October.

82. Thanks for the great info, will definitely use when planning our trip!

83. Our family LOVES to eat at O’hana for breakfast! Love the variety in characters and I absolutely LOVE that this meal is served family style!! No running back from the buffet because a character showed up at your table! Relaxing, fun, and extremely yummy!!

84. Tusker house is a must for us. Last year we had a blast at 1900 since I had my daughter dressed up with the step sisters all over her outfit

85. Chef Mickeys is Awesome! We went right at the end of breakfast so it wasnt very busy and had lots of fun goofy off with goofy.

86. The Cape May Cafe sounds adorable. I didn’t know they wore beach gear, so cute!

87. We LOVE the Crystal Palace for breakfast. Pooh and friends are an added bonus!!!

88. I love them all, you are never too old for a character meal.

89. Chef Mickey’s is our favorite!

90. i want to try 1900 Park Fare

91. I’m 64 years old and love the character dining. So far I’ve dined at Crystal Palace, Akershus, Chef Mickey’s, Tusker House and a few more I can’t think of right now! The breakfast dining has worked well for my family, you get to see the characters, get their autographs and get into the parks early.

92. We have done Chef Mickeys and Crystal Palace and enjoyed both. We are looking forward to trying Tusker House and Akershus next time, but we will do CP again as it is a favorite! 🙂

93. Chef Mickeys is a great way to start your vacation or end your vacation.

94. We did the 1900 park fare and crystal palace character dining. We love Crystal Palace, the food was really good and the character interaction was good as well. For 1900 park fare, we were not that impressed, the food was fair and my husband and I both got a little sick off of it, the character interaction was fair, we finally had to ask if prince charming was even going to come to our table and finally they told us we would have to go to him! it is way to crowded and loud.

95. We did both Chef Mickey’s and Askershus. Loved the food better at Chef Mickey’s and all the character’s were great. However, we were so pleased with the Princess experience and the atmosphere at Askershus. It was a last minute switch from Chrystal Palace. I am sure that is wonderful, but we so wanted our daughter to meet the Princesses on her first trip to Disney World.

96. Have never been to Ohana before – will have to check it out next time as my kids love Stitch!

97. I love character dining! It’s the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone! Pics with characters and good food 🙂

98. My husband and I took our two little girls to Akershus to have breakfast with the Disney princesses. The meal was delicious and they gave us a beautiful photo of the girls with Belle. I am so glad we took them there, it is a memory they will never forget!

99. Our favorite is always chef mickey. We have to eat there each time we visit.

100. Our family ate at the Garden Grill for our anniversary in 2009. It was nice having all of the characters around. And the food was tasty, too 🙂

101. Thanks for the list! Our family fav is Chef Mickey’s and we chose to kick off our trip with dinner there the night we arrived. This visit was our first with our daughter so we had a mommy/daughter trip to Akershus for a princess breakfast this time. It was a wonderful experience at a meal that was so well orchestrated and princesses that were amazing with the children. I’m just not sure who will remember this longer;)

102. If you can’t get a reservation for the date you’re looking for, call back another day.  You never know when there will be a cancellation.  I once got a lunch reservation for Cinderella’s Royal Table about 3 weeks out.