In this post we’re going to walk you through the character dining experience at Disneyland (DL) and California Adventure (DCA). Character Dining can definitely add value to your trip, but at the same time, there is quite certainly a point at which you can have “too much” of the character dining experience (more on that later). Note that this post is not a general dining review, which we’ll get to in later posts. This is just for those meals where you’re paying a premium price for characters to visit your table while you eat.
There are five character dining experiences within the resort and Disney hotels. Four of the experiences are now in the three hotels and one is in DL. There used to be the Princess Parade at Ariel’s Grotto in DCA (which we really enjoyed) but that experience has been replaced with the Princess Breakfast Adventures at the Napa Rose (in the Grand Californian) and Ariel’s Grotto has been replaced with the Lamplight Lounge as part of the Pixar Pier retheming. The five current character dining experiences are: (1) Mickey’s Tale of Adventure Breakfast/Brunch Buffet, located in Storyteller’s Café at the Grand Californian Hotel; (2) Minnie and Friends Breakfast, located at the Plaza Inn which is at the corner of Main Street U.S.A. and the Tomorrowland Entrance inside of Disneyland Park; (3) Goofy’s Kitchen, located in the Disneyland Hotel; (4) Donald Duck’s Seaside Breakfast/Brunch, located at the PCH Grill at the Paradise Pier Hotel; and (5) the Disney Princess Breakfast Adventures, located in the Napa Rose Restaurant at the Grand Californian Hotel.
First, let’s start off with the real benefit of a character dining experience – which is the time savings over in-park character meet and greets. As we have mentioned before, your time in DL or DCA is valuable and it is limited, so any wasted time is both expensive and difficult to regain. We don’t like waiting in line for anything at the parks, but out of all of our trips to DL the lines we regret waiting in more than any other are the lines for character meet and greets. This is just not a fast process. If you’re ten people back in line, which isn’t bad most of the time, your wait could easily be 45 minutes. The reason for the slow line is easy to understand – people want autographs, they want photographs, they want different groups in the photographs, they want just the kids with the character, they want grandma in with the kids in the picture, and after they waited 45 minutes for their turn, they feel justified in taking their time when they are at the front to make sure their moment is perfect. Now, multiply that experience by wanting to meet two, three or even four characters, and now you’re talking about potentially three hours of your time waiting in lines. Not only is that an expensive choice, but it would be a real test of your (and your kids’) patience.
Instead of waiting for those three hours in a few lines, what if your option was to instead have those same characters come to you while you were eating, and have them spend time at your table, take pictures, sign autographs, and play all the silly games in complete character? Well, that is what you’re being sold when it comes to character dining.
You need to eat anyway, and if while eating you get to knock out multiple character experiences in one meal, you just saved yourselves potentially hours of time standing in lines.
On the flip side of the coin, the price of the meal at a character dining experience can be off-putting. Let’s put aside the Princess Breakfast Adventures for a second (because that experience is in a pricing category all its own) and focus on the other four. Even at those four, the price of an adult meal can range from $34-$48 per adult (or child over the age of 9), and $19-$27 per child aged 3-9. Our meals usually include at least three adults and two paying children, so a breakfast bill in the $160 range (before tax and tip) leads to some amount of sticker shock. The way we have come to look at the price is by comparing this price to the price of the alternatives. At the end of the day, we are going to be eating, breakfast and lunch each day, so for most of these character meals we schedule our meal later in the morning, so that it really serves as both of those meals. Buying breakfast and lunch anywhere on property is going to be expensive, but even if we ate at a reasonable quick serve restaurant, each adult is paying $15 and each child at least $8. For our group, each meal on property is likely running us $60 anyway. Multiply that by 2 and we’re paying $120 for a breakfast and a lunch. With that perspective, the $160 price tag on the character breakfast with an all you can eat buffet doesn’t seem quite as outrageous. Add to that the value of the time in lines saved by meeting the characters at your table, and now you’re probably starting to get in the mindset that character dining can be a valuable use of time and money.
The other knock on character dining can be the food. In the four main character dining experiences, the food is pretty much the same and it’s frankly not that exciting. For breakfast, you’re going to have Mickey waffles and pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, potatoes and an omelet station. There will be some cereal, pastries and fruit available as well. For the brunch/lunch/dinner you’ll get a carving station, salad bar, hot dogs, chicken tenders, pizza, mac and cheese, and a dessert station.
None of the food is terrible, but you’re not going to leave with the mindset that you had an outstanding meal that was worth the price of admission. You’ll get your fill, probably overeat because you paid a lot for all-you-can-eat, and probably not think much of your food one way or the other. If you’re like us, the really challenging thought is paying the $27 for your three year old to eat half of a serving of mac and cheese and a few grapes. When we say that you can have too much of the character dining experience, the lack of diversity in the food is really the reason. If the four character dining experiences were distinct menus it would create very different experiences. As it stands, if you go to the four buffets, you’re going to have the same meal four times and the only thing that changes are the locations and the characters that come to your table.
On our first trip to the resort, we had a 5 day stay and made reservations for four character dining experiences. That is what we mean by “too much.” By the third character dining buffet we were tired of the food, our kids barely cared about the characters anymore, we were past the point of regretting the cost of the meals, and we were annoyed at having to leave the parks to hike over to Paradise Pier Hotel or the Disneyland Hotel for a reservation. Now what we try to do is for each trip we pick one (maybe two) character dining experiences that fit with our schedule and planning (more on planning a trip itinerary to come), and for the rest of our meals we try to seek out other Disney experiences or food choices.
The other thing we try to do in connection with character dining is to schedule the meal in off hours if possible. First, breakfast at 7:00 or 8:00 am is a non-starter for us, as we are in line or already in the parks for our Extra Morning Magic Hour (EMMH), which we never miss. Even after the EMMH, the parks don’t usually get their busiest for a couple of hours, so we stay to enjoy the quieter hours before heading to breakfast. The other benefit of a later breakfast is that once the rush and crowds have subsided in a character dining experience there are more empty tables in the restaurant, and, unsurprisingly, we have found that the fewer people in the restaurant the more time each character will spend at your table and the higher quality of experience you’ll have. We spent one meal with Captain Hook taunting our kids and running around with them for a solid twenty minutes, and again, by scheduling this late breakfast it really served the purpose of two of our meals that we would have otherwise bought in the park.
One last general thought about character dining is to really think about where you’re going to be each day and coordinate any character dining plans with your overall itinerary (more on creating the Disneyland itinerary to come in a later post). Our worst experience with a reservation was when we had a reservation at Paradise Pier (it was Mickey’s PCH Grill at the time) for a brunch reservation, and we were trying to squeeze in our fast passes in the back of DL before racing all the way to the Paradise Pier Hotel. That’s about as long of a walk as you’re going to have around the resorts, and being stressed and in a hurry to do it is a recipe for a bad start to an experience. Really think about what days (if any) you’re really going to want to leave the parks to go have breakfast. If it is none, then maybe Minnie’s breakfast is the best choice, or maybe one of the two restaurants in the Grand Californian will work on a park day in DCA (there is a park entrance/exit from DCA near Soarin’ and Grizzly River that puts you in the Grand Californian just steps from Storyteller’s and the Napa Rose). And if you want to go to Goofy’s or Pluto’s try to properly fit that into your itinerary to be in that area and have time to make the walk to get to your reservation.
Find our ranking of the Character Dining options here.
Disney Mom and Dad 