Family and buffet style breakfast

Ld1978 · 16 Feb 20, 08:51 AM

Hey all

I’m starting to look into our character meals and I know some are family style where they bring it to you vs self serve.

Having a 3 year old i would prefer family style but the Disney site says family or buffet. How can I find out which is which?

Thanks

**Goldia** · 16 Feb 20, 08:58 AM

Which buffets or characters are you interested in? We've been to lots of character meals so can let you know what's family style and what's not.

Garden Grill at Epcot with Chip, Dale, Mickey and Pluto is a family style for breakfast, lunch and dinner so the food is brought to you. 'Ohana at the Polynesian is a family style but they only have characters at breakfast...

Tillyjcm · 16 Feb 20, 09:01 AM

Originally Posted by Ld1978

Hey all

I’m starting to look into our character meals and I know some are family style where they bring it to you vs self serve.

Having a 3 year old i would prefer family style but the Disney site says family or buffet. How can I find out which is which?

Thanks

I know Garden Grill (Epcot), Ohana (Polynesian) and Trattoria (Boardwalk) are all family style character, not sure about others.

Ld1978 · 16 Feb 20, 09:08 AM

We definitely want to do ohana and garden grill. Not sure about chef mickey as I’ve heard it’s super busy.

Hollywood and vine for Disney junior sounds good for the little one and princess dining too. I think they will love any characters bless them

**Goldia** · 16 Feb 20, 09:19 AM

Ok, we've actually never done Chef Mickey, so can't comment on that.

For princesses I'd go for Akershus at Epcot. It's kind of a blend between buffet and family style. We've done both breakfast and dinner. The dinner is nice, with a Norwegian smorgasbord buffet for starters, then you order the main course and dessert as a la carte so all are brought to the table for you. For us we preferred the breakfast. The buffet is great with lots of meat, cheese, fruit, pastries etc. The hot food including bacon, eggs, sausage, potatoes are brought to your table. The best thing about Akershus is that it's a 1 credit meal if you're on the DDP and you get to meet the princesses, usually it's Belle, Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, but they do swap them sometimes for a different princess. I really would recommend this place it's great.

I'll have a think about other character meals that might be good.

We loved Tusker House. It's a full buffet meal though, only drinks are brought to the table. But, if you book it at a non standard meal time it will be much more quiet and therefore easier to get the food and you get way more time with the characters. We've done breakfast, but at 10.30 and then dinner but early at 4pm. Both times the restaurant was very quiet we saw the characters multiple times and really enjoyed it.

Hollywood and Vine is a standard buffet, we've only eaten there once back on our first trip in 2014, the food wasn't that great but I'm sure they've improved since then!

The eating outside of the most popular times idea would help at any of the normal buffet places though.

**Goldia** · 16 Feb 20, 10:31 AM

There are two other character meals that are not buffets that I've thought of.

Storybook Dining at Wilderness Lodge. This is a dinner where you meet Snow White, the evil queen and two dwarfs, we met Dopey and Grumpy. It's a three course meal and it's all served a la carte. Personally we didn't enjoy the meal so much, but we ordered poorly and would have enjoyed it a lot more if we'd ordered better.

The other is Topolino Terrace. This is a new restaurant at the Riviera resort. It's only got characters at breakfast. I think it's Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy. You get a basket of pastries and order from the menu so it's all served to you. I've booked this for us this summer, so I can't tell you if it's good or not, but I hope it is! The character's look super cute in their outfits.

Both of these are 1 credit on the DDP.

Clarkd3 · 16 Feb 20, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by Goldia

There are two other character meals that are not buffets that I've thought of.

Storybook Dining at Wilderness Lodge. This is a dinner where you meet Snow White, the evil queen and two dwarfs, we met Dopey and Grumpy. It's a three course meal and it's all served a la carte. Personally we didn't enjoy the meal so much, but we ordered poorly and would have enjoyed it a lot more if we'd ordered better.

The other is Topolino Terrace. This is a new restaurant at the Riviera resort. It's only got characters at breakfast. I think it's Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy. You get a basket of pastries and order from the menu so it's all served to you. I've booked this for us this summer, so I can't tell you if it's good or not, but I hope it is! The character's look super cute in their outfits.

Both of these are 1 credit on the DDP.

Hi we are going to storybook with pickey eaters, any advice on food options after your experience?

**Goldia** · 16 Feb 20, 11:55 AM

At storybook dining myself and my husband ordered the prime rib for our mains, neither of us enjoyed it though. Our server recommended the chicken. I think that if we had taken his advice we'd have been better off. Our daughter had a pork belly stew which she didn't enjoy as she doesn't like fatty meat, but again we should have read the menu more carefully as of course pork belly is fatty so I shouldn't have let her order it really.

The starters and the desserts were all lovely though. I've seen some people in dining reports getting fries substituted for the potato sides. I've not seen fries on the menu but as the restaurant is next to Whispering Canyon Cafe maybe they share a kitchen so that's why the fries can be subbed in? This may be an option for you if there are picky eaters. The servers are all very accommodating so I'm sure if you ask they will do their best to help.

Shooby doo · 16 Feb 20, 12:19 PM

Tusker & Garden grill are probably best food wise, CM was loud but breakfast was decent, CP we felt rushed & if you time it wrong it can be a long wait to get all the characters. H&V is often referred to as Hollywood & Slime & consistently voted the worst TS on property but the characters are good.
SD