A popular place to meet Disney characters is at a character meal. These are not actual meals with a character, instead the character comes to your table to meet your family while you are eating your meal. They will spend anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes with your family.
Here are all the restaurants that you can find the characters:
Animal Kingdom
Donald’s Safari Breakfast and Lunch at Tusker House
Includes Donald, Mickey, Daisy and Goofy
Breakfast and Lunch
Hollywood Studios
Playhouse Disney’s Play ‘N Dine at Hollywood & Vine
Includes Special Agent Oso, Handy Manny, Jake, and Little Einstein Characters
Breakfast
Epcot
The Garden Grill Dinner
Includes Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale
Dinner
Princess Storybook Dining at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall
Includes Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Aurora and Cinderella
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Magic Kingdom
Crystal Palace
Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore and Piglet
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Cindrella’s Royal Table
Cindrella, Ariel, Aurora, Belle and Snow White
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
Resorts
Cape May Cafe at the Beach Club
Goofy, Minnie and Donald
Breakfast
Chef Mickey’s at the Contemporary
Chef Mickey, Chef Goofy, Chef Donald, Chef Minnie, Chef Pluto
Breakfast and Dinner
1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian Supercalifragilistic Breakfast
Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, and the Mad Hatter
1900 Park Fare at the Grand Floridian Cinderella’s Gala Feast
Cinderella and Prince Charming, Lady Tremaine, Anastasia, Drizella, and the Fairy Godmother
‘Ohana Character Breakfast at the Polynesian
Lilo, Stitch, Pluto and Mickey
Garden Grove Cafe Dinner at the Swan Hotel
Goofy and Pluto
Garden Grove Cafe Breakfast on Saturday and Sunday
Goofy and Pluto
My favorites:
- My favorite character meals are ‘Ohanas, Garden Grill and Tusker House.
Tips for meeting characters at a character meal:
- The characters do not all come out at once. They come out in sets. Ask your waitress when the next character should appear
- Always have your book open and ready on the table
- Send one parent to the buffet while the other remains at the table to watch for characters
- It is okay to stand up and pose with the character at your table
My tips for meeting the characters:
- Almost all characters sign, make sure you have an autograph book (write your cell phone number in it) and pen for them to use (their hands are big so you might want to get one of the fat sharpies.)
- Character greeters (the cash members that work with characters) have a light blue shirt on. If you see someone standing around with a light blue shirt, it means a character is about to come out. Ask them!
- When you get in line, ask the cast member when the character plans to go get a snack. You might not want to wait the extra 5 minutes for their break.
- Only face characters (like the Princesses) speak. You could explain this to your child by saying that the other characters have to save their voices for the parades and shows (where they do speak).
- It is okay to ask questions to the characters about their movies, life, etc. It might be fun while you wait in line to come up with a question to ask them. Just don’t ask Chip and Dale where they keep their nuts!
- When we meet a character, we get the autograph first (make sure you open your book to a clean page while you are waiting in line), give hugs and then take a picture. The characters will help your children to turn around to pose for the picture.
- Don’t forget to say “please” when asking for an autograph & photo and then “thank you” afterwards.
Photo tips
- Take a picture of your child as they walk towards the character. I’ve caught some cute pictures of Jacob with his arms outstretched towards the character. It’s so cute.
- Most characters have a Photopass Photographer with them. They will take pictures with your camera too. Don’t be afraid to ask!
- It is okay to have a picture made with just your kids and then you jump in for a second shot.
here’s idea for the regular disney visitor:
take a picture of your child with the same chracter every year so you can see how your child has grown (it makes a great scrapbook page). my mom use to do it with me when i was little and i still love to look at them.
RE this tip: “Character handlers (the cash members that work with characters) have a light blue shirt on. If you see someone standing around with a light blue shirt, it means a character is about to come out. Ask them!”
Here’s a Disney “speak” tip for you – the cast members are identified as character greeters not handlers.
You also have a typo in the parenthesis (cash instead of cast). Just wanted to point it out since you copy and paste this a lot – not trying to be a grammar queen.
OK, I’ve never done this, so I’m confused about something. The tips mention standing in line. If the characters come to your table, why would you have to stand in line?
Cindy , I agree with you on play and dine. It is my girls( 3 & 4) and mine and my husbands favorite character meal. The characters spend so much time with you there. It isn’t at crowded as the other character meals and they don’t make you feel like you have to rush. The dance party with the characters is really fun. Handy manny even got my 13y/o son to stand up and pose for a picture with him and they are both showing their muscles. It is one of my favorite pics of the whole trip.
Thanks for the list!
When we “dined at” Cinderella’s Royal Table in May, we met Cinderella in the “reception” area (no fairy godmother), and then had Aurora (pink dress), Ariel, and Belle (blue dress) walking around during dinner.
We did Cinderella’s Royal Table, Askershus, and Tusker House. By far our favorite was Tusker House for the food and ambiance. The castle was in second place, so pretty to be up there! In November the characters at that meal were Cinderella, Belle (in her blue dress), Ariel, Aurora, and Snow White.
I agree with you on Ohana’s and Tusker House. We have never done Garden Grill. Others have said how they love Chef Mickey’s, but I think it is over priced and the characters don’t spend enough time with you. At Ohana’s last time, after Mickey took pictures with my son, he then noticed my son’s Star Wars figures on the table and he sat down in my son’s seat and started playing Star Wars with him. It was so cute.
Another one we love is Play and Dine. Unlike Crystal Palace and Ohana’s or even Chef Mickey’s where they have towel waving and parade type thing. At Play and Dine they have a dance segment where the kids can join in the center of the place along with the characters and sing and dance to a few songs. My son loved dancing with Oso on our last trip. It was very personable.
And a good tip. Character breakfast meals are a great way to get into a park before anyone else. No you can’t ride the rides, but you can get some great shots of a semi empty main street and then if you time it right you are at the front of the line for when the rest of the park opens. This works great for us at Tusker House and Play and Dine, getting a 8:05 ADR is really good. But Crystal Palace, even though I love it, has some really slow characters. Our last two times we skipped out without seeing all of them because we had been for an hour and the park had opened.
And a tip, you can ask your server for the bill when they first bring your drinks. That way you can get that out of the way, and can leave as soon as you are ready.
I love character meals, but only when I have free dining. Otherwise they are so pricey. But they are great.
My vote goes to chef mickeys! Crystal palace always seems to be running behind schedule. You have to wait in linento check in, then wait some more for your table to be ready. Not exactly fun with little ones. We have eaten there at least 5 times and has been the same thing every time. Chefs mickeys I have only had a brief wait once and the characters do a cute thing where they twirl their napkins around. My kids love it. They are 13, 4, and 3
I loved chef mickeys when I was a kid! Also I think character meals are a great way to save time. You eat and meet characters at the same time, saving time later on when you don’t have to stop and see mickey!
Well, I’m torn. We leave in less than three weeks and I’ve had breakfast at Chef Mickey’s booked for six months. The other day, i noticed that my son really responds to seeing Pooh and Tigger in the youtube videos we’ve been watching of the parades. So for the same day, i booked the Crystal Palace for lunch. I’ve done both before, but never Chef Mickey’s with my kids. My older guys ate at the Crystal Palace when they were 4 and 2 (now 15 and 13), so that doesn’t really count. We are only doing one character meal, so I think I’m going to see how my little one responds to the characters the first couple of days we are there and then make a decision. If someone has a suggestion though, please feel free to help!
We went to 1900 Park Fare for breakfast in Dec 2010, & Tigger & Pooh were also there. Not sure if they’ve been added as regulars, but I’ve seen a few recent Disney board posts have mentioned this also,
I am surprised that one of your favorite isn’t Chef Mickey. We really enjoyed that one. I have never been to the ones you listed, so those will be a “must” next time we go.
I love character meals! They are our families favorite part of our Disney vacations. We Just went for 9 days at Christmas and all of the character meals available! If you want to see our photos at the character meals we have a share site with all of them. It is natalfamilyphotos.shutterfly.com
thanks so much for this, i have been trying to research which character eatings we are going to do, this helps a bunch. is eatings a words ??? LOL
Glad it helped you!
Sounds like a word to me. ;)
Thank you so much for this post!!!!