Character Dining at Disneyland Resort in California

The Disneyland Resort in California has five options for character dining, each offering the opportunity for meet and greats with some of your favorite Disney characters. Characters vary by location, time of year, time of day, and a number of other factors, but regardless of whom the characters are they are always fun to meet. Character dining gives you the opportunity to get autographs and have your pictures with characters while you eat. There is no need to wait in line or chase after characters, as the characters will circulate between the tables coming to you to meet you. 

The first character dining experience we will look at is Breakfast in the Park with Minnie and friends at Plaza Inn. Plaza Inn is located at the end of Main Street next to the entrance to Tomorrowland at Disneyland park.  Plaza Inn is a quick service restaurant for lunch and dinner, but for breakfast, it is a buffet offering guests the opportunity to meet a number of character favorites. The menu includes breakfast staples including cereals, bacon, sausage, eggs, and Mickey waffles. Characters can include Minnie Mouse, Tigger, Pooh, Eeyore, Rafiki, Captain Hook, Max, Fairy Godmother, Chip and Dale.

Surfs Up with Mickey and Friends at PCH Grill in the Paradise Pier Hotel is another breakfast buffet with characters. The theme of the dining experience is a beach theme, characters are dressed up in surf/ beach attire and it is a fun relaxed dining experience. There are fun activities such as surfing with the characters for the children to participate in. Characters to meet include Lilo, Stitch, Mickey Minnie, Pluto, Donald and Daisy. The menu includes items such as Grilled Peanut Butter and Banana with Chocolate-stuffed French Toast, Mickey-shaped Waffles, Minnie Pancakes, Breakfast Potatoes with Peppers and Onions, Chicken Apple Sausage Links, Country Pork Sausage, Crispy Maple Bacon, and an Omelet Station.

The third breakfast only character dining experience is the Chip n’ Dale Critter Breakfast at the Storytellers Café at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. This is one breakfast dining experience that offers both buffet and menu dining. It is set in a country lodge that is the perfect setting to meet the Disney Critters that are hard to meet anywhere else; characters include Terk, Kenai, Koda, Meeko, Br’er Bear, Br’er Fox, Chip, and Dale. The buffet includes items such as made to order Omelets, Caramel French Toast, Eggs Benedict, Mickey Waffles, Bagels, Seasonal Fruit, and Pastries, while the Menu features a number of breakfast items such as omelets, Bacon/ Sausage and eggs, Steak and Eggs, Huevos Rancheros, and Eggs Benedict.

Goofy’s Kitchen at the Disneyland Resort Hotel is a buffet that offers the opportunity for meet and greets with your favorite characters for both breakfast and dinner. Upon paying for your meal, you get a family picture taken with chef Goofy before proceeding to your table. Once seated characters such as Alice in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, Chip, Dale, Pluto, Minnie, Mickey and Fairy Godmother. The breakfast menu includes staples such as Mickey Mouse Waffles, Minnie Mouse Pancakes, French toast, sausage, bacon, eggs benedict, as well as chicken nuggets and Goofy’s Famous Peanut Butter Pizza and Dessert. The dinner buffet includes a carving station, fresh catch of the day, seasonal vegetables, tossed salads, fresh fruit, Pluto’s Hot Dogs, assorted pizzas, chicken nuggets, Goofyroni & Cheese, and Desserts.

The final of the five character dining experiences is Ariel’s Grotto. This a la carte fixed price dining experience is located on the waterfront at Paradise Pier in the California Adventure theme park and offers the chance to dine with the Princesses. The restaurant has characters for all meals excluding World Of Color Dining Packages. The restaurant is divided into two dining rooms, a waterfront patio with views of the boardwalk and Paradise Pier attractions, and “Under the Sea” an indoor dining room with an ocean setting. The breakfast menu has an appetizer of assorted breakfast pastries with fresh fruit, and entrees such as Belgian waffles with berries, frittatas, scrambled eggs with Tri-Tip, and an All-American breakfast including scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon or sausage, and Bircher Muesli. For lunch/dinner, the menu includes a starter of either soup or salad, with entrees such as Sautéed Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta, Red Oak-Smoked Honey-Whiskey Barbecue Tri-Tip with mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables, Fire-roasted Corn Cakes, Fresh Catch of the Day, Citrus-Glazed Chicken Breast, and a Grilled Lobster Tail Salad.

Each of the five character dining experiences on Disney property offers the opportunity to meet favorite characters in a unique setting, whether dining with the Princess on the Waterfront, or meeting some of Disneys hard to find Critters for breakfast in a log cabin setting, there is a character dining experience for everyone.

By Agent Melissa

Travel Time Travel

Melissa@traveltimetravel.com

Disney Dining Plans: Part 2

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Disneyland

By Travel Time Agent Melissa
Melissa@traveltimetravel.com 

We are going to now look at the dining plan at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. This dining plan is new and not as well-known as the dining plan in Florida is. Along with being less well known,  it also works quite differently than the Florida plan. To start it is important to understand the layout of Disneyland, and the neighboring area. 

Disneyland Resort consists of three hotels: The Disneyland Hotel, Disney Grand Californian, and Paradise Pier Hotel, two theme parks (Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure Park) and Downtown Disney. Outside of the resort there are numerous hotels and restaurants. Many of the hotels in the neighboring area are considered good neighbor hotels, and though their onsite restaurants are not included in the dining plan, if you book your hotel stay as part of a package through Disney you can add the Disneyland Dining plan to your package. 

So basically with the layout of Disney it is definitely a feasible option to eat outside of the park if you so choose, this is not to say you should never eat in the park, but it is something that you need to consider more carefully as both options have pros and cons to them. With this in mind let us start looking at the options. Below there is a table showing the different dining plans you can choose from (prices are for 2013 and are subject to change every year). 

	Donald’s 2-Day	Goofy’s 3-Day	Minnie’s 4-Day	Mickey’s 5-Day
Snacks ($5.00)	2($10.00)	3($15.00)	4($20.00)	5($25.00)
$15.00 voucher	2($30.00)	3($45.00)	4($60.00)	5($75.00)
Character Dining($33.00/$17.00)	2($66.00/$34.00)	3($99.00/$51.00)	3($99.00/$51.00)	4($132.00/$68.00)
Premium Character Dining ($43.00/$22.00)	0	0	1($43.00/$22.00)	1($43.00/$22.00)
Adult Price	$106.00	$159.00	$222.00	$275.00
Child Price (3-9)	$64.00	$96.00	$133.00	$165.00

  

So say you have a 5-night trip to Anaheim, 5 days in the parks, but you know there are some restaurants outside of the park you are set on going to (Sunday Gospel Brunch at House of Blues, Rainforest Café etc.) you could choose to take a shorter 3-day dining plan. That is right you can choose how many days of dining plan you want to have, it is not based on the number of nights you are staying. To purchase the dining plan you must book a package staying at either a Disney Hotel or a Good Neighbor Hotel booking through Disney (Travel Time Agent can do this for you).

If you purchase a dining plan you will receive a book of vouchers that can be used for up to the value associated with the voucher at any participating carts or restaurants. I will give some specific examples of this in a moment but first let us look at what counts as a snack, a character dining meal, and a premium character dining meal. Snacks are bottled beverages, individual popcorn, frozen novelties, corn on the cob, or other similarly priced items available at carts throughout the parks and hotels. Character Dining is valid for the following character breakfasts: Minnie and Friends Breakfast at Plaza Inn on Main Street USA in Disneyland, Surfs Up with Mickey at PCH Grill in Paradise Pier Hotel, and Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Critter Breakfast at the Storytellers Café in Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. The two Premium Character Dining experiences are Goofy’s Kitchen buffet at the Disneyland Hotel, and Ariel’s Disney Princess Celebration at Ariel’s Grotto restaurant in Disney’s California Adventure Park.  So one theme that you may have noticed, these locations are all in the hotels or the parks, the dining plan is currently not accepted at any restaurants in Downtown Disney or off property (including at Good Neighbor Hotels).

So if you are a family of four (2 adults and 2 children ages 7 and 5) and have a five day package including a four day dining plan, your first day you could have breakfast at your hotels free continental breakfast (hotel dependent), an ice cream (snack voucher 1) in the middle of the day and then use your premium character dining for an early dinner at Goofy’s Kitchen before heading back to the park.. For your second day you could go for buffet breakfast at Surfs Up at Paradise Pier hotel before entering the park, purchase a snack for lunch, and have a burger and fries using  (1)$15.00 voucher for dinner. The next day you have breakfast at your hotel before leaving for the park again, and for lunch you use one of your character dining experiences(1)and (2) 1 snack voucher  towards lunch at Carthay Circle, and have pizza and a drink for dinner using $15.00 voucher( 2). For your fourth day you could have a pastry from the bakery on Main Street for breakfast using your snack voucher (3) then use your character-dining voucher (2) towards lunch at Blue Bayou, and have dinner off property later in the evening. For your final day you could have breakfast with Minnie and Friends in the Park using your final character dining experience, have a salad lunch using $15.00 voucher (3) have a cob of chilli lime corn in the afternoon as a snack (last snack voucher) then use your final $15.00 voucher towards dinner at Wine Country Trattoria.

The above example of dining is not the best use of all your dining vouchers but it shows the different ways that the vouchers can be used. If you do not want a character breakfast every day (buffets every morning) you can apply the allocated dollar value towards a meal at another restaurant. If you do not need a snack every day you can combine two vouchers towards a more expensive sit down meal. The important thing to remember if you are doing this is you cannot get change back from vouchers, whether you are using one voucher or combining them. Also, the character and premium character vouchers include tax and gratuity when used at the designated locations, but if you use them at another restaurant they do not go towards the gratuity. 

 If you work out the value of each voucher included in each dining plan individually it totals the amount that you are paying for your dining plan. Therefore, you are not necessarily saving money by purchasing the dining plans, though you still could be. The value of the character and premium character dining experiences is the cost of the meal you would be getting, not including the tax and gratuity, but if used for the designated dining it also includes these costs. Therefore, for a single person for one meal that can be up to about $10.00 savings. Now if you use your snack vouchers worth $5.00 for an ice cream worth like $4.00 you are not getting money back so you are losing money there.  This is one of the disadvantages, you have to be so careful about your planning to make sure you are not losing money more often then you are saving money. Another disadvantage is they are vouchers not just a card, if a voucher gets lost or misplaced that voucher is gone; the vouchers do say not to tear out before paying and they have the right to not accept a voucher that is not still attached to the book so unless you lose the book you shouldn’t have problems losing vouchers. Another disadvantage to some people is that at some meals you will have to pay additional money, the $15.00 voucher does not cover a whole quick service meal as is defined in the Walt Disney World Dining plan (entrée, drink, and dessert), so therefore if you want a quick service meal including all of these items you would most likely have to use some cash or a second voucher towards it. I personally had a soup in a bread bowl and a fountain drink in a souvenir cup, it came out to like $18.50 or so, if I got my drink in a regular cup it would be far under the $15.00 value, but by taking the souvenir cup I had to use $3.50 cash towards the cost. The last kind of disadvantage is that you are kind of committing yourself to eating a certain number of meals (or at least spending a certain amount of money on meals) either in the parks or at the hotels. The dining plan is not accepted in Downtown Disney, and cannot be used towards World of Color or Fantasmic Dining packages.

There are also a number of advantages to purchasing a dining plan. You can buy options ranging from individual meals to a 5 day plans regardless of how long you are staying. Many of the sit down restaurants on Disney property require or recommend having priority seating, so committing to meals at the time of purchasing a package encourages you to make all your necessary dining reservations (or have your Travel Time Agent make reservations on your behalf). Your meals are mainly paid for in advance, minimal budgeting for meals is required during your vacation. Though eating off property is a feasible option, and sometimes nice to get away from park food, chances are you will still want some meals in the park, it is convenient, and there is a certain magic to dining in the magic. Buying the dining plan should not cost you more than you would spend on dining, in fact if you plan well it should still save you some money, even if it is just $20-$30 a person, that is money you can spend on souvenirs or on your next trip. 

Knowing your family is a key to making the most of your Disneyland dining package, knowing if they are picky or up to trying different things, if they are light eaters that snack a lot, or like large infrequent meals, knowing if your family likes to try different meals or if they are okay with repetition all help make the best decision. Along with this, it is important to have someone that knows Disney Dining, knows the restaurants in the parks and surrounding the parks, and can help you to make the most of your dining plan, whether that is using the dining vouchers or planning meals outside of the parks. 

  

Contact Melissa

Melissa@traveltimetravel.com

1-855-468-8896 Ext 128