Adventures in Character Dining, Part 2

Can you believe we still had more dining adventures? I told you, we ate SOOO much food while at Disney World. We really do love character dining. There is so much fun to be had during the meals.

Disney Junior Play n’ Dine at Hollywood & Vine (Hollywood Studios)

We ate at Hollywood & Vine in 2016 and 2017. The visits each had a different set of characters to meet.

In 2016 we had lunch with some of the Disney Junior characters: Jake, Sophia, Doc McStuffins, and Handy Manny. (Now they meet only at breakfast.) At the time the kids we’re almost five and two and a half so it was perfect! They were crazy about all of those characters on our trip and we couldn’t have picked a better meal. The food is a buffet with many of the traditional items salads, sides, meats, and a kids station with chicken fingers, of course. We had our fill of food.

The dessert Buffet here is out of the world!!! I pretty much need to go here for dessert about every trip. There are many cakes, cheesecakes, cookies, brownies, chocolate covered everythings, and many other desserts. Oh, and there is an ice cream station! Soft serve ice cream.. out of the machine.. as much as you can eat. ‘Nuff said.

I was too busy stuffing my face so this is the only picture there is of the sweet, yummy deliciousness.

Back to the point… It’s a character meal: The kids had a huge miles for every character as they walked by and stopped at our table.

I remember Diva yelling ‘Fia the moment that she saw her! She had to meet Sophia but then she saw Doc and she had to meet Doc too! Peanut has loved tools since he was about a year old. He’s just like his father. He loved watching Handy Manny and identifying all the tools so meeting him was a treat.

Now Jake, I can’t begin to tell you how many episodes of Jake and the Neverland Pirates we watched in my house and we still do. My kids love Jake! We had met him just a short time before lunch reservation because they couldn’t wait but they needed to see him again.

The kids aren’t always so great at being interactive so the dance session was a little less exciting for them than the character standing at the table but they didn’t parade around the restaurant with the characters.

Minnie’s Seasonal Dine at Hollywood & Vine (Hollywood Studios)

In 2017 we went for Minnie’s Springtime Dine. This time we were able to see Minnie, Mickey, Daisy, and Donald. Diva had become quite obsessed with Minnie so she brought her Minnie Mouse dress to wear and get a picture. As you might have read our dinner was a bit chaotic due to Grumpy’s cell phone suddenly deciding to not work. We still made the best of the meal and ate plenty from the buffet. I was sure to eat a little less and leave plenty of room for dessert. Peanut and Grumpy decided to leave a little early for a FastPass to see Indiana Jones and Diva and I remained in the restaurant to finish our desserts!

The characters were just as fun as we’ve come to expect. Photopass was at the front of the restaurant to capture our family portrait with Daisy. We could go up any time so we just waited until there wasn’t a line.

Bon Voyage Adventure Breakfast at Trattoria al Forno (on the Boardwalk)

This is probably THE cutest meal I have been to in all of our character dining adventures! The was a reservation for the whole family but Grumpy and Peanut were being grumpy (or maybe just sleepy) so Diva and I went on our own. We took an Uber to the Boardwalk Hotel and then walked right to the restaurant. We had a 7:30 a.m. reservation which was right at opening. We were just a few minutes early and waited in the lobby with a few other families.

Disney is great at their marketing and has some little stands with Rapunzel and Ariel goodies setup right outside while waiting. I saw many parents roped in. Once the doors opened we were the second or third name called. We walked in and there were servers holding mini frying pans up in saber-arch style. The server standing between those holding the frying pans were applauding and welcoming us. It was so cool!

The food I had to customize a little to meet my appetite. For the first time I tried steak and eggs for breakfast (and potatoes). The steak was okay A little tougher than I prefer and it’s hard to mess up scrambled eggs. Diva had Mickey waffles which are always tasty. The meal includes some pastries at the beginning which I probably could have eaten an endless supply as my whole breakfast.

 

This is the only place at Disney to meet Flynn Rider or Prince Eric so it made the meal even more appealing. It’s very fun to meet the princes.

We had brought an over-sized birthday card for one of Diva’s friends since Rapunzel was her favorite. All the characters were super excited too sign the card and Rapunzel even wrote the friend’s name on the envelope. We missed getting Prince Eric’s signature and Ariel was super gracious to go off and find him and have him sign so that we could be on our way to Hollywood Studios for the day.

Diva loves this meal so much she has already asked many many times can we go to the Rapunzel breakfast when we go back to Disney? We’re going for her birthday trip so yes, Diva, I do have it on the to do list.

Princess Storybook Dining Breakfast at Akershus Royal Banquet (Epcot)

I keep saying that we’re going to have a princess dinner at the castle but I just haven’t worked it into the plans at this point so I made a reservation for a princess breakfast Akershus. Again with our eating habits any other meal was just not appealing for us so took the safe choice with breakfast. We had a pre-park reservation which I hoped would help us get in line for Frozen. However, we had a rough start to the morning including a meltdown. By the time we made it to the restaurant the line for our reservation was about 10 to 15 minutes long. There was a little patience that morning with the kids not so pleasant attitudes but everyone was relaxed again.

We started by taking a family photo with Belle and then Diva and I got our own picture too. We were seated and immediately jumped at the buffet. The food is a little different here. The buffet doesn’t include the eggs, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. Those are all brought out family style. Fruits, yogurts, and some Norwegian specialty items.

Diva had fun parading around the restaurant with Cinderella, but Peanut preferred to stay at the table. The kids took time with the to smile, give hugs, and take lots of pictures with all the princesses.

While we were eating Belle who doesn’t normally wander around the restaurant came to our table. We were pretty surprised to see her but she had picked up one of our Disney pins that had fallen off while we were meeting her. She made it a special point to remember who we were and then come find us as soon as she had a free moment.

It’s not a must do again meal but I wouldn’t necessarily pass it up either.

Coming soon… Quick Service Dining