And by "character meal," I don't mean one where you actually eat a character:
But one where you dine with the characters:
The upside of character dining is the chance to multi-task: You take care of a character meet-and-greet and a meal, at the same time! The downside is the expense: Character meals often cost more than non-character meals with the same food. You're paying for that character experience.
But many theme park visitors welcome the chance to pay a little extra to ensure some one-on-one time with the favorite characters without having to wait, often outside in the sun. That's why character meals often require advance reservations, and sometimes weeks in advance.
Not every character meal's a tough ticket, though. Several years ago, the kids and I walked over to the hotel at Knott's Berry Farm for dinner, and ended up being the only party with kids at a Snoopy character dinner. The kids were thrilled to have Snoopy all to themselves, but after about 10 minutes, we discovered that too much character time can get, well, awkward. Once Snoopy had mimed his way through all his gags, the encounter started to feel like a bad blind date. The kids had nothing left to say, and Snoopy, well, he's a giant theme park dog. There wasn't anything he could say. So after several moments of awkward silence, Snoopy mercifully called it a night and shuffled away.
I'd love to hear your stories and opinions about character dining in the theme parks. Please share your tips and advice, or just a funny, silly or crazy story, in the comments.
As always, thanks for reading Theme Park Insider, and have a great weekend!
Well, we got our wish last trip. We were all sitting outside Jake's one night when the Scooby character came walking by with his handler on their way off-duty. "Scooby" recognized another Dane right away :-) Here was our chance... but, of course, the camera was in the room!! Even though they were both tired and he wanted to get "Scooby" out of the heat, the handler graciously agreed to follow us back to our room so I could get the camera. He took the perfect shot of all three of us with our favorite cartoon dog.
We made sure to contact the character management office the next day to tell them how much we appreciated their employees going above and beyond to indulge two silly pet parents :-)
As far as Character Dining at Disneyland, we really enjoyed Goofy's Kitchen. The food was ok, but the characters and the overall atmosphere was great. We also have eaten at Ariel's Grotto. Once again the food was ok, but we scheduled the meal so our daughter could see all of the Princesses since only a few were actually available in the park. We would like to try some of the other character dining experiences the next time we travel to DL.
But...her mother and I had a ball watching it.
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