First off, Minnie and Friends Breakfast at Plaza Inn is the cheapest character meal on property currently, it was $30 plus tax with no tip necessary since it is a cafeteria style restaurant. It is also the only character meal in Disneyland Park. You definitely get a lot of bang for your buck.
Since there are no real pre-park opening reservations and we wanted to keep some prime early park time, our reservation was for 10am, which is when we arrived. As we walked up we saw various characters wandering around, this got me excited. The cast member who walked us in was telling us about how Walt used the plaza for dining with his special guests, kind of cool to know. We were brought up to the porch where our picture was taken, without any characters. This feels very random and I’m not sure why one would buy it. Then we were brought into the restaurant to get our table. The waitress bringing us to our table then seemed confused asked us to wait and a few minutes later came back and brought us to a table. This was also weird.
Our table/booth was near the food, a big plus, but also behind a few other tables and crowded in tightly next to another table. The configuration of tables made it kind of hard to get out to take pictures with characters as they came by.
Around us looked a little like chaos, it wasn’t totally crazy, there wasn’t kids chasing characters as I have heard horror stories of but it wasn’t so calm either. There was a lot of people coming and going and people complaining to staff that Minnie missed there table. Also, while we saw Pooh in the area when we were waiting for our table to get sorted out, we didn’t see many characters around when we got seated or for about the first twenty minutes we eating.
I found the food better than expected. The eggs were probably the best I had on property and this was one of the few character breakfasts I visited that offered bacon, sausage, or ham. And the ham was good. This was plated for you at the counter where they have chicken in the afternoon. They also had fresh Mickey waffles, always my favorite, also plated for you. I’m not sure why but the regular syrup is over by the cereal, just for your information. There was also a selection of fruit that I enjoyed.
I guess what really makes this a cafeteria style instead of a buffet is you have to get your own drinks. I opted for decaf black tea and orange juice. I got a number of refills easily when I got more eggs, ham, and waffles. There wasn’t a long line for anything, unlike trying to come here for lunch at high noon.
The first character we saw was Fairy Godmother. I thought she had overlooked us buried behind other tables but she came and found us and had a really good interaction with us. That was cool, we had never met her before. Finally more characters started arriving and they did so in quick succession. We managed to find ways to move around and get people to take our photo together with some of the characters, though there weren’t as many servers or other cast members around to help with that.
The characters we saw next were Captain Hook, Minnie, Chip, Dale, Eeyore, Tiger, and Pooh. It seemed like a pretty random assortment of characters, but they were fun to meet. To me, the food and fun with characters were definitely worth it.
