humormeeee
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2015
We had a lot of character breakfasts on our Spring Break 15 trip. We had an 8:15 pre-park opening breakfast at Hollywood and Vine. Hollywood Studios opened at 9:00 that day. We arrived at the park at about 7:45. They were not even letting breakfast patrons through the gate at 8:00. We were literally only going through the park turnstiles at about 8:15, the time of our reservation. We were literally one of the first people to check in, and one of the last people called, way past our reservation time, and I was getting very angry about it, because the restaurant was not really all that full or busy. We did not get called to our table until 8:40 and it took another 10 minutes for our waitress to get our drinks, which is a problem for me, because I have a swallowing problem and cannot eat solid food without something to drink or I choke. We ate at several character breakfasts and lunches and none of them took more than an hour. We were hoping to get out of there close to park opening time so we would not get in long lines for rides, needless to say, that did not happen. The characters were very very poorly coordinated. We rushed to the buffet as soon as we got there because we were so late, I told the kids to try to hurry and eat. Sofia, which was my 4-year old's 2nd favorite character there, showed up at our table within seconds of us going to the buffet line. At all the other character buffets, they timed it so you had at least a few minutes to go get your food before the first character came. So we ran out of the buffet line to our table to go get pictures with Sofia. Then the other two characters, Doc McStuffins and Handy Manny, came within second of each other. Me and the kids tried to eat as fast as we could so as to avoid getting in long lines for big park attractions, but it was really too late. The waitress was not in any hurry to get us drink refills, or to bring us the check or change once we filled out the receipt. She kept commenting that she didn't know why people were running out so quickly (um, it was because they got in so late for their reservation). The last character, Jake, from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, was my 4-year-old son's favorite. We were done eating, and had finally paid and got the check signed and were ready to go. We waited 10 minutes for him, we didn't even see him in the restaurant. Finally, we saw him--he had 12 more tables to visit before getting to us--that was going to take forever, and we had been ready to leave for a while. If he weren't my son's favorite character, I would have left at that point. We asked the waitress if we could just get a quick picture with him so we wouldn't hold up other people by sitting at the table. They let us snap a quick picture with him on the way out. Overall, we were about 40 minutes later than what we expected to be in getting out of the restaurant. Out of all of the character dining experiences, Hollywood and Vine breakfast had the least appealing food. It was mediocre at best. The other issue was that due to the lighting inside the restaurant and the windows, the pictures turned out poorly because there was so much light coming from all directions. Overall, it was not a character dining experience I would recommend. I do realize there are some characters that meet there that are hard or impossible to meet otherwise. If you have a child that is so into one of those characters, maybe it is worth it, otherwise, I would do something else. I would also strongly recommend not doing a pre-park opening breakfast if you want to try to beat the crowds for certain rides like rockin rollercoaster or tower of terror.
. But in terms of enjoying the H&V, no, a prepark ADR was a giant waste of time and energy. One thing different for us...as I mentioned, it was only my DS and myself so I didn't have an extra adult on hand to hold the table while the kid and I went to sign up. Having two adults - assuming you do - is an advantage in that particular situation, so you may be fine. Just head over and sign up, return for second helpings, ask for the characters you may have missed, etc.
