We love character meetings too! Our kids are young, so that's the main attraction right now. We seem to do about 6 character meals each trip. We have always had excellent character interaction. The characters make us feel like we do have them all to ourselves. They stay a long time for pictures, playing, autographs ~ even sometimes sitting with us! One of the best character meals was when ds was 15 months old. He always loved characters, but not right in his face. At Chef Mickeys Breakfast, ds was eating a muffin. Chip and Dale were around. Chip came over and stood behind ds and started stroking ds's hair. ds didn't really pay much attention. Chip stayed a really long time. Finally ds turned around and gave Chip the biggest hug! Same meal, Minnie came over and started flirting with ds, she got on her knees and he kept kissing her nose over and over. Our home video is amazing. I must have 100 stories like this. Ice Cream Social is another great character gathering. We got ALL the characters together at our table! The character tents in Toontown is great. We have always gotten Mickey Mouse to ourselves for 5 to 10 minutes. Great pix and video! Goofy always takes our camera and tries to take pix of us! Our character meetings were priceless. If you truly want 30 minutes @ $550 when you must do that. But it doesn't need to be done because the characters are awesome! OH YEAH! Pluto sat with us at Donalds Breakfastosaurus and fed ds while I ate. Dh doesn't do that LOL! S