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We love character dining experiences here at Green Vacation Deals, and one of our favorites is Chef Mickey’s over at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. Today, I want to give you a complete review of my family’s experience of a Chef Mickey’s breakfast.
But first, let me explain what Chef Mickey’s is. It’s a restaurant in the Grand Canyon Concourse at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. If you’ve ever taken a monorail back to the ticket & transportation center or to the Polynesian Resort or Grand Floridian Resort, then I am sure you’ve seen it before.
You can get a great aerial shot of the restaurant while you’re on the monorail.
You can also hear it going on if you eat at Contempo Cafe at Contemporary Resort, another restaurant you can see from the monorail (you can see our review for that restaurant here).
A few years, seeing Chef Mickey from the monorail had been the extent of my experience with Chef Mickey. I would pass it when I was on the monorail and wonder what a meal there would be like.
But that changed a few years ago. I was visiting Disney World for my sister’s birthday, and we decided to treat her with a visit to Chef Mickey’s. This was very fitting because my sister has always loved Mickey Mouse. Plus, my family was staying at Bay Lake Tower, which was the building built on to the Contemporary Resort (you can find out more about Bay Lake Tower, including how to save money on a stay, here).
Chef Mickey’s is open for breakfast and dinner. But we decided to try the breakfast option. So for the purposes of this review, we’ll be reviewing our breakfast experience at Chef Mickey’s.
And it was an amazing experience for me, for a lot of reasons. First of all, it was one of those things I wanted to check off my Disney World bucket list, so to speak. So did it live up to my expectations? Well, you will just have to keep reading to find out!
Getting a Reservation
It’s not always easy to get a reservation here. I wanted to get it on my sister’s birthday. I couldn’t find a reservation until only a day or two before. So keep checking on the app if you can’t find the time you want. It can always pop up at the last minute (though no guarantees, obviously).
If you want more information on booking a dining reservation at a Disney World restaurant, you can learn more in our Advanced Dining Reservation Guide.
By the way, before you book a reservation, you should probably know this isn’t exactly an affordable experience. The breakfast costs $59 per adult and $38 per child. But is it worth it? Well, again, keep reading.
First Impressions
So once it was time for our reservation, we headed over to Chef Mickey’s. Actually, we had to hurry a bit because I got caught up having fun that morning at Magic Kingdom. But we were able to take a monorail over here. This can work great even if you’re not staying at Magic Kingdom. You can take the monorail here from Magic Kingdom, Polynesian, Grand Floridian, or the Ticket & Transportation Center. You can also walk over to Chef Mickey’s directly from Magic Kingdom, and it’s not too long of a walk.
Once I got a text that my table was ready, we were taken to our table. Now, as I said earlier, I had already seen the restaurant from up above. So I thought that was the only place where you would be seated.
But I had never realized just how big this place is. There are rooms you can’t see from the monorail. All of them are beautifully decorated. One room I had never seen before was decorated like a celebration.
I really liked the room we got in though. We were right by the window. They have floor-to-ceiling windows in that room.
We got amazing views of (depending on where you sat) Cinderella’s Castle, Grand Floridian, the monorail, and Seven Seas Lagoon.
I also really love the fun decor at Chef Mickey, like the puzzle pieces on the wall.
I feel the whole atmosphere and decor are not only great for kids but also brings out the kids in all of us. Which is, of course, kind of the point of Disney World.
I should also mention that it was pretty hot here. They don’t have fans going like they do at other restaurants at Disney World. And since we were up against the window and the sun was bright, I think that added to it. So dress accordingly.
Food Review
One of the reasons my family really enjoyed this experience was the (mostly) delicious food available at Chef Mickey’s.
Let’s start with the fruit. There are select available when change seasonally. When we were there, it was grapes, watermelon, pineapple, and melons.
The melons were a bit harder than I would prefer, but the rest of the fruit I thought was delicious, especially the watermelons.
We also had a yogurt parfait.
They also had Fresh Fried Sweet Fritters with Vanilla-Cinnamon Sugar as well as buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy.
I loved the Fresh Fried Sweet Fritters. If you like donuts, you’ll love them. They were one of my favorite foods at the breakfast.
But I was sadly disappointed by the biscuits. Which is a shame, because biscuits are literally my favorite food ever. But they were too hard.
On a more positive note, I really loved the eggs.
They were some of the best eggs I have had at a restaurant, perhaps ever. I happily got seconds of the eggs.
The banana bread French Toast was also a hit. It was more bread than toast, but really good. The topping on the French Toast was great, too. The sausage was good as well. I also liked the Mickey Waffles.
The bacon was mixed in that some of the bacon was crispier and some was chewier. So it depended on which piece of bacon you got if you like it. On the plus side, if your family is torn on how they like the bacon, there would be enough variety to please everyone!
The item that was universally disliked was the celebration pancakes. They were a huge disappointment. Which was disappointing since they were actually what I was looking most forward to. I love pancakes and I loved the idea of special celebration pancakes. And when I saw pictures online they looked like full-sized pancakes with lots of sprinkles and whipped.
But instead, they were small pancakes with very little sprinkles. The pancakes themselves tasted like microwave pancakes that hadn’t been cooked properly. They were really hard in certain parts and hard to chew. And even the whipped cream was disappointing, which I didn’t even think was possible.
Luckily, the menu lists seasonal pancakes. Which means you will (hopefully) get different pancakes.
Character Interactions
You get character interactions with five classic Disney characters: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. They make their way around the restaurant so you have a chance to interact with each one during your meal. You can get their signature and get photos with them or just of them – whatever you would like.
Overall our interactions with them were quite positive, especially Pluto who was very sweet. They can be interactive without being intrusive.
However, the one negative here with the character interaction is that there weren’t that many of them. When we went to Minnie’s Holiday Dine a couple of months ago, we got the characters almost immediately. But here, we got a few interactions and then waited a long time until we saw any of other characters. And for all, we thought Donald Duck was never going to make his way to our table.
But on the plus side, our server came over and asked us towards the end of the meal if there was any character who hadn’t made their way over to us. When we told them Donald, she passed that along and soon enough, Donald Duck was at our table. So we did get interactions with all of them.
However, I will say that from my experience with character dining, how much interaction you get varies from visit to visit. In my experience, you get the best interaction with characters when you book off-peak times. Less people are there, so that means when the characters are going from table to table, it will just take less time. And then they’ll make their way back to you quicker. So if the character interactions are what you want most out of this experience, book this at a less popular time.
One way to see which times are not as popular is when you are looking for dates for reservations, if there are times that are available for multiple dates, that is probably not a super popular time.
By the way, booking at a less popular time is one of our top character dining tips.
But back to Chef Mickey’s. One fun thing that happened at the meal was that at various points, the characters danced for us.
Mickey may have been the best. He even moonwalked for us and hit some Michael Jackson moves. But Donald Duck cracked me up the most. That seemed fitting for both characters, don’t you think?
Birthday Cupcake
One nice, unexpected thing happened towards the end of our meal. So you know how I mentioned that it was my sister’s birthday? Well, when I checked into the restaurant I indicated we were there celebrating a birthday. I wasn’t sure if they’d do anything for it.
But then they brought out a free cupcake for her!
I thought this was a really nice, special touch. It’s special touches like this that can elevate an experience to one you’ll look back on fondly.
Conclusion
Chef Mickey’s was a restaurant my family always wanted to go to. Visiting there was a bit of a mixed bag.
Plusses:
- Some of the food was delicious
- Got to interact with five classic characters (Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto & Goofy)
- Fun atmosphere
- Characters would dance from time to time which added to the fun
- Great location
- Great extra perks like bringing out a free birthday cupcake unexpectantly
Negatives:
- Some of the food wasn’t as good
- They rushed us a bit
- Didn’t get that much interaction with the characters
- It’s really expensive
As you can see, there really are more positives than negatives. The price alone might be enough to dissuade you. But if you’ve always wanted to go, I think you will really enjoy it.
Visiting Chef Mickey’s
Now as I said, I was staying at Bay Lake Tower. Staying at Bay Lake Tower and the main Contemporary Resort are the most convenient for eating there. You can find out how to save money at Bay Lake Tower here and how to save money at Contemporary here.
You can also easily get to Chef Mickey’s via the monorail from Polynesian (find out how to save money there here) and Grand Floridian (find out how to save money there here).
And you can easily get to the restaurant via monorail from Magic Kingdom or the ticket and transportation center.
You can also walk from the Magic Kingdom.
If you are planning on staying somewhere else on Disney property, you can click here to find out how to get a cheap rate for a deluxe Disney hotel.
And you can click here to find out how to get cheap Disney World tickets.
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