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A few years ago, my family decided to try Minnie’s Holiday Dine at Hollywood and Vine. This is one of the restaurants at Hollywood Studios. They have different seasonal character dining experiences, and since my family loves Christmas so much we wanted to try Minnie’s Holiday Dine.
Well, fast forward to now, and we’ve made it a yearly tradition. Not only that, but we’ve enjoyed the springtime, summer, and Halloween character dining experiences at Hollywood and Vine. We love the food, atmosphere, and just about everything about it.
But today, I specifically want to talk about Minnie’s Holiday Dine. And I specificallly want to talk about our experience in 2025. Did it live up to all my positive memories of past years? Do I still recommend your family try it?
Keep reading to find out! In this blog entry, we’ll cover
- Our Initial Hesitations
- Reservation Process
- The Atmosphere of the Experience
- The Character Experiences
- The Food
- A Food Review
- Our Recommendation of Whether or Not You Should Attend
Our Initial Hesitations
But before I tell you about this year’s version, let me tell you about my family’s initial hesitation. Because it is possible you have the same hesitation.
The thing is, we just weren’t sure Minnie’s Holiday Dine was worth the price.
Because when we looked at the menu online, we weren’t sure there were enough foods to justify the cost of the experience. Because this is not exactly a cheap experience. In 2025, it’s $64 for adults and $44 for children ages three years old to nine years old (plus tax and gratuities).
But here’s the thing. The menu online is just a “Partial Listing”. So before we visited, we walked by the restaurant and asked the hostess outside about the food available. We liked a lot of the foods she said, so we felt confident we would enjoy the meal. We were so confident went ahead and booked a reservation for the next day!
Reservations
Because this is the kind of dining experience I think you should get an advanced dining reservation for. You can do this is on the My Disney Experience app. I would recommend getting in advance, though usually there are times available if you do it the day before (but no promises there!).
On the day of, you can show up and check in and wait outside the restaurant. There is plenty of seating and it is covered (which came in handy one year when it was raining).
Atmosphere
Hollywood and Vine has a 1950s diner-type theme (which makes it fit in well with its neighbor, 50’s Prime Time Café). They also have some Christmas decorations up for the event. It all looked great.
There’s also a great photo opportunity right when you walk into the restaurant. This has always been the case every year my family has attended. It’s a great photo opportunity.
We were told we could come back there at any time during our meal to get a great holiday family photo.
Character Interactions
But that’s not the only great photo available during the dining experience. Minnie’s Holiday Dine is a character buffet, so that means you get interactions with popular Disney characters!
There are four Disney characters that appear at this experience: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, and Pluto. They make their rotations throughout the restaurants. It takes about twenty minutes. So you should be able to see each character.
I have had varying success with characters each time I have attended this dining experience. But I have always gotten to interact with each character. In general, I have found that if you visit on busier times (such as 12:30 PM), the restaurant is more crowded and it takes the characters longer to get to everyone. So you’ll see the characters less. If you get an off-peak time, like say 2:30 for a late lunch, you’re more likely to have more character interactions.
The other tip I would give you for character interactions is that the server will generally tell you where the characters are coming from (if they don’t, ask). Make sure you go to the buffet line at times when the characters aren’t say a table away from visiting your table. Because if you’re at the buffet line, the character will just skip your table. They will not wait for you. And if you are really scared of missing the characters, you can always pile your plate very high so you won’t have to keep getting up!
The interactions with the characters honestly depend from meal to meal. Sometimes say Mickey Mouse might be the most playful, sometimes it’s Goofy, etc. It really just depends.
Since this is a character-themed experience, the characters appear in their holiday attire. You can see Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse pictured below.
I especially loved Minnie’s beautiful red dress.
The other two characters were Goofy and Pluto. Not to be outdone, Goofy was dressed as Santa!
Pluto was adorable, too.
I would have enjoyed the meal without the characters, but it certainly added to my enjoyment.
Minnie’s Holiday Dine Food
When we weren’t interacting with characters, we could go back to the buffet line. And we went more than once.
Here’s a tip: make sure you go there hungry. This is something we have learned through the years of this experience. Because there’s a lot of great food here you won’t want to miss out on.
There’s also a great variety for different diets. There’s a lot of Plant-based and Allergy-Friendly options, too.
We like doing this experience for lunch and when we do, we make sure to eat very little for breakfast. We want to show up incredibly hungry.
Main & Side Dishes
Our experience from going to Minnie’s Holiday Dine more than one year in a row is that the menu changes a little each time. But some of the menu items stay the same.
And by the way, if you have ever done any of the other seasonal events at Hollywood and Dine (such as Minnie’s Halloween Dine or Minnie’s Springtime Dine), you can expect a lot of the same foods. There might be a couple of new dishes or maybe the salmon is prepared in a different way. Since it is a seasonal event, the time of year can affect the menu. But they still have a lot of the same great foods.
They have a carving station where you can get Turkey on one side and Grilled Flank Steak (there is Chimichurri Sauce on the side).
Here are some of the other dishes they have:
- Sweet Chili Aioli Salmon
- Chermoula-spiced Fried Chicken
- Macaroni & Cheese with Shrimp & Bacon
- Meatballs with Barbecue Sauce & Pineapple
- Allergy-Friendly Penne Pasta with Marinara
- Peel-n-Eat Shrimp
- Baked Chicken
- Chicken Breast Nuggets
- Pizza
- Shepherd’s Pie (Contains Beef)
- Sautéed Garlic Green Beans
- Sweet Potatoes and Marshmallow
- Mexican Street Corn
- Cheesy Cauliflower
- Fried Rice
- Potato Barrels
- Whipped Sour Cream and Chive Potatoes
- Jalapeño Cheddar Cornbread and Spicy Rice
- Crispy Tofu with Asian Glaze
- White Rice
- Cornbread Stuffing (Contains Alcohol)
- Roasted Mushroom Farro Risotto
- Caramelized Brussels Sprouts
- Pasta Salad
- Roasted Beet Salad
- Potato Salad
- Panzanella Salad
They’ve also had a salad bar with multiple dressing options like Balsamic, Caesar, Ranch, etc. and a lot of great toppings like red onions, diced cucumbers, shredded carrots, mixed olives, chickpeas, shredded Cheddar, etc. Plus a lot of fruits, like Chili-Lime watermelon with Cojita, melons, etc.
Desserts
Some of the desserts they have this year include:
- Hot Chocolate Tart
- Seasonal Bread Pudding
- Apple Cobbler
- Pumpkin Cheesecake Bar
- Gingerbread Cake with Raspberry Cream
- Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Ice Cream
And by the way, if you are visiting on a special day like a birthday, make sure you indicate that when you check in to your reservation. It was my birthday, and I got a great cupcake!
Food Review
I was excited to see a lot of my favorites back. Two of my absolute favorites are Macaroni & Cheese with Shrimp & Bacon and Whipped Sour Cream and Chive Potatoes. They are absolutely and it’s practically worth the price of admission just for those items. I always get more than one serving of this.
Salmon was another favorite of ours in the past, but it used to be Seared Salmon with Beurre Blanc. This year, it was Sweet Chili Aioli Salmon, and we did not care for that as much. Depending on your tastes, that could make it more appealing to you, but we were disappointed.
Speaking of disappointment, I was also disappointed to see my favorite dessert gone, the Mississippi Mud. Luckily, there were lots of other great desserts here, such as the delicious Pumpkin Cheesecake Bar and the Seasonal Bread Pudding. We were more mixed on the chocolate chip cookies (a few were hard, but the ones that weren’t were delicious). The Hot Chocolate Tart was also a bit hard, and I did not care for the Raspberry Cream on the Gingerbread Cake.
But as for some non-desserts we liked, we liked the Cheesy Cauliflower, Shepherd’s Pie, and the Flank Steak.
And this year marked a new favorite of mine, and that is the Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows. It reminded me of the casserole my grandmother used to make for when I was a little girl at the holidays. I am glad they added that to the menu and I hope they keep it!
Conclusion
Minnie’s Holiday Dine is an amazing experience where you can get wonderful Christmas photo opportunities with four of Disney’s most iconic characters: Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy. It also has a huge selection of food so you can easily find food you love. So given all that you get, and how expensive all food and drink options have gotten, Minnie’s Holiday Dine is definitely worth the price. So I would definitely recommend this experience for your family. My family absolutely loved our time at Minnie’s Holiday Dine, and we suspect your family would love it, too. So if you are planning a trip this holiday season to Disney World, we highly recommend going to Minnie’s Holiday Dine!
Additionally, if you are planning a trip to Disney World this holiday season and you haven’t booked your vacation yet, read this hack for getting a Disney World hotel for a fraction of the price. Also, you can get discounted Disney World tickets here.
And if you want other great holiday experiences in Orlando, then check out our SeaWorld Christmas Guide and our Universal Christmas Guide.
