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The Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida is a wonderful place to visit during the holiday season. There are a lot of great festivities going on throughout the resort. The International Festival of the Holidays is taking place at EPCOT. You can go to Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom. There are amazing decorations throughout Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. There’s a Christmas tree trail at Disney Springs.
But one thing I like about Christmas is the food. It’s really nice to sit down and have a wonderful meal with your family in a holiday atmosphere.
So you might be wondering if there is anything like that at Walt Disney World during the holiday season. And the answer is yes. And that is Minnie’s Holiday Dine.
Minnie’s Holiday Dine
Minnie’s Holiday Dine takes place at Hollywood and Vine. This is one of the restaurants at Hollywood Studios.
This year, Minnie’s Holiday Dine takes place between November 6, 2024 ,and January 4, 2025. During this time, at Hollywood and Vine for breakfast, you can enjoy a Disney Junior Play n’ Dine Buffet Breakfast. But for lunch and dinner, it’s a buffet called Minnie’s Holiday Dine.
My family decided we wanted to try this experience for the first time a couple of years ago. We were so pleased with our experience we made it a yearly tradition!
So I am glad we didn’t let our initial hesitations about trying this experience stop us when we first talked about trying Minnie’s Holiday Dine. 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 2024, it’s $63 for adults and $40 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 foods 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 noon the next day!
The next day, we were pleased when we walked in and saw all the great holiday decorations. Hollywood and Vine has a 1950s diner-type theme (which makes it fit in well with its neighbor, 50’s Prime Time Café). 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 (though the picture could be different this year). At any rate, 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.
We were given a great commemorative card with Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, and Goofy’s signatures.
That’s a nice touch we can always save from the experience.
But that’s not the only interaction you have with the Disney characters. Minnie’s Holiday Dine is a character buffet, so that means you get interactions with popular Disney characters!
There were four Disney characters there when we were there. How it works is that the four characters divide up two by two. Two will greet guests in one half of the restaurant while the other two will greet guests in the other half of the restaurant. Every twenty minutes, they rotate. So while you eat, you should be able to meet with all four characters. In fact, when we were there, we got to meet with each character more than one time.
The first two characters we got to see were two of Disney’s most iconic characters, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse! Minnie and Mickey both looked stylish in their holiday attire. By the way, for 2024, you can expect Minnie and Mickey to be in holiday attire but it might be different.
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 and Pluto had on reindeer ears!
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 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 different dessert items or maybe the salmon is prepared in a different way. But they still have a lot of the same great foods.
So to give you an idea of what you can expect at the buffet this year, here are some of the dishes they’ve had in the past:
- Seared Salmon with Beurre Blanc
- Oven-Roasted Herbed Chicken
- Roasted Pork with Spicy Mustard Sauce
- Beef Stew with Root Vegetables
- Macaroni & Cheese with Shrimp & Bacon
- Meatballs with Barbecue Sauce & Pineapple
- Penne Pasta & Marinara
- Roast Beef with Horseradish Cream
- Peel-n-Eat Shrimp
- Baked Chicken
- Chicken Nuggets
- Green Beans
- Olive Oil-Roasted Potatoes
- White Rice
- Potato Barrels
- Oven-Roasted Seasonal Vegetables
- Spring Peas and Pearl Onions
- Sour Cream and Chive Whipped Potato
- Couscous Salad with Cilantro-Lime
- Broccoli & Carrots
- Crispy Tofu with Asian Glaze
- Roasted Mushroom Farro Risotto
- Caramelized Brussel Sprouts
- Spitzweck Rolls
- Herbed Focaccia
- Mini Pita Bread
- Kid’s Macaroni & Cheese
They’ve also had a salad bar with multiple dressing options like Balsamic, Caesar, Ranch, etc. and a lot of great toppings like onions, Romaine lettuce, olives, Feta cheese, Parmesan cheese, etc.
Plus a lot of fruits.
They’ve had watermelon, pineapples, grapes, melons, etc.
Desserts
Some of the season desserts they’ve had before include:
- Mississippi Mud (My family’s favorite!)
- Carrot Cake Cupcake with Cream Cheese Icing
- Apple Crisp
- Seasonal Bread Pudding
- Ice Cream
- Candy Magic Bar
- Peanut Butter and Jelly Tart
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.