Play and Dine at Hollywood and Vine Character Meal Experience

Hollywood and Vine is one of the table service restaurants at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. For breakfast and lunch, you can enjoy a fun character meal with Disney, Jr. friends. This meal was a priority for us this past Disney trip, because Natalie thoroughly enjoys her Disney Jr. time in the morning before going to the sitter, or really any time of day because she watches it on my iPad, too. Today I want to share with you our Play and Dine at Hollywood and Vine Character Meal Experience. Hopefully you’ll glean some tips from this experience for your next Walt Disney World trip.

First, we scheduled a pre-rope drop dining reservation. This means that we arrived at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for our breakfast before the park even opened. I LOVE pre-rope drop reservations. They allow for photo opportunities in a near empty theme park. Also, with an early reservation {ours was at 8 am when the park opened at 9}, this gave us plenty of time to eat and be in the park at opening. By doing so, we were able to dash out of there around 9 am, get Fastpasses for Toy Story Midway Mania, AND sign the boys up for the Jedi Training Academy. These two attractions fill up very quickly at the opening of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. But, with our early breakfast reservation, we made it to sign up and get on with our day!

We checked in with the CastMember, and only had to wait a little bit for our table to be ready. As we walked in, some characters were roaming around, greeting guests. We saw Handy Manny, June from Little Einsteins, and Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. The whole ambiance of the Play and Dine experience is very fun and kid friendly. Bright colors, fun music, and easy to enjoy food made it awesome.

We visited the buffet, and it had a great selection of food that everyone in our family enjoyed. Mickey Waffles, fruits, bagels, sausage, eggs, cereal. You name it and it was there! It was so good, too. To keep the kids entertained while we were eating and waiting for characters, some cast members would sing songs, and invite the kids out of their seats to sing and dance along. Of course, Natalie sang along but wouldn’t get up and dance :).

Special Agent Oso, Jake from Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and Handy Manny made their way around for autographs and photos. I always love seeing Natalie’s face when she is nose to nose with the characters she loves and watches on TV. One thing I really appreciated about the Play and Dine at Hollywood and Vine breakfast experience is how sweet the characters are toward the little ones. The place is FULL of the younger preschool set-even younger in some cases-and the characters are so cute and gentle toward them. One thing I would suggest is to call ahead, or ask your travel agent, to confirm who is going to be at the meal as far as characters. This is one experience where the characters are very subject to change, based on what is popular on Disney, Jr. at the time. It’s nice that they change the characters up, but at the same time it’s a good idea to prepare your child so they aren’t disappointed.