We finally got to try Garden Grill on our 2019 Walt Disney World trip. I was so excited to score a pre-park-opening breakfast reservation, and I’d heard such great things about this restaurant.
Garden Grill is a restaurant in The Land pavilion in EPCOT’s Future World. Chip ‘n’ Dale’s Harvest Feast is usually available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I believe in the phased reopening they are only serving lunch and dinner. It’s an all-you-can-eat meal, but it’s served family-style instead of on a buffet.
It’s also a character meal! The characters here are usually Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale—and it’s one of the only meals you can meet Chip and Dale! And Mickey is dressed in his farmer best for this meal, which is just so cute!
And did you know that this restaurant rotates?? You get a great view of the Living with the Land attraction while you’re eating, especially if you’re sitting at one of the semi-circle booths on the outside ring of tables. It’s very cool!
We loved the food!
Like I said above, the food here is all-you-can-eat, but it’s served family-style instead of on a buffet. This eliminates the stress of some other character meals where you don’t want to go up to the buffet because you’re afraid of missing a character. For breakfast, you get a massive share-able cinnamon roll, scrambled eggs, Mickey waffles, bacon, sausage, tater tots, and fruit. They also bring a variety of condiments, including ketchup and a delicious chocolate hazelnut sauce. You can see the menus for lunch and dinner on the Disney World website here. It also includes your choice of drink. Korey and I both ordered coffee, and Liam got chocolate milk.
This was plenty of food for the three of us. We didn’t have a chance to ask for more of anything (more on that below), but you have that option if you want to! We love to fill up on a big breakfast when we’re in Disney World—it gives us lots of energy for a full park day! Plus, breakfast for a meal like this (especially one with characters) is always going to be the cheaper option. Luckily, we love breakfast food!
We loved the characters!
My boys—yes, Liam AND Korey—love Chip and Dale, so we were very excited going into this meal. And we were not disappointed!
The character interactions at Garden Grill were top notch. Chip and Dale are always so much fun to meet, and I just couldn’t get over how cute Mickey is in his farmer outfit! Because there are only four characters going around and because the restaurant is circular, they do a great job of making sure every character visits every table. We were able to meet every character in pretty quick succession, and the character interactions themselves were really fun.
Liam absolutely loved it! When we first started going to Disney World, I had this impression that it was going to be all princesses, but that’s not the case at all! This is a great non-princess character meal option in EPCOT. And—whenever characters start signing autographs again—it’s great to be able to get signatures from four characters at one meal. Then you don’t have to spend time waiting in line for these characters later in the day!
We didn’t love feeling rushed.
Unfortunately, the end of our meal felt very rushed. I’m not sure if it’s because they try to get each table done before the restaurant makes one full rotation (that’s kind of what it felt like). But we were never asked if we wanted more of anything, even though it’s an all-you-can-eat meal. And I was really bummed that I didn’t even get one refill on my coffee. Because of all the time we spent meeting and interacting with the characters, we were still eating when we got our check. It just felt like they were trying to turn over tables really quickly, even though it didn’t feel very busy inside the restaurant.
Bonus: We could have easily rope-dropped Soarin’ if we’d wanted to!
We left the restaurant just around park opening, and there was a huge flood of people running to Soarin’, which was a little crazy and stressful to be honest. We thought about jumping in line, but Liam got a little nervous about the ride at the last minute, so we ultimately decided against it.
Overall, we would definitely eat here again and hopefully we would feel like we could take our time more! We often recommend it to other families for its uniqueness in characters and menu, and its affordability. In early 2020, Chip & Dale’s Harvest Feast breakfast was $42/adult and $27/child. This is the same price as breakfast at The Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom, but compared to Chef Mickey’s, Cinderella’s Royal Table, or Akershus, Garden Grill is much cheaper.
Have you eaten at Garden Grill before? Would you like to? Let me know in the comments below!
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