Crystal Palace Experience / Speed

[MrHappy]

Quick question, I appreciate your feedback. My family (traveling with 7, including 2 young kids) have a 2:05 ADR at Crystal Palace the last day of our trip. After lunch, we'd walk back to our rental car parked at BLT, I'd like to make it to the car by around 3:20 to give enough time to gas up and make our flight.

How do you see this playing out? Will I be seated at 2:05? Will lunch go to ~3?

Thanks for your help!

 

[jrogue]

I'd say your only way of assuring you are seated around your reservation time will be to make sure you arrive extra early. Sometimes you are seated on time, sometimes no, so if you get there around 1:30 you're probably safe. If you show up at 2 for the reservation you might not get seated until closer to 2:30.

 

[Hakunamatata]

For a minute I thought Crystal Palace had started selling illegal substances.

 

[NeedMoreMickey]

I think to walk from Crystal Palace to BLT could take at lease 15 minutes with little ones so that means you need to leave by 3:05. If you are 10 minutes late getting your table which happens at CP you have a little under an hour to eat and see all the characters. We've eaten there a few times and I don't ever remember getting seated at our reservation time. I would be checking the time every 10 minutes and would not enjoy my lunch worrying about leaving in time to catch the flight.

 

[CAPTAIN HOOK]

I'm afraid you're cutting it too fine. Crystal Palace is extremely popular and you're banking on being seated on time, which in turn is reliant on the earlier diners vacating their table promptly. Getting there early does not guarantee an earlier seating.
On the other side of the coin is your walk back to BLT and a journey of about 15 minutes.
Stuck right in the middle is a rushed meal, with an eye on the clock and your mind on the journey to the airport. Staff will not rush just to attend to you with drinks, and the bill - there's a restaurant full of people.

My advice - try for a different reservation time or skip it completely

 

[Swissmiss]

I would think the walk is even longer than 15 minutes; I'm a fairly fast walker when I am on my own but add getting through crowds and having young kids (which means either pushing a stroller through crowds or encouraging the kids to keep up) and I don't see how you'd be able to make it so quickly. Also, when we ate at the Crystal Palace the characters had just cycled through the side where we were seated so we had to wait a fair amount of time before they were back on that side.

Wish I could remember the name of our waiter to give him a shout out - funny, friendly gentleman in his sixties - oddly enough we had several named Bob/Rob on that trip (I think in at least three restaurants!) but I can't remember if Crystal Palace was one of them.

 

[MrHappy]

Thanks everyone, I'll try to reschedule for an earlier slot if possible. Otherwise I'll cut this one loose....no need to rush