Disqualified from Mother of the Year: A WDW Vacation That Lacks Character(s)!

[GoofGoof]

We just got back with a 2 and 5 year old. We did Chef Mickey one morning for breakfast. They loved it and met Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto and Donald in less than an hour. The buffet without the characters would be overpriced, but the characters make it well worth it in my opinion. We probably saved ourselves half a day of waiting in lines for meet and greets. Also, if your youngest can't go on a ride like Splash or Space Mt there are usually characters around they can meet while they are waiting for big brother/sister. My youngest met woody and Jessie waiting for us to get off Splash Mt.

 

[RedBaron]

To the original poster, I am right there with you. I will also not be receiving the Mother of the Year award. When we went 2 years ago (kids ages 3 and 5 at the time), we also did not do any character dining since I refuse to pay upwards of $100 or more for a character breakfast. It's just not going to happen. When we were walking around the parks if there was a character that my kids were interested in seeing that had a short line (less than 10 people deep), we took a picture, if not we just continued along our merry way. If I ever do find Mickey in any of the parks, that might be the only exception where I would be willing to wait in a line for a photo. If my kids were fussing and crying about not stopping at a meet and greet that would be a whole other story, but most of the time, my kids could have cared less about the characters and were really just looking forward to the next ride.