I dont have experience with it yet. I have a few character dining experiences booked for our trip & now wondering if too many. Im not a fan of buffets myself, and my son is picky. I think he would love meeting the characters tho. I have Storybook Dining at Artist Point, Minnies Seasonal Dine @ H&V dinner for Fantasmic seating, Cinderallas Royal Table breakfast & Be Our Guest Dinner, and Tusker House breakfast. Thoughts on any of those?
How long is your trip? How old is your kid? Which characters are must see? When are you traveling?
It's easy to get on here and get caught up in everyone else's experiences. But, the reality of a first trip is often very different. I'm actually glad I got my "first planned trip" over with before kids were a factor, because by the time ODS was born, I knew better what we would be able to accommodate as a family.
The good news is that unless you're on the dining plan, and have prepaid for all those meals, you can cancel with a little bit of notice once you're there and see how the first one goes.
I actually prefer meeting most of the characters in the parks. Then I can put it on Memory Maker and not mess with taking pictures myself. Plus, there's a better backdrop for photos in general. Also, it's tough to get my kids to eat under perfect circumstances. Getting pulled away from their food every 10 minutes doesn't work particularly well for us, right now. Especially when that distraction means I am pulled away from my food to facilitate an interaction or take a picture.
Thinking back to our last few trips, I think we've done 1-2 character meals per trip, and it has been plenty. The lines for characters in the parks have been negligible for the most part. 3 TS meals is our max for our entire trip now, because scheduling more than that gets complicated. Last trip, we did 1900 Park Fare dinner and Trattoria al Forno breakfast plus Big River Grill for dinner.
That said, the only in park character meals we haven't done are Crystal Palace (no huge Pooh fans...) and Akershus (too many dining options in Epcot, and my husband HAS to get Fish & Chips every time we're there, so he has pushed back every time I've scheduled ANY Epcot TS meal). The resort meals are more difficult to access/plan, and the two resort meals we did our last trip were fine, but my kids weren't into them enough. I thought they were wonderful choices, but DD was particularly prickly. I wish I would have dropped at least one of them, but I got too attached.
Before DD grew into her opinions and it was mostly ODS to worry about, the character meals went much better. He's always been a more "go with the flow" type of child.
So, anyway, I answered "other" to the poll, because there are a lot more factors to consider.