Storytellers Cafe — Restaurant in Anaheim

Good: All-you-can-eat, nice sweets, mascots, crab cakes, friendly staff Bad: Other savory items, strange tastes, price-to-quality ratio

At the moment, this restaurant is reservation only, so make sure you plan ahead if you want to eat at this restaurant! Most of the stuff is self-serve, although there's a decent number of items like crab cakes and salmon poke that are made-to-order, too.

There were a lot of things that usually disappoint me that I actually quite liked here. The Mickey waffles were nice and crispy, with a fluffy, sweet interior, though my girlfriend told me the one she took was hollow, so if you get a disappointing one, maybe try another. The beignet bites were tasty, with assorted fruit fillings. I was also quite fond of the parfaits. For savory items I definitely recommend ordering the crab cake, they were really tasty and heavy on the crab. I like that a lot of the items were served with these miniature taster's plate portions, makes you want to order a lot of different stuff.

I was surprised at how little I liked the food items I was actually looking forward to. A lot of the food had strange tastes and flavors that were somewhat off-putting. The eggs benedict had this strange, crayon-like flavor from the hollandaise. The egg white fritatta tasted kind of off for some reason too. I was really excited for the froot loop milk, but it just tasted like soy milk. Not bad; I like soy milk, but it's a little disappointing. Scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, pancakes, and sausage were fine, exactly what you'd expect from a hotel continental breakfast. Salmon poke, salmon bagel, and chilaquiles were okay too, they won't be the best you ever had, but it's cool that you can get them at a buffet I think.

Staff were nice and I think one of the main draws of this place is that there are mascots like Mickey and Goofy and Pluto and Chip and Dale who wander around, visit every table, have non-verbal conversations with you and offer to take photos. They were all very friendly and really took time to interact with you.

Overall, I had a good experience, but I don't really think I need to come here again. There are many places around that feel like a destination, but this one feels more like a "well, while you're at Disneyland" kind of deal. At $50 a pop minimum don't feel like you're missing out on too much if you can't...

First off, resturant was a bit difficult to find since it is in the grand californian hotel.Getting there I did the mobile check in and I had selected that we were celebrating a birthday, a birthday button was not even offered to us when we got seated. The tables were extremely close together so i had to wiggle my way in to my seat trying not to hit the table behind us. Our reservation was at 12:40 which was brunch, the food was VERY limited, not much options and buffet split where you had to walk out and then in again to get to the other side. We saw characters walking around and patiently waited for them to come to our table THEY NEVER CAME. Not until I mentioned to our server if we had to request for them to come over, he gave an answer like oh well the experience is 90 minutes so they still have time to come over. We did see that he went to tell a lady about our concern so she came over and said the same thing, she said specifically that we had been there 45 mins already and asked us which characters have came over, we said NOT ONE. She said well when you see characters out try and stay at your table. This was upsetting because we were at our table the whole time. We had only got up once for food since being there. My 6yo would not eat anymore because she did not want to leave the table and miss the characters. After this the characters eventually started to come around to our table and two other times a women came in an checked on who has come to our table. We were all done eating and were just basically waiting for the characters at our table. There were two other tables around us that I noticed not once did the characters come to our section until I spoke up and said something. A table got seated after us and they got a few characters there before we even got one. This is a character dining experience and it is quite pricey, if I had not mentioned the characters to the server they might not have ever come around. This was definately not worth $50 plus dollars a person. Lastly They do not validate for the downtown disney parking lot, I found this out when i went to the parking kiosk. They only validate if you use their hotel valet as the cast member in the parking lot...

Storytellers Cafe is likely the worst place for the gummies I took an hour earlier to fully take effect into my bloodstream. I was sitting in this rustic, cabin-like ambiance fighting for my life when Donald Duck's girlfriend came to our table and started interacting with us. I wanted no part of it, so I have no idea why the words “I think you’re cute” left my lips. I didn’t want to catch the hands from Donald, so I got up and went to hit the buffet.

I weaved through the wild children roaming around, refusing to make eye contact or acknowledge any of the Disney characters.

My first plate consisted of prime rib, turkey breast, fried chicken, kale salad, vegetables, and a slice of pizza. They literally have everything in here. It was so overwhelming.

The thing about me is I always forget I don’t like prime rib until it’s on the plate sitting in front of me. It’s just so one dimensional. Prime Rib just doesn’t have the juice. No motion. There is no crust formation, no seasoning, and no soul. Just a pink center. That cow is still alive damn near. I will never understand the general public's obsession with prime rib.

Everything else was middy wap besides the kale salad and pizza, so my 2nd plate consisted of only kale salad and pizza.

As I was walking back to the table with my 2nd plate, my soul barely still in my body, some music began playing loud and all the disney characters started dancing in unison through the center of the establishment. I couldn’t help but think of the people in these costumes just trying to feed their families. Crazy job to have.

As the show ended, I looked to my left and there was Donald, staring deep into my soul. I thought I was gonna have to throw a spinning wheel kick in self defense, but I slowly walked back to my table without breaking eye contact. He didn’t want this problem and I can’t blame him.

As we got up to leave, I saw Goofy. Goofy is my GUY. That lyric “Young Walt Disney Imma tell you truthfully, If you leave Mickey you gon end up with a Goofy!” lives rent free in my head, so I had to dap him up. Goofy always catching strays. SHOUTOUT TO GOOFY!

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