Garden Grove — Restaurant in Bay Lake

Not a bad place for breakfast if you're staying at the Swan and possibly the cheapest character breakfast you'll find anywhere in Disney. It also has the attribute, for adults at least, of being a character breakfast that doesn't scream character breakfast - it's low key, only a couple of characters come around (we saw Goofy and Pluto while we were there), so if you want to eat in peace, you can manage it here. The center of the room is dominated by a large artificial oak that's so well done, you have to look closely to see it's not real. It gives you a little bit of a feeling of eating in the woods, which is nice. While they do have ala carte selections, nearly everyone takes the buffet, which is what my wife and I did. The buffet is pretty standard fare - scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, grits (it is the south, after all), etc. Also is a pretty decent selection of baked goods - blueberry muffins and the like. In addition to all the pre-prepared food, there are also 2 custom stations where they do omelets, fried eggs, etc. The only disappointments here for me were the scrambled eggs and the bacon. The eggs were over-cooked and had water puddling in the bottom and the bacon was pretty greasy. Neither is that unusual for a buffet, but their sister buffet, over a the Dolphin the Fresh Mediterranean restaurant doesn't have these problems and has, I think, a better selection overall. It is $2 more expensive over there and doesn't have character though. So, again, if you're staying at the Swan and/or you just have to have characters with your breakfast, this is a decent bet...but the breakfast is better...

My wife and I visited this restaurant on the last day of our trip to the Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan. We had originally planned on attempting to go on a weekend since the breakfast buffet features characters but we ended up going on a Monday morning around 10:30am. The restaurant was not busy at all. In fact, I would say there were no more than ten tables of Guests at that time of day. The atmosphere inside has all the tables circling a large tree with flickering lanterns in the middle of the room while the buffet was in a small area on the outer wall. As for the selections available I must say that it was lacking compared to what other buffets have offered in hotels such as Hampton Inn and the like. We were surprised when our server told us that if we wanted toast we had to ask her for it and she would go and get it, unlike most other buffets I have ever been to where bread is readily available. Even the Mickey shaped waffles that are standard at all Disney buffets were not on the buffet itself and had to be asked for. However, despite the limitations on offerings the food itself was very good and I could not have been happier with the omelet station and the taste of the food I had. The only other negative I would say is that there were a group of kids from one family who kept running around the restaurant playing hide-and-seek and otherwise causing commotion, even so much as almost running into one woman carrying a plate of food. The servers and other staff did not say anything to the parents (who were just sitting at their table oblivious to their kids) in an attempt to get the youngsters...

I had dinner at the Garden Grove restaurant. TL;DR it's a CHARACTER dinner so make sure you are going for the characters not the dinner. I went with the intention of taking my wife to a nicer dinner and noticed they had lobster here so I thought it would be comparable to the Cape May Cafe across the lake. I could not have been more mistaken. I noticed this was a character dinner and didn't think much at the time however while eating here it became apparent the food was obviously not the main appeal. The lobster seemed like it had been fully prepared, then frozen, then steamed again for dinner. Most if not all was either undercooked or rubber and the bit that was stuffed was dripping wet and messy. The crab legs were better but they were still about what I would expect from a much cheaper Asian style buffet. The roast was carved far too thick and was this very difficult to cut against the grain making it very chewy or very labor instensive. The desserts we're also on par with what I would expect to come out of a much cheaper restaurant. Most tasted as though they had been prepared, frozen, and then thawed back out. They were all incredibly dry except the mousse which is basically impossible to serve dry as it is primarily liquid. The only thing that I actually enjoyed eating was the fried basket and that's mainly because I wasn't expecting much it to be anything out of the ordinary. The characters were enjoyable and fun to interact with however that wasn't as big of a deal to me as it wasn't why I went. In hindsight I should have realized if the characters are there they are the...