The Crystal Palace — Restaurant in Bay Lake

When I go to character dinners at the Walt Disney world resort, I don’t expect high quality food despite the over inflated prices. However I do expect to actually see the characters within a reasonable amount of time. Over the span of 80 minutes I had character time with two out of the four characters and was told I would have to just wait until whenever the characters were available. Characters would dance around the room but would never actually make it to my table either due to parades around the restaurant or breaks. Due to this you start to feel hostage to your table where if you leave your table to get food there is a chance you could miss all characters since they are not spread out at all and have to restart you entire waiting. I witnessed children unable to get photos with characters because their parents had left to get some food for themselves. Despite telling staff members about this error, they simply shrugged it off as if it wasn’t important for a child to get the photos and experience their parents had so overpaid for. Management is atrocious here. Leezel and Disney have created a toxic work environment where servers do not interact with each other and do not work together. At all other restaurants on property, if I was unable to locate my server another server would either get what I needed or send over my server. If I had missed a character, the cast member would gladly bring the character over within a reasonable time. However due to this toxic culture of the crystal palace that doesn’t occur here. Disney has had to update the reservation for this place to state that 90 minutes at minimum are required to see all four characters due to these deficiencies in management. At a park where time is money and I’m already over paying for access to said characters I would advise against spending your money here. There are plenty of other character dining meals that are efficiently managed. Yet due to the size of the crystal palace and poor management it is simply not a good use of your time and money to have any meal here regardless of how cute the Winnie Pooh...

I'm usually a positive, 5 Star leaving reviewer, but this was the worst buffet I've ever experienced. We came here twice during our stay years ago. Brought the family here our first night this trip.. we cancelled our other sit-down reservations based on what we had here vs the price. Disney can only crank the profit dial up so far before people start to revolt. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind paying, for someone decent, but there was nothing here that would justify $300 for 2 adults 3 kids. Everything on the buffet was obviously as cheaply mass produced as possible to the point being inedible. Very small selection. They have lots of space, but each end of the buffet mirrored the other end, so 1/2 the selection they could have, and each dish is sitting twice the amount of time. They had some kind of boiled fish that was so stretchy I couldn't cut it with my fork, couldn't finish it, tasted like nothing. Another dish with peppers and sausages, the sausages should have been grilled first, instead I think the whole pan was just put in the oven, sausages were chewy, didn't finish the small helping I took. The broccoli was very disappointing, it appeared to be dehydrated in a convection oven with hard dried out cheese singed into the top. I was the first to cut into fresh pan, I almost gave up trying to hatchet through the cheese with the provided spoon. Also couldn't finish my helping of that.. so that's everything I should have liked.. The other main dish was a breaded chicken breast.. it looked ok, but we had chicken strips for lunch, and snack already. And back to my point, more cheap food at the most expensive buffet I've ever been to. We had to book it out of there for a ride we had scheduled... Another sore subject.. I think the manager should go check out Golden Corral, I haven't been there in ten years, but at least back then, their food blew this stuff out...

We’ve been to the Crystal Palace many times over the years. The food has never been fantastic especially when compared to the prices BUT we felt it was worth it because we got to eat while meeting characters without having to stand in line. In the past, we’ve been able to meet all of the characters at least twice while dining. Not this time. We brought our son to Disney for the first time this week to celebrate his first birthday and all of our other experiences this week have been AMAZING (shoutout to Seth in guest relations on Main Street!) Except for the Crystal Palace….

My son has food allergies to dairy and egg. Every other restaurant has been SUPER accommodating to his allergies. Even quick service restaurants, we’ve met with the chef and they’ve made him fresh food for his allergies. At the Crystal Palace, you’re given a menu of what you can get from the buffet with a disclaimer that food could have cross contamination. I just expected more for $70+ a person. There was a list of food that would come directly from the kitchen on the back but it was mostly desserts. We ordered him allergy friendly cookies for his dessert and it was just a package of cookies. It also took forever for us to get them.

My biggest complain though was the characters. First, we found out that Pooh doesn’t even come to the tables anymore. You have to stand in line and meet him at the front of the restaurant. Second, we were at the restaurant for right at an hour and none of the characters had even made it to our side of the restaurant much less our table. We had to leave before meeting any characters because my one year old just couldn’t wait anymore. So we paid over $100 just for overpriced food.

We probably won’t go back to the Crystal Palace after...