Crystal Palace is a character dining buffet in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Joined by Winnie the Pooh and his friends, guests dine in a beautiful Victorian-style building on the corner of Main Street. The Crystal Palace serves breakfast, lunch and dinner while offering a 10% discount to Disney Visa cardholders and Annual Passholders. The restaurant is a part of the Disney Dining Plan as a table-service credit. In this post, we’ll review lunch and dinner at Crystal Palace including the atmosphere, cuisine and value.

I’ve knocked the Magic Kingdom restaurant options quite a bit over the years but dining inside one of Disney World’s most beautiful buildings while Eeyore roams around isn’t a hard sell. The park only has one other character dining option, Cinderella’s Royal Table, and that spot is over $20 more per meal and isn’t buffet style. Crystal Palace definitely fills a void.

Along with character dining demand, the restaurant sits in a prime spot. Resting between the end of Main Street and beginning of Adventureland draws a lot of foot traffic. That location also makes the beautiful greenhouse-inspired building more of a draw. The Victorian design fits in elegantly with the rest of Main Street and the domed ceilings give a hint of the Arabic design to come in Adventureland. It’s a great bit of Imagineering and thematic design.

While waiting to be seated, guests can relax on the restaurant’s porch and look out at the castle. There are certainly worse spots to wait!

Once inside, Crystal Palace has beautiful natural lighting from all of the windows around. The restaurant (thankfully) isn’t open air dining but it has that feeling, with high ceilings and lots of space. I can’t say I’ve dined inside a greenhouse (inspired building) before but if they’re all like this then count me in! Sadly, I don’t think most have the air-conditioning that Crystal Palace has.

Despite this being a character dining buffet, I found the setting to be romantic. Your mileage may vary on that, depending on how you feel about Victorian style design. The green chairs and maroon booths pop against the off-white walls and mint ceiling. Flowers are around the whole restaurant, including a few photos of them in the front that seem almost like guides for dining here. Honestly, I’d like to see them go even deeper into the flower theme!

Of course, there’s the character element of Crystal Palace too. That’s likely the reason most people book the restaurant, not because of how beautiful it is. Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore all roam around the restaurant while Winnie the Pooh meets guests in the center of Crystal Palace after you’re done eating. If you can sneak him some honey packs, it would make his day.

There’s a loosely connected backstory called the ‘Friendship Day Celebration’ with the Winnie the Pooh characters. Frankly, it’s not all that important and a little half-baked but the restaurant does a nice job overall with connecting the beloved characters to other parts of the meal. While all character interactions are dependent on the situation, we thought Eeyore, Tigger and Piglet were very fun to talk to when they came up to the table. Winnie the Pooh had a little less time to talk but was still personal in his interaction.

Moving to the food, here’s a look at the lunch and dinner menu. This doesn’t tell the full story, as more is offered than what is listed. The offerings lean southern, with a touch of Cajun and seafood thrown in.

Disney World buffets wildly vary in quality. At some, you’re just hoping for the food to be passable. Others are surprisingly good. I’d say that Crystal Palace falls somewhere in the middle. The food is certainly better than passable, as nothing we ate was downright bad. The lack of standout dishes is what holds the restaurant back though.

I was pleased to see some interesting options throughout the meal. Fried chicken in a black pepper gravy is one of the specialty offerings and I thought that was tasty and very filling. I was surprised that the chicken wasn’t overly soggy and the gravy’s flavor was good.

The usual sides and starters were offered at Crystal Palace. Buffets are nice places to get your fill of veggies at Disney World. Not that I actually do that, I’m just saying they’re a good spot to try if so inclined! As usual, the mashed potatoes were a delicious and buttery side at this buffet. Collard greens with smoked ham hocks were also offered and a nice addition to the usual, somewhat bland, row of sides.

In a big surprise, the shrimp and grits at Crystal Palace was our favorite option. The grits were really cheesy and full of flavor. Shrimp is generally pretty good at WDW and these were no exception, seasoned in a Creole sauce. I wouldn’t call myself a shrimp and grits connoisseur but I’ve had my fair share and these were much better than I expected. Crystal Palace also has a carving station and I thought both options there were strong.

Desserts were more of a mixed bag. They were exceptionally cute because they all matched different characters. But I didn’t think any of them were fantastic. On the flip side, none of them were bad. My favorite was probably the Honey Flan!

Lunch and dinner at Crystal Palace comes in at $62. That’s both much cheaper than Cinderella’s Royal Table and not cheap at all. Even accounting for the opportunity cost of meeting a character, I wouldn’t consider Crystal Palace a great value. That said, the price is roughly in line (if not cheaper) than all of the other character dining buffets at Disney World. When it comes to the Disney Dining Plan, once you add in a cocktail this a solid value but far from the best.

If you (or your children) love Winnie the Pooh characters then Crystal Palace is a good bet. We still prefer Hollywood & Vine in Hollywood Studios as far as in park options go but this is a decent alternative. I’d recommend this over Cinderella’s Royal Table and believe Crystal Palace is one of the better table-service meals in Magic Kingdom. The building and characters alone make it a good option, even if the food is only average.

Overall Rating – 8/10

Have you eaten at Crystal Palace? Let us know your thoughts or any questions you might have in the comments below. Planning a trip to Walt Disney World? Check out our Disney World Trip Planning Guide to help you out. Looking for discount tickets? Check out this site! If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends, as well as like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!