Chef Mickey’s is a character dining buffet in Walt Disney World’s Contemporary Resort. The meal includes Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Pluto all coming to visit guests at their table. Chef Mickey’s is open for breakfast ($59) and dinner ($69). The restaurant takes part in the Disney Dining Plan as 1 table-service credit and offers a 10% discount to annual passholders. In this post, we’ll review dinner at Chef Mickey’s including our thoughts on the atmosphere, characters, food and value.

In our never-ending quest to try all of the restaurants at Walt Disney World, Chef Mickey’s was always put on the backburner. The buffet’s reputation of leaving food on the backburner for a little too long kept us away. While we’ve grown to enjoy character dining more and more, we also like to eat good food and I have never heard anyone say a nice thing about Chef Mickey’s cuisine.

Like Thanos, Chef Mickey’s was inevitable. We had to eat there eventually as it was the most popular Disney World restaurant we hadn’t been to. We have had some good luck in the past few years with restaurants that had poor reputations, so all hope was not lost.

Before I go any further, I should mention that no one is booking Chef Mickey’s to have exceptional food. If you are then please reconsider. Instead, the restaurant is popular thanks to being the only restaurant in Walt Disney World where you can meet the Fab Five – Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto. That goes for breakfast and dinner. Using a meal to meet those popular characters instead of taking up park time to do it can be a savvy move, if meeting them is important to you in the first place. Chef Mickey’s will remain popular thanks to that draw.

While we’re on the subject, we thought the character interactions at Chef Mickey’s were fantastic. Some of that may have been thanks to our reservation being later in the evening (close to 8 PM) when the restaurant was less busy. Mickey and the gang each spent a good amount of time at our table, posing for photos with both of us. They also paraded through during the meal and were personable to every table we saw. Even if the meet & greets had been shorter, we would have really enjoyed the interactions.

Each character has a chef’s hat and they all wear a chef’s jacket and apron aside from Pluto. He doesn’t wear one either because he’s a dog or because he is such a neat cook that it isn’t needed. The characters look great and were more than ready to field questions about what they’ve been making in the kitchen. At one point towards the end of the night, Goofy grabbed a broom and started cleaning up around the restaurant. He was on a real physical comedy heater that night. Character meals are always different depending on the situation so I can’t promise that your interactions will be as good as ours but we thought they were excellent.

That was the highlight of Chef Mickey’s. The atmosphere and decor is also interesting. Depending on your feelings on the 90’s, you’ll either love or hate the look of the restaurant. Sitting on the 4th and main floor of The Contemporary, Chef Mickey’s doesn’t try to separate itself from The Grand Canyon Concourse. The monorail zooms by fairly often, Mary Blair’s Grand Canyon Mural is easy to spot, there are a few views of Bay Lake or Magic Kingdom if you get the right angle.

The restaurant itself is colorful, with reds, yellows and blues abound. There’s nothing subtle about Chef Mickey’s, it tries to be loud and succeeds! I like a lot of the design and neon around the buffet section, as it feels cartoonish.

The seating around the restaurant is less interesting and feels dated but not as nostalgic. There are quite a few Mickey touches both on the walls and seats, those are pretty fun. Those bright colors that are around the buffet lines are far more muted in the carpet and upholstery. There’s just a lot going on and not much tying it together in terms of color.

Whether you like the atmosphere of Chef Mickey’s or not will come down to how interested you are in things like the monorail passing by or the nostalgia of 90’s design. I doubt that’s on many people’s mind when dining here, as most of the attention is directed to the characters. For what it’s worth, I think the restaurant is kind of a fun vestige to cartoons and Mickey Mouse. I wouldn’t call it pretty but it was interesting.

As for the food, it feels pretty similar to the carpet. I didn’t necessarily mean that in terms of taste (although you could make that argument), but more that it feels like a mashup of dull colors. Here’s a look at the menu, which doesn’t include everything offered but is a decent representation.

The highlight for us was the salad bar and chilled shrimp. That’s not a great sign. Everything did taste fresh there which feels like a very low bar but credit where credit is due. I liked the Four Cheese Focaccia pretty well, seen on the plate above.

After that, things were pretty grim. Maybe they were just downright bad. Melissa and I divided and conquered, trying every item in very small portions. None of it really stood out, as there just wasn’t much flavor anywhere. Some items ended up being overcooked or mushy. That’s the nature of buffets and Chef Mickey’s falls into all of the traps that a below-average buffet usually does.

I don’t want to get overly negative. There were only a few items that were downright bad and most of it was fine. The carving station was decent, offering a strip loin and turkey. Neither were great but they were edible!

A few other specialty options included the Shrimp Scampi, Butternut Squash Ravioli and a Chicken Pot Pie. They were all missing any depth after the initial taste. Again, nothing terrible but just no standouts among the group and there was nothing worth going back for.

We were hoping that dessert could salvage some of the food offerings but it wasn’t to be. The options were very cute though! There was a Warm Chocolate Cake that I was looking forward to but it tasted like a flourless cake that ended up dry. The rest of the desserts were themed to one of the characters and looked adorable but were forgettable in taste.

All of that made up the worst food that I can remember at a Walt Disney World table-service restaurant. That’s not what you want for $69! As I said, if you’re coming here for the food then you will be disappointed.

For what it’s worth, strictly from a value perspective on the Disney Dining Plan Chef Mickey’s isn’t a bad play. Once you add in a drink, the meal will cost more than $80 and that’s strong if you’re looking to come out ahead on the plan. That’s just from a money perspective though, I can’t recommend this as a good place to go even as a strong value on the Disney Dining Plan.

The character interactions do earn some grace for Chef Mickey’s and bump our overall rating up to 4/10 instead of a 1 or 2. That is what the restaurant has going for it and is the reason to book it. If you, or your kids, really like Mickey Mouse and his friends then this might be worth it. Consider breakfast, as it’s $10 cheaper and the food can’t really get worse than dinner. After years of putting Chef Mickey’s off, we finally went and now will be putting off a return trip for as long as possible.

Overall Rating – 4/10

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