Cape May Café Character Breakfast Review
Cape May Café Character Breakfast is located in Disney’s Beach Club Resort at Walt Disney World. Cape May Café serves all-you-care-to-eat buffets at breakfast in a lively, beach-themed restaurant, and it participates in the Disney Dining Plan. It also accepts the Tables in Wonderland card for a 20% discount. Like most character breakfasts, it’s not a good value on the Disney Dining Plan, but it’s not a terrible value, either, especially with kids. Goofy “and friends” (almost always Minnie and Donald) meet and greet guests during this Disney Character Dining experience, which serves a variety of breakfast favorites, including Mickey Waffles, a fresh fruit and yogurt bar, fresh-baked pastries, breakfast pizza, biscuits and gravy, and other options.
We’ve visited Cape May Café a few times, most recently on our honeymoon when we stayed at Disney’s BoardWalk Resort. We first began dining here in 2007 out of necessity, because we wanted to do a character meal but couldn’t grab reservations anywhere else. Since, we’ve found that it’s one of the best character meals on property, with great breakfast variety and great costumes for characters we like.
Like the rest of Disney’s Beach Club Resort, the ambiance and atmosphere at Cape May Café is nice. Pastel-colored umbrellas, beach chairs, and croquette clubs decorate the restaurant. These really set the mood nicely for the meal, although in 2010 some of the window-facing ones appeared a bit sun-faded. Obviously a very minor observation, but for the prices charged, Beach Club should always be in tip-top shape.
Another nice element of the ambiance (in a way) is that Cape May Café is tucked away and often is far less busy than popular locations like Chef Mickey’s. Characters spend more time with guests, there are shorter waits to be seated, and the buffets in general aren’t as busy. At least on the occasions when we’ve gone. During the free dining promotion, it’s probably much busier.
When we first started dining at Cape May Café, the restaurant featured Minnie, Goofy, Chip, and Dale all dressed in very cool swimsuits. At some point around 2009 or 2010, the restaurant switched to Goofy, Minnie, and Donald. Donald’s costume is awesome (possibly the best of the bunch), but it’s disappointing that Disney has cut a character to eek out a little more profit.
Luckily, the breakfast has remained as excellent-as-ever over the years. Cape May Cafe has quite possibly the most extensive character breakfast menu of all character breakfasts, with 44 items on the menu according to TouringPlans.com. The buffet is divided into a cold bar, hot bar, yogurt bar, and dessert bar. There truly are too many items to name, but some of my favorites include the Biscuits with Home-style Sausage Gravy, Bacon Gruyère Casserole, Mickey Waffles, Breakfast Potatoes, sausage, and bacon. As you can tell, I don’t mess around at Cape May Café–I order mostly meats and other delicious (and unhealthy) hot-items. Let someone else have all the bananas and oatmeal!
At various times, Cape May Café has also offered a breakfast pizza. I don’t want to fixate on this too long, because it’s not always available, but it’s incredible. An incredible combination of cheese and egg, it’s absolutely not to be missed. The other breakfast items aren’t too shabby, either. There’s the Disney breakfast standby, the Mickey Waffles, along with some other more unique items like the Bacon Casserole and Breakfast Potatoes. These have always been great when we’ve tried them, never cold or “old” tasting, even when we’ve gone on days that Cape May Café hasn’t been overly-busy.
Overall, Cape May Café is a great option for breakfast, regardless of whether you have kids. At nearly $30, it’s rather pricey for breakfast (a dinner clambake is a non-character alternative), but this is par for the course with character meals. It’s difficult to ding it too much for the price, but at the same time, we always do find ourselves with a bit of “sticker shock” when we receive the bill (for comparison’s sake, we typically pay less when we dine at Beaches & Cream for dinner, even when we order decadent ice cream treats–and we usually leave both restaurants about equally full). Luckily you can eat as much as you want, so make sure to stick around for a while so you get your money’s worth. That said, the food is excellent, the characters are fun, and it’s always nice to head over to Disney’s Beach Club Resort. It’s one of our favorite character breakfasts, above Chef Mickey’s, Crystal Palace, and ‘Ohana. If a character breakfast with fab five characters in awesome costumes is what you want, this is the meal for you. Plus, it’s a short walk to Epcot, so you can easily hit the parks after your meal!
To read other Walt Disney World restaurant reviews, organized by location, check out our Disney Dining Reviews Index.
Overall Score on the Disney Dining Brick-o-meter: 8/10
9 Responses to “Cape May Café Character Breakfast Review”
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AHHH!!! I LOOVEEEEE the breakfast pizza! Sorry for the caps but I seriously love that pizza as well. When we went for the first time in about ten years a few years ago we stayed at the Yacht Club and went here for the buffet. The characters were awesome and I lvoed their outfits, and I did insist we go back when we went a year and a half later so I could have that breakfast pizza again.
Great review!! We tried this breakfast for the first time last December and loved it. We are going back in May. The characters are wonderful here, wonderful interactions and the food is great.
Awesome review and photos!!!! Cape May Cafe is my favorite character breakfast BY FAR for all of the positive reasons you stated! I really wish I was there right now, enjoying some Mickey Waffles. The characters are great there and spend so much time with you. Donald, especially, always puts on a good show. Thanks for sharing this great review!
Glad you liked it!
Our family loves this Charc. Breakfast as well! I do like all the egg, waffle, meaty stuff too BUT I really enjoyed the oatmeal becvause they gave you so so many sides to mix in with it… Sadly this past Sept. I noticed there were not nearly as many sides for the oatmeal
We love seeing all the characters in their swim suits and the hotel is beautiful!
Super fun review!!
Great Review! Our family had an extra TS credit with the dining plan and just kinda stumbled upon Cape May in trying to find a reservation at the last minute. We truly had the BEST time and thoroughly enjoyed our meal. Love the outfits and the themeing and the great selection of food choices. Also, our server was just fantastic…so personable and friendly. Cannot wait to go again. Thanks for the great pictures, too!
Agreed that Cape May is a neat little restaurant that’s a bit different than the other character meals. Really gets you in the “beach-y” mood!
I am glad to see this show up again as I never saw it the first time around. This is a really great review and good info. Our last time at Beach Club we managed to never eat at Cape May (breakfast or dinner) which I thought was a shame. This time I was planning dinner for sure, but sounds like I need to add breakfast in. Sounds awesome!
I think what appeals to me most is that you can have an earlier character breakfast than is offered in the parks, so you can be a little more leisurely about it.