1900 Park Fare Character Restaurant Reopening Date & Details!
Walt Disney World has announced the reopening of 1900 Park Fare, the character dining experience at Grand Floridian Resort. This post will share dates, details, and our expectations about what’s going to change at this spot that used to offer two different character options for breakfast and dinner. (Updated February 10, 2024.)
For reference, 1900 Park Fare previously served up the Supercalifragilistic Breakfast in the morning (obviously). This was a fabulously festive, all-you-care-to-enjoy breakfast buffet! “Popp in” for custom-made omelets, fluffy mini pancakes, Mickey-shaped waffles, carved ham and more. Disney characters at 1900 Park Fare for the Supercalifragilistic Breakfast included Mary Poppins, Alice in Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, Tigger, and Winnie the Pooh. It was quite the eclectic crew.
In the evening, the character dining experience at 1900 Park Fare transformed into Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner, an enchanting buffet dinner hosted by Cinderella and Prince Charming. The Princess’ storybook friends joined in the festivities as guests had a ball dining on delectable seafood, salad, pasta and beef specialties. The culinary selections are representative of several “kingdoms” from around the globe and include such kid-friendly fare as chicken, cheese pizza, and macaroni & cheese.
These were the two options served up until March 2020 when 1900 Park Fare closed…for what has turned out to be over 4 years.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Walt Disney World has announced that 1900 Park Fare is reopening on April 10, 2024. This iconic restaurant will feature returning guest favorites along with a newly refurbished dining room and other special touches.
Here’s what else Walt Disney World has shared about the return of 1900 Park Fare:
Because meals are best enjoyed alongside friends, a few familiar faces will stop by throughout breakfast and dinner — some for the first time at this location! In this refreshed character dining experience, you’ll be joined by new royalty: Aladdin in his Prince Ali attire, Cinderella, Mirabel and Tiana in her new costume for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, as they all celebrate the power of a wish.
An enchanting buffet will be served for breakfast and dinner at 1900 Park Fare, featuring some returning guest favorites — yes, that includes the strawberry soup! — along with new menu offerings dreamed up by Walt Disney World’s talented chefs to pay tribute to some of the characters and stories you’ll encounter throughout the restaurant.
Fans of 1900 Park Fare will remember Big Bertha, an antique organ that has called the resort home since 1988. Look for her in the main dining room, where she’s on display as its grand centerpiece!
Just like before, carousel theming is woven throughout 1900 Park Fare. This starts with the impressive new mural, which will serve as the focal point of the restaurant’s entrance. In one of the adjoining dining rooms, you’ll find drawings of carousel animals inspired by classic Disney films like “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Little Mermaid.”
The artistic touches continue throughout the main dining room, where you’ll also find twelve new portraits created exclusively for the restaurant by Disney artists. Each one, inspired by the impressionist art style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, features a different Disney character as they hope, dream and wish upon a star (or even a magic lamp or a wishing well).
Over the years, 1900 Park Fare has been the backdrop of so many guests’ favorite vacation memories. At the heart of this unique restaurant is the magic and whimsy of turn-of-the-century gardens and fairgrounds, where people of all ages came together to enjoy each other’s company. The spirit of those carefree days spent outdoors is brought to life with each detail big and small, making it the perfect place to create new memories with loved ones.
Advance Dining Reservations for 1900 Park Fare open on March 5, 2024, so mark your calendars!
Along with this announcement about 1900 Park Fare, Walt Disney World has also teased that there’s even more to come as they continue to refresh and enhance Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, and that they can’t wait to share more with you in the future.
I feel like that isn’t true. If they actually “can’t wait,” they already would’ve shared. This project has been talked about since 2022 and it has always been vague and open-ended. At this point, it’s pretty late in the game–after most guests have already booked stays–to finally be revealing the scale and scope of the project in the main building. We literally don’t know whether this is a light refresh (a la BoardWalk) that will be accomplished in the overnight hours, or if portions of the lobby will be walled-off for months.
Aside from the lobby, the outer buildings are already finished and look fantastic. The new guest rooms (see Grand New Rooms at Walt Disney World’s Flagship Resort for a look inside) are a night-and-day improvement over the old mid-tier Marriott-inspired guest rooms they replaced. The lobbies and hallways also look nice and fresh, using “Enchanted Gardens” as the unifying visual style.
If you’re not sure what that means, it’s essentially Victorian meets modern meets Mary Poppins motifs. We actually like this aesthetic a lot, and think it delicately balances themed design with the expectations of regular guests dropping a ton of money to stay at Walt Disney World’s so-called flagship resort, and not expecting it to look like “grandma’s house” (a very common complaint). It’s certainly not perfect, but it does as well as possible satisfying demos with preferences that are often at-odds.
Along with the guest rooms and common areas, most restaurants at the Grand Floridian have also been modernized. This includes Enchanted Rose Lounge, Citricos, Narcoossee’s, and Victoria & Albert’s. It would be a colossal stretch to claim that there’s any unifying style among these restaurants–they’re all over the place. But the point is that they’ve all received major refreshes in the last few years.
The official page for 1900 Park Fare doesn’t yet offer menus or any other details (“Check back on March 5, 2024 for more information”), but it does state “Dining Plans Not Accepted.” We wouldn’t necessarily put too much stock or read anything into this. It’s possible this indicators is left over from a previous version of the page. It’s also possible that this is a sneak peek of what’s to come, and this is going to be a fancified experience.
None of this should be hugely surprising. After a 4-year closure that started right as Walt Disney World’s character dining scene–especially at Deluxe Resorts–was in the process of being transformed, it seems inevitable that there will be some changes to 1900 Park Fare. That probably would’ve been true if comparing 2019 to 2024 had the closure never happened.
Look at Bon Voyage Adventure Breakfast at Trattoria al Forno, Storybook Dining at Artist Point, and Breakfast à la Art with Mickey & Friends at Topolino’s Terrace–all relatively recent additions as of late 2019. Then look at all of the restaurant reimaginings at the Grand Floridian in the last 5 years–Enchanted Rose Lounge, Citricos, Narcoossee’s, and Victoria & Albert’s.
Previously, we speculated that 1900 Park Fare could be redone in the style of Royal Banquet Hall, the brand-new restaurant at Disneyland Hotel in Paris or the one inside the castle in Shanghai Disneyland (see our Royal Banquet Hall Review). Clearly part of that was wrong, as it won’t feature fur characters in regal attire.
We had also heard rumblings that the new meals at 1900 Park Fare would be among the most expensive character dining experiences at Walt Disney World. It appears this will be inaccurate, as journalist Scott Gustin has confirmed that 1900 Park Fare will still be only 1-credit on the Disney Dining Plan. That almost guarantees the out-of-pocket price will be less than Cinderella’s Royal Table or Story Book Dining at Artist Point, both of which are 2-credits.
It’ll still be expensive, and Walt Disney World will almost certainly raise the prices at 1900 Park Fare to some degree over what it cost before (4 years of inflation tends to do that!). However, we’re now expecting prices in the ballpark of Chef Mickey’s ($34 for kids and $54 for adults at breakfast; $41 for kids and $66 for adults at dinner).
Maybe dinner will hit the $70 mark for adults at dinner, but if the 1-credit DDP news is accurate, 1900 Park Fare won’t be in the $85+ ballpark we previously predicted. (The 1-credit DDP news should be accurate given Gustin got confirmation from Disney; but the official restaurant page still hasn’t been updated. Until that happens, the DDP status and pricing is subject to change.)
For a final thing, this grabbag of characters is odd. That’s not just me, is it? The premise here is “wishing,” which is one of those vague Disney things that could mean anything or nothing. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if this concept was dreamt (sorry, wished) up back when Wish was expected to be a smash success. But it wasn’t, so swap out Asha for (*checks costuming*) Tiana in her new bayou explorer look.
Personally, it doesn’t bother me that this is no longer very British characters. Although the interactions were a hoot, I think that was thematically a stretch. Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins might be from the same country, but so are Hamburglar and Robocop. Would a meal featuring both be well-themed? (Scratch that, it’d be glorious. Let’s add Terminator, Rocky, Captain America and Hannibal Lector for good measure.) If you’re going to do princes and princesses, it needs to either be royal couples or have some other logical through-line. This does not.
On a positive note for the characters, this not featuring Rapunzel & Flynn Rider from Tangled or Ariel & Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid strongly suggests that the plan is still to bring back Bon Voyage Breakfast at Trattoria al Forno. Those royal duos are/were incredibly popular, and not having 3 of the 4 at any character meals at Walt Disney World is a glaring omission that you have to figure will be remedied sooner rather than later.
If I’m not mistaken, there’s also no character dining at all that features Moana, Pocahontas, Anna and Elsa. I’m somewhat surprised none of those princesses have a presence anywhere, and think a meal with that lineup (or a variation thereof) would be quite popular. I get that Walt Disney World probably wants to include a token prince to give it more appeal, but is that really necessary?
Ultimately, we’re excited for the return of 1900 Park Fare at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort featuring familiar favorites and new princes and princesses starting on April 10, 2024. We’re still debating what to choose for Megatron’s first character meal, and now there’s a new contender in the running. (1900 Park Fare probably won’t be it–especially if the pricing is as bad as expected–but I haven’t consulted with Sarah yet to assess her hype level for this.)
Regardless of cost and other details, expect 1900 Park Fare to reopen as one of the more popular Advance Dining Reservations at Walt Disney World. We’d expect those ADR slots for Summer 2024 to fill fast, as there will be a lot of pent-up demand and excitement among both fans and guests of the Grand. The bottom line is that the reopening of 1900 Park Fare is a big win for families looking for princess dining Walt Disney World.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Will you be booking an ADR for 1900 Park Fare once it reopens on April 10, 2024? Have you dined here in the past? Excited that new meals are debuting, or will you miss the Supercalifragilistic Breakfast and Cinderella’s Happily Ever After Dinner? Will you be booking breakfast or dinner with the princesses here on an upcoming stay at the Grand? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
I am excited for this random assortment of characters! Something new indeed!
I’m so confused on how they went so hard with the Mary Poppins theming of the resort rooms, and then took her character away from their character meal offering. It makes no sense to me. But, I guess since Chef Mickeys is so popular in a now Incredibles themed resort, they thought “hey, why not”.
Agree odd collection of characters but when I first read Mirabel my mind went to Clarabell. Lol. Still weird assortment but at least all face characters.
There’s a deeper commonality among these four characters. They all have a history of poverty, and they’ve made it.
Aladdin was a street rat, Mirabel a homeless refugee. Tiana lived in a shotgun shack. Cinderella is the classic rags-to-riches story.
From impoverished, oppressed origins, they have made it all the way to the Grand Floridian. They are wearing the attire of their success.
That’s why someone like Jasmine doesn’t fit the theme. She started rich.
I see your point and think it’s a fair one, but I also don’t think that’s something that makes for a cohesive group of characters. Most guests, I suspect, will not perceive this. It’ll seem like a random assortment of royalty.
Then again, I also don’t think the prior selection was cohesive just by virtue of being British.
Right, unless the meal is named something obvious like the nouveau riche buffet. Which is how guests not raised in wealth may feel at the Grand Floridian! I appreciate the shared narrative theme even though this may be one of those subconscious details.
That’s VERY specific. Sounds like you either work for Disney or know someone very well who does.
The change in characters is a GOOD thing. What do they actually have to do with the location and decor anyway? It’s just for fun and it’s good to see fresh faces and FAVORITES. Prince Ali!! MIRABEL (needs more love in the parks)! Mad Hatter and the step sisters were scary to some kids. Bringing ones that people actually like is awesome.
So Pooh bear was just weird. But no Alice and the Mad Hatter, no Mary Poppins, no Lady Tremaine and stepsisters? No thanks.
I would like to make the slightly different complaint that I liked it better when there were different characters at breakfast and dinner.
While I agree that there are some really odd choices here (come on, put Aladdin and Jasmine together here or at the castle, already!), I realized I’d be on board with some randomness if it still also involved the live action Statler and Waldorf-esque antics of the Wicked Stepsisters.
The majority of comments on the Disney Parks Blog annoucement all highlight the same issue you did as well: nobody thinks the lineup makes sense. Most folks (myself included) want the old lineup back, or at very least, Mary Poppins.
The only place you can meet Mary now is the christmas party… *if* they bring her back again. The new lineup feels extremely random and unfortunately my two little girls will have almost no interest in going now. We had been looking forward to it as they both love Mary and the Pooh gang… Well, they like Jasmine, but Aladdin is “meh” in their eyes.. Can’t get them into Encanto despite a few attempts… Same with Cinderella… And they LOVE Tiana, but I’m honestly not sure they would be excited to see her in the new outfit versus one of her outfits from the film.
We are likely to just go six meters to the left (if that) and go to the cafe for breakfast instead. Far cheaper than a character meal, delicious made to order, and Olga our waitress last November was phenomenal. Here’s hoping if Mary is indeed out for this, that they bring her back in some more consistent fashion elsewhere in the parks!
This is a disappointment. I loved seeing Alice and Mary Poppins there at breakfast. At dinner time the interactions with Cinderella’s step mother and sisters was a lot of fun. I remember having a great time trying to talk Lady Tremaine into marrying my sons off to her daughters. This new lineup bums me out.
The banter with the stepsisters was the best. The new character lineup doesn’t make sense AT ALL. Very disappointed.
Prince Ali definitely sticks out like a sore thumb. There’s no cohesion with the GF theme. If they needed a token Prince, why not bring back the Cinderella cast and include Prince Charming?
“There’s also no character dining at all that features Mulan, Merida, etc…” We did see Mulan at Akershus and Merida at Cinderella’s recently. Just FYI. Love your blog – keep up the good work and enjoy that little one! They get big really quick!
Thanks for the heads up, I had no idea Mulan and Merida were at those meals. I’m both impressed that they are, and disappointed I didn’t know that. I’ll correct the article.
I was a face character for 5 years and finding those characters at dining is a rarity–they are not intended to be at those meals. It happens when a princess calls out and the spare gets pulled to a different location. They can put Rapunzel or Merida at CRT–just not Belle because her cottage is too nearby so it would ruin the illusion and not Tiana because her dress doesn’t fit between the tables (which is why she’ll be in her new look). At Norway, I’ve worked with Mulans, Alices, and Marys… basically any face character. This happens a lot around the holidays, so if you were there around Christmas or New Years, that’s likely to happen, but it is not the intended princesses at those meals.
What timing! I’m so glad people will have the option of meeting these beloved characters, but Tiana deserves her own jazzy dining venue. I feel like the only way this blend makes any thematic sense at all is if the characters kick off the meal sitting in director’s chairs and telling an interviewer about how they all became fast friends while working on “Once Upon a Studio” together.
LOL.
I still suspect and am holding out hope that Tiana’s Palace (like the DCL version, not the DLR one) is in the cards for the new concept for Reflections Lodge, and this is a stopgap measure until that arrives.
Happy to hear they’re finally reopening but I’m so disappointed in the character lineup! I was really hoping to experience Anastasia and Drisella as I heard their character interaction was unparalleled.
They and Lady Tremaine were a lot of fun. This new line up does not sound fun at all. Until I read more comments I could not place who Mirabel is and what movie she is in.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this!
Also, I need to get my Grandma to up her game, clearly.
I’m still waiting for the tea service to come back… although if it does, I’m dreading what those prices would look like.
Ha, yeah. I honestly feel like we’re probably better off if some of these upcharges don’t come back until pent-up demand dies down more and per guest spending returns to reality.
But if 1900 Park Fare actually is priced on par with Cinderella’s Royal Table and excluded from the DDP, I suspect it’ll get its own reality-check within a few months!
The Cinderella and her Stepmother and Stepsisters meal sounded so much fun. I am sad to hear it won’t be brought back.
I was so excited that this will be open again for our trip, but pretty disappointed with the new character line-up. I loved that the breakfast offered something a bit different, and loved the full Cinderella-ness of the dinner line-up. The characters all sounded like such fun. I was really hoping to experience both. This new version may not make it to a ‘must-do’ for me, certainly not for more than one meal since it sounds like it’s the same character line-up for both breakfast and dinner. If the Garden View Tea Room opens up again and offers a ‘high tea’ type experience, I’d probably choose that over the new 1900 Park Fare meals.
Boo! The sisters were the best along with lady Tremaine. And it was 1 credit and in my opinion the best buffet in WDW. (Never did Boma but did all the others).
We did this breakfast for the first and only time in February 2020, and we thought it was the best breakfast buffet we’d done. We’ve been wondering when it would finally come back – here’s hoping the food is similar. I am a bit disappointed no Mary Poppins (fine with no more Winnie the Pooh) – it feels like she should also have some presence – especially in the hotel themed for the same time period she’s in, but oh well.