Our first trip!!!!!! Help a newbie out :)

[dukie41181]

We just booked tonight and are really excited!!! We now want to get going with booking things like character dining and bippity boppity boutique!!! What are some places you'd recommend to eat with the kids and the best character dining experiences? Or other things we should get booking early?

Also, are there ways to get any cool discounts while we are there?

[klwa]

How early are you? Dining & BBB start booking 6 months out (assuming you're talking about WDW not DL). Are you in that window yet?

[brittone2]

We just booked tonight and are really excited!!! We now want to get going with booking things like character dining and bippity boppity boutique!!! What are some places you'd recommend to eat with the kids and the best character dining experiences? Or other things we should get booking early?

Also, are there ways to get any cool discounts while we are there?

Some things we really liked on our Feb. trip:
Wishes Dessert party at Tomorrowland Terrace (ymmv as fireworks are off to the side, but I am not fond of being crammed into crowds elbow to elbow and enjoyed the dessert party tremendously as a result!)

We really liked Be Our Guest for lunch. I thought it was excellent and I liked doing it for lunch vs. dinner (1 credit, QS, but they deliver the food to your table). I used the link on the Disboards to book it, so we were able to just walk up and skip the line. YMMV on how you feel about that, as it is supposed to be invite only, but the Disboard folks when I was planning had great success using the link. Food was very good for QS in a park, IMO.

Early morning ADRs for Crystal Palace. This should give you a chance to get photos in front of the castle, etc. before the park opens for the day to the public. Unfortunately for us they were filming a commercial the morning we had our ADR, so no pics for us in front of the castle, but it was a decent buffet for Disney food.

We liked breakfast at Kona a lot (Poly).

We had silhouettes done of the kids on Main St and love them. Reasonably priced, not overtly Disney but still remind us of the trip, and I've wanted them done for years so it was a great excuse. We tried once or twice and they weren't there, and then when they were there my youngest had crashed out in the stroller. His head was kinda slumped, etc. and I thought we'd just bring him back later. Well, the artist said he could do it just fine with DS2 asleep, and his silhouette turned out great!

My older two really liked the Sorcerer cards and portholes. It was nice at times when we were kinda killing time and didn't necessarily have time to ride something. It may not be something you want to spend time on, but they liked it.

Nightvision goggles for viewing the animals after dinner at Boma was fun (and free). Boma was decent. Very much a buffet in terms of quality, but I liked the setting and getting to visit AKL.

We liked Talking Mickey.

Tusker House was a good bkfast for meeting a lot of characters....food quality for us was not great at all, and it is supposed to be one of the better character meals. But it was probably worth it for the character meets. We were there on a really rainy day, so it was a good place to hide out :)

We did not do BBB as DD isn't a huge princess fan.

[dukie41181]

We are going Nov 9th so are still more than 6 months out.

We will be celebration my daughter'a 4th birthday there too which is kinda fun. Want to think of something special to celebrate but not BBB.

[klwa]

At your 180 day mark, try & get a reservation for Be Our Guest for supper. If you can't get that, look around for the link on the DIsboards that PP mentioned for lunch. :) (I didn't want to throw that one out there if you were past that point!) You get to meet Beast on your way out at supper, but not at lunch. He was GREAT! with DD1 who was dressed as Belle. DD2 was a little freaked out, but was happy to wave to him from a distance. He tried to interact with her, it just didn't work.

We loved Garden Grill in Epcot for the interaction with the characters. (Mickey, Pluto, Chip, Dale) We've been 3 times & had great characters every time.

If you're looking for an out of park meal, we really enjoyed the 1900 Park Faire (Grand Floridian) breakfast with Tigger, Pooh, Alice, Mad Hatter, & Mary Poppins when we did it 3 years ago.