The character buffet 1900 Park Fare at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort has reopened today, April 10, 2024, after being closed for over four years. It features all-new furnishings, new carpeting, new artwork, new characters, and new lighting.

Strawberry Soup Returns!

For those who have never been, 1900 Park Fare’s signature item was the Strawberry Soup. Served cold, it is essentially a strawberry smoothie, but it was a favorite item among guests.

We’ll get right to the point: Yes, the strawberry soup has returned, and it is as good as I remember it. It is now served in individual soup bowls on the buffet instead of a large tureen, but that’s probably for the better. In addition, fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream are available to garnish (or, I suppose, to just eat by themselves).

If you’ve never had the strawberry soup, it’s a must-try, and for many guests it’s the sole reason to dine here. (Maybe “the sole reason” is exaggerating a bit, but it is a highlight of the restaurant for many diners.)

Location of 1900 Park Fare

1900 Park Fare is located on the first floor of the main building of Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort. The entrance is in the back left of the lobby, adjacent to Grand Floridian Cafe. The entrance is in a different location; previously it was to your left as soon as you enter the lobby.

Characters

The characters at 1900 Park Fare are the same at breakfast and dinner, and include Cinderella, Aladdin, Princess Tiana, and Mirabel. Interestingly, there is a bit of a storyline with the characters here. The first clue is that Disney calls this character meal “Wish Makers Enchanted Dining.” The theme is that each character is known for making a wish, and making their wish come true.

The character signature card that you receive when you are seated is two-sided, with the back being a space where guests are encouraged to write their wishes. During the meal, the voice of Jiminy Cricket is broadcast and guests are asked to hold up their wish cards. This is a nice added dimension to the concept, but as we soon discovered, no one wanted to sully the collectible autograph card by writing on it. Everyone just held up their blank cards at the appropriate time.

Mirabel was the first to visit us. We had a lengthy conversation with her about making our wish and writing it down.

Aladdin, dressed as Prince Ali, stopped by next, and explained to us that he knows a bit about making wishes come true thanks to his friend, the Genie. He also recounted that he made Genie’s wish come true by wishing for his freedom.

Princess Tiana appears in her adventurer gear from Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. She spoke at length about the food offerings her food-making experience.

Cinderella is the one character returning from the pre-Covid version of 1900 Park Fare’s character dining experience. She appeared at dinner only, while different characters appeared at breakfast. To eliminate guest confusion, the decision was made to feature the same set of characters for all meals at 1900 Park Fare moving forward.

Breads, Pastries, and Sweets

Multigrain bread, white bread, and plain bagels are available at the toaster station. As fairly run-of-the-mill buffet options, there are much better choices to spend your appetite on.

The pastry station includes guava and cream cheese pinwheels, banana bread, double chocolate muffins, and iridescent glitter-covered doughnut holes. We appreciated the added bit of flair with these somewhat unusual selections.

The banana bread was actually pretty good, soft and fresh with a big banana flavor. The double chocolate muffins weren’t bad either, but these are clearly not made in-house and so were not as fresh as one would hope. As the only chocolate offering on the buffet, they’ll do for the chocolate fiends in your party, but you won’t be remembering them after you leave.

Croissants are available with a variety of accoutrements, including butter, strawberry jelly, date jam, orange marmalade, and grape jelly.

One of the highlights of the sweet offerings is the cinnamon pull-apart bread, which is so soft and luscious. The bread pudding with vanilla creme anglaise is also excellent, somewhat reminiscent of Boma’s bread pudding offering.

Of course, any Disney breakfast buffet is required to have Mickey waffles! Pancakes are also available.

We absolutely loved the cinnamon pull-apart bread, which was one of our favorite items at the buffet. It was soft and warm with a perfect amount of cinnamon glaze. And the beauty of the pull-apart is that you can share with your table, with everyone getting a nibble without a lot of waste. The bread pudding was also very good, as we expected. The vanilla creme anglaise is, as far as we can tell, identical to that at Boma. The bread pudding itself is a bit different, with Boma’s version including raisins.

The guava cream cheese pinwheels were flavorful but a little on the dry side, probably because they are very thin. The donut holes were the standard glazed variety, but with the addition of iridescent glitter. They were very soft but rather mundane. The croissants were the typical Disney offering, soft and flaky, but the reason for the croissants is the variety of jams. We tried the date jam, which was something different, and delicious!

Breakfast Meats and Eggs

Any breakfast buffet has the requisite bacon and sausage, and these are the typical Disney buffet offerings that can be had anywhere across property. You know what you’re getting, and it’s exactly as you’d expect.

The standard buffet scrambled eggs are available, as well as a cheesy scrambled egg version. Some people love buffet scrambled eggs, and some people hate them, and neither version here is going to change anyone’s mind on that.

In addition to the pork sausage, diners also have the option of chicken sausage. The spiced tofu scramble is the main plant-based protein choice. It lived up to the title card with ample spiciness. A variety of veggies, including fancy mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes, spinach, provided a nice mélange of flavors, but the intense yellow color of the tofu-designed-to-look-like-eggs was just a bit jarring. As far as Disney plant-based breakfast offerings, this is better than many.

A carving station offers chef-carved ham, which looked much better than it tasted. The ham was quite dry, with a somewhat off-putting chemical flavor that we couldn’t quite identify.

In addition to the two varieties of scrambled eggs, made-to-order omelets are available. You place your order with your server. Most standard omelet varieties, such as ham and cheese or western omelets, are available. But you are also able to customize your omelet with a variety of omelet fillings. We chose a mushroom, bacon, and cheese omelet, which was cooked perfectly and surprised us with gourmet mushrooms instead of the standard button mushrooms.

Breakfast Sides

Side dishes included a beef and pepper hash, which was disappointingly bland. Even the addition of hot sauce wasn’t able to save this dish. This was a strange concept for a breakfast dish, because it’s nothing like your regular corned beef hash. Instead it consists of small cubes of roast beef, with chopped peppers and onions, and topped with a tomato-based sauce and green onions. With another hash brown option just down the line, this seemed unnecessary when a basic corned beef hash would fit the bill.

A much better choice was the cheese grits, which we liked. Way back when, The Wave at the Contemporary had these amazing cheddar cheese grits, both on the buffet and on the menu. While Steakhouse 71 still has a menu item of the same name, it’s fine but doesn’t live up to its predecessor. These grits are also perfectly serviceable, but I was hoping for those amazing grits from The Wave.

What tops the charts in the starch-based cheesy side dish category is the cheesy potato casserole at the next station. If you’ve had the hashbrown casserole at Cracker Barrel, you know what this is like. The perfect blend of shredded potatoes and cheese with a perfectly crispy top, these were a favorite of everyone at the table.

Eggs Benedict were yet another egg-based choice at the buffet. What was most interesting was that the first skillet at the buffet had perfectly poached eggs atop the ham and English muffin, the replenishment pan had something entirely different. The second round of the Benedict was topped with eggs that were not poached, but rather appeared to be cooked on a griddle using egg rings (a la McDonald’s egg McMuffins). We’re not sure why there was a difference, but if you’re picky about your Benedicts, take note. Other than the cooking method of the egg, the Eggs Benedict were a fairly standard dish with little to make us recommend it.

Other Breakfast Offerings

If the extensive meat and egg selections were not enough, biscuits and sausage gravy is also available. These, unfortunately, are the standard Disney biscuits (read: mediocre at best) and the mass-produced Disney sausage gravy (read: also mediocre). It will satiate your craving for biscuits and gravy, but you’ll wish they were better. This was also the station where the basic buffet-level oatmeal is available, along with either brown sugar or caramelized apples.

Smoked salmon, with herbed cream cheese, capers, tomatoes, and red onions, created a bit of a gourmet addition that you don’t find on many Disney breakfast buffets. The salmon was fresh and tasty, with zero of the bad fishy smell or flavor.

Fruit and Cereal

In addition to the oatmeal available on the hot side of the buffet, a variety of cereals and fruits are available. Granola, with plain or strawberry yogurt, cottage cheese, fresh berries, a fruit salad, and watermelon were today’s offerings.

Fruit Loops, Rice Krispies, and Raisin Bran are available in dispensers. Milk is available from your server and is included in the price of the buffet.

Kids’ Section

The “kids’ section” of the buffet included a rather fancy croissant breakfast pizza, plus potato barrels, or as we like to call them, tots. The breakfast pizza included bacon, scrambled eggs, cheese, and a sort of creamy gravy. It is likely that this will change from day to day as the chef experiments.

There was also a large dispenser full of gummy bears for some odd reason. Do you put them on your cereal? Scrambled eggs? Oatmeal? Or just eat them by the bowl? Who knows…

Beverages

A selection of eight specialty cocktails plus two zero-proof cocktails are listed on a separate menu. Curiously, we were told that the same cocktail menu is offered at dinner. We chose to get the four cocktails that seems to be most aligned with breakfast: the cold brew martini, chipotle bloody mart, sparkling hibiscus, and strawberry rosé spritz.

Although the cocktails all sound delightful, they were overall mostly disappointing.

The chipotle bloody Mary was the most disappointing of the four we tried. The spiciness we had hoped for and expected was just not there. In addition, as you might be able to tell from the bright red color, this was not a fresh-made beverage with tomato juice, but rather some pre-mixed concoction that we knew from first glance was going to be lacking.

The strawberry rosé spritz was better than the bloody Mary, but not by much. More than any specific issue we could pinpoint, it just lacked flavor overall. Either there was not much liquor or the proportions were off, and it left us wanting something with a bit more substance.

Next up was the sparkling hibiscus, which was another disappointment. This tasted just like a non-alcoholic strawberry lemonade. First, it wasn’t sparkling at all. We did not detect any grapefruit soda in the glass. It was also cloyingly sweet, although there was no taste of honey at all. It made a good lemonade, but for $17 we expected much more.

Finally, and the highlight of the drinks we tried, was the cold brew martini. This was splendid; perfectly blended with the right balance of liquor and coffee. Everyone at the table agreed that this was the favorite and we’d get it again next time.

Video Review

Overall Thoughts

Before all of Walt Disney World closed in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, 1900 Park Fare was arguably one of the best character breakfast buffets on property, at least as far as food quality and variety (though some guests were disappointed in the selection of characters that appeared). With its signature strawberry soup, made-to-order omelets which are only found at a few breakfast buffets on property, and generally higher-than-average food quality, it was one of my favorites, and I lamented the delay in its reopening.

Now that 1900 Park Fare has reopened, the food quality is actually better than before, and therefore it can reclaim the title of best character breakfast buffet at Walt Disney World. Throw in the improved selection of popular characters, along with a coherent story for the disparate characters to appear together, plus the refreshed decor, and all around, it’s a winner.

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Jason Diffendal