Disneyland Princess Breakfast Adventures Review
During our most recent trip to Disneyland, we booked a Disney Princess Breakfast Adventure at the Napa Rose located in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa. This is a special experience that requires a dining reservation well in advance (click here for some tips to getting one). If you are thinking about booking this dining package but want a little more info, look no further. Here’s what to expect and my official recommendation...
What is it?
The Disney Princess Breakfast Adventure is a 3-course breakfast with up close and personal experiences with numerous Disney princesses. The most up-to-date menu and cost can be viewed here.
What can you expect?
I’m going to breakdown our experience step by step. Scroll down to the next section to skip straight to my overall review if you would like.
After checking in for our reservation via the Disneyland app, we waited about 5 minutes before our table was ready. When we got the text notification, we entered the Napa Rose, gave them our name and were ushered to a place holder table in the lobby. At the table was a fun Tangled themed tic-tac-toe board game for us to play while we waited for our main table in the dining room. We also were able to immediately meet with Princess Tiana on the lobby patio nearby. There was only 2 other families in the lobby and we didn’t have to wait to go right up, give hugs and meet her. Our daughter had plenty of one-on-one time to talk with her and we could take as many photos as we wanted without feeling rushed. There was no official Disney photographer, but thankfully my husband had is good camera. Once we were done chatting with Tiana, we went back to our lobby placeholder table and waited about 3-5 more minutes before we were brought to our table in the main dining room.
When we arrived at our main table, there was a little card with our family name on it and a small basket of pastries waiting. Our waiter was also ready for us, gave us a warm welcome and then a quick run-down of how our breakfast would go and let us know that we would be able to meet 8 different Princesses throughout our dining experience.
She instructed us that our appetizers would be delivered shortly but to feel free to walk outside on the larger patio and start meeting more princesses and that she would wait to fill up our coffee cups until we got back so our coffee wouldn’t get cold (I so appreciate this attention to detail!). The patio was fairly large and wrapped around the corner of the dining
Since there was no line outside, we went right out and started meeting our first round of princesses. Our line up included Mulan, Rapunzel and Jasmine. With each Princess, our daughter was able to talk with, get autographs and take plenty of photos. We never felt rushed at all. Mulan actually got right on the floor and sat with our daughter and chatted for quite a while.
There was only one Disney photographer that stayed at the 3rd princess stationed (Rapunzel), so at each of the others we had to take our own photos. This was the only part I honestly thought was kind of weird. It would have been nice to have a photographer at each of the princesses.
After our first round of 3 princesses, we came back to our table and our appetizers were waiting and our waiter was immediately there pouring coffee and taking any additional drink orders. The cocktail menu looked amazing and of course I had to try one. I had the”Still Royal After Midnight” and it was delicious!
The appetizers were beautifully layed out, very creative and each one was Princess-themed in some way (Tangled sandwiches, mini beignets that Tiana had told us earlier she was in the kitchen baking especially for us, etc.). Each of them were yummy but nothing out of this world. My favorite was the mini lobster roll and my husbands favorite was the Tangled open-faced sandwich.
While we were eating the three princesses that had been out on the patio, came and walked through the dining room saying goodbye to people as they left and then three new ones came in. A line started to form on the patio with the new selection of princesses and we jumped in line. The lineup included Pocahontas, Belle and Snow White (Snow White being the only station with a Disney photographer). Again, even with a small line of people waiting, it never felt rushed and each child had plenty of time for pictures and to chat.
When we came back inside, our waiter had a big basket of fancy french fries waiting for us (shout out to Disney for knowing what kids wants ha!) and our table cleaned up. We were instructed to visit the buffet line for the main course whenever we were ready. I didn’t take any photos but there was probably 12 different main course selections including scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken apple sausage, the famous mickey waffles with or without friend chicken, roasted vegetables, salmon crostini, a fancy mac and cheese, loads of fresh fruit, etc.
After we started to slow down on the main course, our waiter made sure we had had time with the princesses. By this point we had met 7 of the 8 Princesses and as soon as the 8th one arrived our waiter let us know so we could say hello. The 8th was Aurora who had swapped places with Tiana on the lobby patio.
We went out to meet Aurora (no line this time and no other families in the lobby waiting). When we came back from meeting Aurora we let our waiter know we were ready for dessert.
I should also mention, every time we left our table our waiter would sneak over and clear off any crumbs, re-fold our napkins and refill our coffees so they were always full and hot.
Our dessert tower arrived and it was beautiful and princess themed… our waiter even sprinkled “pixie dust” on top of the desserts before we dove in haha! The desserts included a seashell shaped macaron with a pearl poking out from the middle, cake pops, peanut butter cups, tarts, sorbet topped with pop rocks and cotton candy, etc. By this point I was absolutely stuffed and could only manage to take one bite of everything. They were each delicious and my daughter was thrilled with the cake pops most of all. My favorite was the peanut butter cups with chocolate feathers.
After about 5-10 minutes, our waiter checked back in to see if we needed anything and let us know we could do another round with the princesses if we would like even though we had finished and met all 8 of them. She also brought out a special keepsack cloth backpack for our daughter with three large “Princess Adventure” breakfast pins, a postcard with all of the Princesses signatures (including the two that weren’t there on our morning which were Cinderella and Ariel) and a necklace with a tiara charm. Finley was totally surprised and so excited to have a princess necklace!
We stayed and sipped our coffee for a bit longer, paid and then left. When we walked back out through the lobby Tiana had switched again with Aurora and she walked right over to our daughter and gave her a big hug goodbye.
Overall Review
This was by far the most expensive dining experience we have ever done at Disney. The Napa Rose was a nice environment, our waiter was incredible, the food was solid (not as out-of-this-world as I had hoped), my cocktail was delicious and we left very full. But the absolutely best part was the time our daughter got with Princesses in such an intimate one-on-one setting. This made it absolutely worth it. The fact we never felt rushed and it felt like each Princess was there to sit and chat with us for as long as we liked was amazing.
I am also thankful we waited for our daughter to be the age she was (5 1/2). She was able to fully engaged and I think she will remember this experience forever. If I were to suggest an age for this, I would say 4 years and older is perfect. But that is just a personal opinion.
For us - this will probably a one and done thing. I don’t think we would do it again, but I’m very very thankful we did it once and it was definitely worth it.
If you did the Disney Princess Breakfast Adventure, I would love to hear your thoughts! And if you haven’t done it and are wanting to but aren’t sure how to tackle dining reservations, click here to read my post with some tips and tricks to getting the reservations you want. And don’t forget, if you need help planning a magical Disney vacation, click here and lets start planning together!
