Review: Minnie’s Halloween Dine at Disney’s Hollywood Studios Offers a Unique Character Experience

September 17, 2016 Denise

Hi everyone!

Minnie’s Halloween Dine is the newest Minnie’s Seasonal Dine buffet offering at Hollywood & Vine located in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Minnie, Mickey, Donald, Daisy and Goofy all debuted new Halloween costumes for the meal! The buffet is decent, Jeff enjoyed it more than I did – really, the big draw here is the characters and their new costumes. Where else can you see Donald Duck dressed as an astronaut? Here is a look at both the characters and food, along with more information about the experience. The price says $46.99 per adult and $27.99 per child (ages 3-9) online, but our two meals were $48.00 plus tax and gratuity each (we did receive a 10% off Disney Visa discount, and the restaurant also takes Tables in Wonderland). This is a one table service credit entitlement on the Disney Dining Plan, which is a good value if you are on it.

We also talk about the experience on Mousesteps Weekly #200, which is at the end of the article.

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Hollywood & Vine is still a Disney Junior character experience for breakfast and lunch, before it turns to Minnie’s Halloween Dine in the late afternoon (you can check dining hours for each day here). Minnie’s Halloween Dine runs through November 6th, 2016. After that, it becomes Minnie’s Holiday Dine on November 7th and that will run through January 6th, 2017.

There was no character meet and greet in front of the backdrop when we dined.

There are pumpkins with all of the characters noted.

Minnie and Mickey in pumpkins.

Minnie’s Halloween Dine banner.

A pumpkin scarecrow with Mickey ears stands behind the desserts.

Here is our video of the characters (check out Minnie photobombing Donald!), and then keep reading for photos of both characters and food!

Mickey Mouse is in his vampire outfit.

Meeting Mickey in his new costume.

There is a character signature card and something that is like a heavy plastic Halloween box, those were by the door.

Here is a closer look at the character signature card, both sides.

Daisy Duck also looks very cute in her outfit!

Jeff poses with Minnie.

Here is Daisy from the back.

Check out her spider buttons!

Minnie Mouse wears a witch costume.

This is the back of her hat.

Minnie poses for a photo. She has spider webs for gloves and a spider at the neck.

Minnie shows off her gloves.

Here is a closer look at her hat.

And her cape has quite a span on it.

Donald is in a very cool spacesuit, and was definitely the biggest hit on our social media accounts.

Here are Donald’s feet.

Donald gets ready to move to the next table.

Donald standing from the back.

Goofy is dressed like a cowboy. Spiders are utilized quite a bit in most of the costumes.

Goofy holds his ears out.

Check out his gloves! And a spider dangles from his hat.

There is a spider on his handkerchief and one on his belt.

There will be a few more character photos at the end, but now on to the food. The signs above the food include names like “Boo Breads”, with a Halloween witch hat theme.

I usually like (love) bread, but these were both a little too hard to eat.

There were a number of different salad items, including caesar salad and spring mix.

My favorite item was here, under “Bubbling Brews”. The spiced pumpkin patch soup was very tasty and I will show it a couple of photos down.

Peel and eat shrimp sit alongside New Zealand green mussels with shallot vinaigrette – these both were favorites for Jeff (I don’t eat seafood).

Here is my soup, salad and the bread that went mostly uneaten. The soup was very good.

Jeff’s first plate included lobster and shrimp macaroni and cheese along with peel and eat shrimp.

This is a look from a distance at the salad area.

There were meatballs and corn (to the right).

My second plate was also mostly salad, along with the roast turkey (the turkey was excellent).

Garlic mashed potatoes.

Peach-glazed barbecued pork next to green beans (on the left).

Kraken pasta – squid ink pasta, calamari with cherry tomatoes.

Petrifying pumpkin-seed crusted trout.

My third and last plate was a mixture of adult and kids items. The kids area included baby potatoes, chicken nuggets and carrots. I asked for another slice of turkey and tried the sliced beef (the turkey was much better, I didn’t eat much beef).

Jeff thought the braised short ribs dish was excellent, the meat fell apart from being so tender.

Here is a look at the roast turkey.

And the marinated beef.

Jeff tried a few of the mini-desserts. I found them mostly uninteresting and uninspired. The Halloween theme is slight, and as much as I like dessert, I only tried one mini cupcake and found it too hard to eat (trying to pull the dessert wrapper off without making a mess). Disney can create excellent desserts and I expect more for a $50 buffet. Next month I plan to write a review of Inventions at the Disneyland Paris Hotel – a restaurant we’ve dined at before – and that will be a good comparison for a similarly priced character buffet restaurant and offerings.

Salted caramel cookies.

Lemon meringue ghosts.

Cupcakes with a candy corn on them. There are other desserts as well, including chocolate covered strawberries (the chocolate was flaking off them so I didn’t take a photo).

Back to the main reason for many guests to visit. Minnie, Mickey and Daisy came over to the backdrop for photos (not for us, we just happened to be there at the time).

Mickey stands in front of the Halloween backdrop.

Daisy stands in front of the backdrop. It would be nice if one of the characters was up here for entrance photos with guests, it’s a question I’ve received quite a bit about.