Perhaps to make up for the lack of crowds, the dinner was expensive. The all you can eat buffet ($29) changes based on the night; we were there for American BBQ night. The price might be acceptable if they didn't nickel and dime you by also charging for a soda ($2.50). The child price ($13) did include a drink, oddly. Even after all this, the price could have been worthwhile if only the food were good. But alas, the food was entirely pedestrian, with no standouts at all and several dishes quite mediocre. We found the value per dollar of this restaurant to be among the lowest at Walt Disney World.

Your server offers a hand-tossed salad (the usual ingredients) with BBQ sauce as a dressing, which was more interesting sounding than tasting. The buffet line had stuff for kids (mini corn dogs, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and broccoli), and we found the mac and cheese singularly tasteless. Literally without taste. For adults, there was chili (quite sweet) and a beef barley, which tasted like something out of a can. They had four salads, most of which were pasta salads rather than anything with greenery. All but one were pedestrian - the creamy pasta salad was interesting and unique. For entrees, there was bourbon chicken (poor quality meat, bland flavor), swordfish (harmless, but by no means 'good'), pulled pork (fatty and substandard, without much flavor), and a beef brisket carved on request. The brisket was actually pretty good. I would have gone to get more, except that every time I went by, the server was absent. This was particularly inexcusable, because the restaurant was so devoid of patrons.

You'd think they'd wait on us hand and foot. The remaining side dishes ranged from uninspired to limp, with the one exception being the garlic mashed potatoes, which were wonderfully spicy, almost too much so. 

They did have a large display of desserts, and I give them credit for presentation. All looked great. These were the more upscale-type of desserts: small portions, rich choices. Things like raspberry s'mores, melon brulee, chocolate pudding tart. The problem is, these also managed to disappoint. They contained sweetness (though not as much as you'd expect) but lacked any creative spark. The flavors didn't gel. Maybe these were old desserts, recycled from previous days also without many patrons?

Our service was great, with quick refills and quick clearing of dirty plates (the server thus got a 15% tip, despite this not being table service - they have the temerity to send along a tip tray with an explanation of tips for foreigners, and imply 15-20% is normal for this kind of restaurant too). But the other staff stood around and chatted with each other (witness the problem with the signature dish, the brisket). The characters on our visit were Pluto and Goofy, which took turns every half hour coming out to the few tables that had visitors. They were fine, as far as that goes, but they also weren't anything amazing, nor did they spend a long time here, despite not having other apparent duties. On the other hand, we had not one, but two utensils that had crusted-on food. This is quite inexcusable when the restaurant is so empty of patrons. They need to work harder at perfection, not less hard, when the clientele hasn't decided to descend in droves just yet.

For this restaurant to charge what it did bordered on criminal. The food was uninteresting, most of the staff unengaged, and the prices far too high. Character meals, when they work, are great because you have to eat anyway, and why not skip the lines to meet the characters? In this case, though, eating literally anywhere else at Disney World would have yielded better food, and it would have cost less. For these prices, I'd rather wait in line to see the characters.