Chef Mickey's
Chef Mickey's is a buffet character restaurant on the Grand Canyon Concourse of Disney's Contemporary Resort in Walt Disney World. Mickey Mouse and four other core Disney characters, dressed as chefs, visit tables during breakfast and dinner. The restaurant opened at the Contemporary on December 22, 1995, having previously operated for five years at the Disney Village Marketplace, now Disney Springs.
History
The first Chef Mickey's opened in July 1990 at the Disney Village Marketplace, in the space later occupied by the Rainforest Cafe. It was not originally a buffet: guests ordered from a menu while characters circulated. It closed in September 1995 ahead of its move.
On December 22, 1995, Chef Mickey's reopened at Disney's Contemporary Resort, taking over the space of the Contemporary Café on the fourth-floor concourse. The Contemporary, which opened with Walt Disney World in 1971, had hosted earlier forms of character dining, including the Character Café of the late 1980s, but Chef Mickey's gave the resort a permanent and heavily promoted character restaurant. Its position placed it a short walk from Magic Kingdom and directly on the Resort Monorail line.
The restaurant marked its thirtieth anniversary at the Contemporary in December 2025. Its format has been adjusted several times: periods of serving three meals a day, a temporary change to family-style rather than buffet service after the resort's 2020 closure, and a later return to a self-service buffet. The character line-up and the basic premise have remained unchanged throughout.
Setting
Chef Mickey's occupies an open area of the Grand Canyon Concourse, the Contemporary's central atrium. The room is not enclosed in the conventional sense: tables sit beneath the resort's A-frame, alongside the 90-foot (27 m) ceramic mural by Mary Blair that lines the concourse, and monorail trains pass through the building on their beam a short distance from the dining area. That combination of mural, atrium and passing trains gives the restaurant a setting unlike any other at Walt Disney World, and makes it louder and more animated than most table-service locations.
Decoration inside the restaurant is kitchen-themed, with oversized utensils, chef's hats and colourful tiling. A buffet occupies the centre, arranged in sections for hot dishes, salads, a children's selection and desserts.
Cuisine
Breakfast is a conventional American buffet, including scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, breakfast potatoes, biscuits and gravy, fresh fruit and Mickey-shaped waffles. Dinner adds carved meats, pasta, salmon and other hot entrées, vegetables and a range of miniature desserts, several named for or decorated with the characters. A children's section at lower height offers items such as chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese and corn dogs. Prices are fixed per adult and per child, with the character appearances included in the price.
Character dining
Chef Mickey's is one of the few character meals at Walt Disney World at which all five members of the group sometimes called the Fab Five appear together: Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto. All wear chef's whites, hats and neckerchiefs, with Mickey as head chef. They circulate individually, visiting each table for photographs and autographs, and periodically lead a celebration in which guests twirl napkins above their heads while a song plays — a routine that has been part of the restaurant since its Contemporary opening.
Because it offers the full group in one sitting, close to Magic Kingdom, the restaurant is frequently used by families as a first character meal, and reservations for breakfast in particular are among the most competitive at the resort.