In the pantheon of character meals at Walt Disney World, there’s only one where you can dine with big, fluffy friends straight out of the Hundred Acre Wood — and in a classic Magic Kingdom location: Crystal Palace!

Truth be told, we’ve had a bit of a roller coaster relationship with Crystal Palace over the years. Some visits have been good (like this lunch four years ago and like breakfast here back when you could get into the nearly-empty park!), and one was particularly awful (dinner at the end of the night = icky buffet remnants…I didn’t even do a post about it).

But the opportunity to dine with Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, and Tigger is pretty much a Disney World rite of passage and something that every Disney fan should do at least once. And dining in the Crystal Palace — a gorgeous building that’s been a mainstay since Magic Kingdom opened in 1971 — is a lovely experience.

But what about the food — arguably the most important aspect of any restaurant? It’s standard, but acceptable on most visits, with breakfast having, perhaps, the most interesting options with Pooh’s Breakfast Lasagna and Puffed French Toast being crowd favorites. And so I returned recently, for lunch this time, to see how things are going.

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