Tusker House is one of my favorite character breakfast options at Walt Disney World. It’s located in the Harambe area of Animal Kingdom near Kilimanjaro Safari and you can dine with Mickey, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy decked out in their finest safari gear.
As a fun Father’s Day treat, I booked a 1030am reservation for our family and my parents at Tusker House in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Even though I knew that we would be at Animal Kingdom as soon as the park opened, I opted for the later breakfast time so that it would serve as a brunch instead of just breakfast. We were able to get the lower breakfast pricing and the benefit of both the breakfast and lunch buffet choices since they start switching the buffet over to lunch at around 1045am. Lunch and dinner have the same spread and the same pricing so there’s no real advantage to booking a late lunch like there is with a late breakfast.
As soon as you walk into Tusker House, you’re transported to an open-air market in Africa. To the left are breads and salads, the back has entrees and a carving station, and the center section is full of pastries and desserts (that should not be missed!). Like all of Harambe Village in Animal Kingdom, the theming of the restaurant, especially the buffet area, is fantastic– they clearly went above and beyond in the Disney magic department!
As soon as we were seated, our server explained the character rotation to us and let us know that Goofy would be up first. Since it’s a buffet and there is always an issue with people being at the buffet when a character comes around (at least in our family!), she let us know which table to keep an eye on for an indication that we should stay put (or round up the kids) so that we didn’t miss any characters.
Donald was so cute in his safari gear!!
Mickey waffles!! The food at Tusker House is amazing, probably the best food of any Disney buffet that we’ve had the chance to try!! The spicy shrimp (sadly, not pictured) was the standout star of the lunch spread. Big, flavorful shrimp in a deliciously spicy sauce served over a bed of rice– I honestly could have eaten a plate of the shrimp and been completely satisfied!
Safari Daisy was so much fun! She was definitely the most interactive character that we met and had a ball playing with the kids.
Hugs from Daisy 🙂 Ellie absolutely LOVED Daisy! In the past, she’s been slow to warm up to characters but Daisy spent lots of time with her and by the end, I think Ellie wanted her to join our family for the day!
Our kids love buffets because they can get whatever they want to eat, and that often means way more bacon than I would normally let them have! They’re at an age where they can go up to the buffet on their own and get what they want making buffets a bit easier for our family than they were a few years ago. When you have to take little kids up and get their food along with your own, it can be more time-consuming and stressful so when our kids were littler we leaned toward doing family style character meals (like at ‘Ohana) instead of buffets.
Safari Mickey was great and posed with our family in a variety of configurations! We love meeting Mickey in all of his different outfits and his safari outfit definitely did not disappoint.
Happy 40th Anniversary, Mom and Dad!! A milestone anniversary wouldn’t be complete without a picture with the main Mouse!
Tusker House will definitely be on our must-do list from now on. The theming is amazing, the characters were great and the food was delicious– a win-win-win!! The 1030am reservation time worked really well for our family since everyone could fill up on breakfast and lunch foods and we didn’t need to eat again until dinnertime. It was easier to justify the high price of a character meal since it really counted as two meals that day.
Have you been to Tusker House?? What was your experience??
Hi! I love this post and your blog is one I will be following! We have done Tusker House for character dining on both of our trips, and I love it. Animal Kingdom is my fav park, and we stayed at AK Lodge our first trip in 2012. We also are a family of 7 with kids from 12 to 5 months so a lot in common. We also lived in Charlotte for 8 years and really miss it. Can’t wait to read more.
Author
Oh wow, we do have so much in common!! We love Animal Kingdom Lodge, too– we stayed in a savannah view room a few years ago and it was amazing!