Updates: Cinderella’s Royal Table opened today, one day earlier than its scheduled reopening date, with a 5 minute wait! Click here to check out all the details. We were also surprised by a special guest during our dining experience today. Click here to see who made a guest appearance during our meal! Stay tuned for our full review of Cinderella’s Royal Table.
Ever wanted to dine like royalty?
Vaulted Ceilings in Cinderella’s Royal Table
You can truly feel like a princess when you eat at Cinderella’s Royal Table in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. But, let’s be honest, this place has always been off-the-charts expensive.
Pre-closure, you could drop over $300 (after tax and tip) for your family of four, and it wasn’t even all you can eat. But we’ve always still recommended it as a one-and-done — because getting the experience to dine inside Cinderella Castle AND seeing five princesses at once almost made it worth the cost. Especially if this was your one and only experience to dine here.
And since the cost is so astronomical here, you’d expect that, with the news that CRT will be reopening SANS princesses, we’d see a drastic price reduction. After all, fan-favorite, all you can eat buffet Chef Mickey’s in Disney World’s Contemporary Resort reopened — character-less — at nearly half the cost of its original Fab Five-festooned dining experience. (And it’s actually a pretty good deal right now.)
Cinderella’s Royal Table
But you would be WRONG.
So…This Kind Of Seems Like A Rip-Off?
As it turns out, Cinderella’s Royal Table is reopening with only a $13 price reduction per meal for adults, going from $75 pre-closure to $62 when it reopens. $62!!! (FYI, kids will cost $37, compared to the previous $45.)
EDITOR’S UPDATE — FALL OF 2022: Please be aware that the price to dine at Cinderella’s Royal Table has increased since this post was initially published, and Breakfast costs $45 per adult (a $3 increase) and $29 per child (ages 9 and younger; a $2 increase). Lunch and Dinner are $67 per adult (a $5 increase) and $39 per child (ages 9 and younger; a $2 increase).
So let’s break down what you get for $67: bread basket, plastic sword or wand, plastic wishing star, (pretty mediocre but better than it used to be…I’m being honest) entree from a (smaller-than-you’d-expect) menu, dessert, non-alcoholic beverage. 🚫No princess meet and greets.🚫
Wand and Wishing Star at Cinderella’s Royal Table
But yes, you do get to eat in the castle. So let’s talk about that.
Maybe Disney Will Surprise Us…
Eating in Cinderella Castle is a big deal. That’s just the truth. Anytime you get a chance to dine in a Disney World weenie you should closely consider taking advantage of it. But even that may not be worth $67. So let’s put this out there into the universe: maybe Disney will surprise us.
Breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Table
When Be Our Guest Restaurant reopened in July with a too-expensive prix fixe lunch and dinner menu, they brought in a big deal extra — the Beast.
Beast!
Yep, the Beast himself — not advertised AT ALL as being there after reopening, even though he was a draw at dinner pre-closure — traverses the dining rooms every twenty minutes or so, gazing worriedly at the Enchanted Rose in the West Wing and bowing to his guests majestically in the Ballroom.
Beast with the Rose
This was huge. For those of us who weren’t expecting to see him and who had already accepted our fate of spending too much money on a meal solely because we’d get to see the inside of the Beast’s castle, this immediately made eating there almost worth it!
So what if Disney does this at Cindy’s, eh? What if Cinderella herself appears every 20 minutes to wind her way between the tables at a safe social distance, waving benevolently to diners and smiling pacifically to families who may or may not have bickered their way up Main Street earlier that morning (hey, we’ve all done it) and who are about to feel the pinch of a $250 meal? This would do a lot for the optics on this (IMHO) overpriced meal, right?
Cinderella
What Are The Chances?
Will they do it? Probably not. Disney has already visually decreed that princesses don’t wear masks — even when in socially-distanced, outdoor cavalcades. So having Cindy, mask-less, walk around an indoor, recycled-air restaurant in the middle of a pandemic would likely put her in too much danger in the current circumstances for them to attempt it (or for the union to allow it) I’m guessing.
Snow White Greeting Guests at Cinderella’s Royal Table
So that leaves us here, wondering how they’re justifying charging this much for a single mediocre meal with only the dining room itself as the draw.
Well, if you know us at all, then you know we’ve already got a reservation for Cinderella’s Royal Table on reopening day. We’ll be sharing any surprises and updates ASAP. So stay tuned to DFB and our social media channels for real-time updates and thoughts. It’s a mixed metaphor, but fingers crossed there’s “something there that wasn’t there before” to make this worth the price tag.
Click here to check out the new spooky character dining experience that’s coming soon to Disney’s Hollywood Studios!
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We will be ‘social distancing’ from WDW until park management comes to its senses and properly reopens sans all of this useless and over-priced nonsense.
Your email address will not be published. Neither will your comment if the DFB thought police don’t agree with it….Pathetic….
Be glad to read about your experience when it reopens. We started to make ressies for our trip in late October but it seemed way over priced for just a meal and one not too great anyway.
Maybe they could have the mice do a walk through. That would be special since you rarely see them.
Hi, Harry. Thanks for writing. I just hadn’t gotten to your comment yet.
Hi AJ,
Is the price $62 without tax and tip? I booked a reservation for 2 for myself and my 14 year old daughter’s first time to CRT and we are pretty excited. The total charged for 2 was $154.38 and doing my Disney math adding 6.5% tax and 18% tip equals about the $154.38 I was charged. I had read that some people were being charged the regular price of $75, but maybe that $75 is with tax and tip and maybe that was their confusion. Also, can we still use Tables in Wonderland discount or Passholder and get it refunded at the restaurant? I read this is how it was handled in the pre-pandemic days.
Thanks for all the info and joy you bring for WDW trips and in between trips!
Disney has starved everyone (for all things Disney) for so long, that anything they do now is seen as some kind of wonderful new thing that is just so awesome.
Kind of like towards the end of the movie “Castaway” where Tom Hanks’ character has been on the deserted island for 7 years, and then gets rescued, the first thing he wanted was ice.
It is amusing to see DFB writers fawn all over the meager offerings Disney has doled out, trying to make it like seeing a character is something never seen or done before, and how awesome it is.
I agree with Harry Callahan– we won’t be coming back to WDW until all this nonsense is gone. We won’t even buy Disney products until they remove their heads from their posteriors.
You have to prepay, and the price you pay includes taxes and tip. We booked a meal for lunch next week.
Nicole, we’ll be there tomorrow and ask.
Is the wand and sword only for children? Because I went 2 years ago and I didn’t one. I wasn’t even offered it. Just wondering. Thank you!
Ashley, I believe adults can typically have them. You may have to ask.
Saw this morning that Cinderella does make an appearance!!!! Although she does not wind through the tables. Yay!!!!
I LOVE you AJ!!! I feel like we’re friends… Ive watch your videos for so many years! Keep up the awesome work ! We are going back to WDW the week before Thanksgiving and are so looking forward to it! We want to go HOME. I look for your new video daily! Muah 💖💕💖💕
Why can’t they get clear masks? They’re available for people who are with deaf people who read lips. I’m not sure I explained it right but I know they’re out there.
Well, I see I’m not the only one censored by DFB for a critical comment, none of my posts made it past the Thought Police for months! Could it be there getting a kickback for only allowing rosey comments ?
“Anytime you get a chance to dine in a Disney World weenie you should closely consider taking advantage of it.” Is this a typo or is there a Disney World weenie experience I don’t know about?? 🙂
FYI DFB – you guys are great and I so enjoy checking in with what you’re up to (and eating!) at the parks.
As with all things Disney, it is over priced at best. We enjoyed breakfast at Cinderella’s castle close to 20 years ago and granted, it is a bucket list activity, but the pricing make it hard to reach for most guests. It is too bad, but the only way they can control the crowd crush is thru pricing, oh well, done and done…I doubt I will ever return to this attraction
Dana, hi! A Disney Parks weenie is a term Walt used for Park icons. 🙂
My observation is that if anyone expects to attend any kind of Disney experience cheaply is naive.
If you don’t like it, don’t do it.
A.J. I for one think that you guys are doing an awesome job at DFB. That said, I’m only on a very meager disability income, VERY meager, and I’ll be very happy if I can ever be able afford to go to WDW again let alone eat in the castle. I did years ago so that would be it for me.
We just got back and Cinderella did make an appearance!
We dined in November. No bread basket. No wand. No star. Cinderella was clear across the room. We were told she would be coming closer, to an empty top seating section. Almost like a balcony. She did not. Some guests did get a photo post card type card. We did not.