Are you ready for an out-of-this-world guest review? Join me in welcoming guest author Miranda Roberts! She’s sharing her experience at the Star Wars Galactic Dine-In Breakfast at the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater in Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World!

My husband and I are not morning people. Not remotely. We are the people who are last out of the park at night, and stay sound asleep until late morning. We love cocktails and fireworks and chilling out by the pool.

But we could not pass up the chance to eat breakfast with Darth Vader! So, despite not really knowing anything else about the set up of this event, we took a chance and made a rare breakfast reservation. We were super excited about this meal!

Atmosphere

As we approached the Sci-Fi restaurant on a very sunny morning, there were friendly cast members waiting to direct us to the check-in desk, and they had added special signs to the front of the restaurant. Having extra cast members with directional arrows helped us overcome our bleary-eyed morning confusion about where we were heading.

Once we had checked in, we were told to wait near the entrance until we were called. We only had to wait around five minutes before a server came looking for us “To join the rebellion”.

We joined a short line of about 6 people at the restaurant entrance to have our PhotoPass picture taken with Darth Vader and Boba Fett. The price of this was already built into the meal. Then a server showed us to our seats and explained a little about the restaurant to us.

If you have dined at the Sci-Fi before, the set-up is exactly as normal with a couple of extra signs outside to advertise the event. For those who haven’t eaten here before, the restaurant is one large room made up like a movie set to look like a drive-in movie theatre from the 50’s. The lighting is very low, to make it seem like evening, and there are stars twinkling in the night sky around you.

The tables are mostly cars that have three rows of seats. Each row seats 2 adults or 3 kids. Since my husband and I were alone on this trip, we were seated in the back row of a car, and the family in front were told they had picked us up as galactic hitch-hikers!

All the cars face the big movie screen at the front, which was showing a series of clips from Star Wars and related spin-offs. There were clips from all the different episodes, plus some cartoon adaptations and some spoof adverts and posters. The Cantina band also had a segment, which was really cool.

The twilight setting and movie clips set a great atmosphere for the event. Throughout the meal, characters circulated that included Stormtroopers, Jawas, and Greedo. They were all pretty playful, with a Stormtrooper trying to steal my chocolate milk, and making guests kneel like prisoners for photos! It’s worth noting that we only saw bad guy or neutral characters – there were no “hero” characters at this meal.

But with the dark lighting in the restaurant, most guests were having problems taking pictures with the characters. With a flash, faces were too over-exposed, and the backdrop looked weird. Without the flash, you can barely see who is in the photo. You’re going to see I struggled with the same problem for these food pictures too; sorry 🙁

To help you time your FastPasses, it’s worth saying that we were seated at 9:40am and we left the restaurant at 10:50am. There is no way we could have eaten faster, so this was one of the longer Disney meals we have shared based on our experience that day. Other people might have quicker days, but it would be a shame to rush it with so much to see on the screen and around you.

Now let’s talk about the food!

Eats

The menu and our server explained that we would automatically be brought a selection of pastries. These would then be followed by our choice of fruit salad or yogurt parfait, and then we had a choice of entrée. The meal would then end with a “sweet surprise”.

She started us off with a choice of drinks, and there was a very wide choice of refillable drinks -– tea, coffee, hot chocolate, juices, sodas, chocolate milk, and a fun Blue Milk (like Luke Skywalker drank in Episode 4 at home on Tatooine).

It was blue raspberry flavored and my husband enjoyed the fun and novelty of it, but switched to Coke after one glass. There were also a couple of cocktails, but not being morning people, that was too much of a stretch for our systems. We stuck with soft drinks!

Our pastry platter had six pieces, with three different offerings. All these came automatically, almost as soon as we had sat down.

The swirl pastry, that our server said “looks like Princess Leia’s hairdo”, was an almond pastry, the C3PO chocolate one was a mini double chocolate muffin, and the one with Darth Vader was a mini vanilla cream puff. All three were really delicious.

The almond swirl kind of reminded me of frangipane (which I know is popular with the DFB team!) and the chocolate muffin was very moist with good chocolate chunks, but we both liked the Darth cream puff best. It had a really delicious sweet vanilla custard inside, while the pastry was crisp and flaky.

For our next course, my husband had the fruit salad and I had the yogurt parfait. Both came with adorable Yoda shaped cut-outs of melon, which was lucky since we both would have been jealous if just one person got it!

The fruit salad was nice, varied and fresh. The parfait had several layers — fruit, then plain yogurt, then a fruit yogurt (I think blueberry) on top, with a really tasty, crunchy granola sprinkled all through it. I loved the parfait.

The plain yogurt layer tasted like it had quite a good dose of honey in there, too, but that may have just been the taste from the excellent granola.

Next it was onto the entrees. Each was whimsically named with a Star Wars reference, which added to the fun. My husband chose the Kessel Run (smuggling route for spices!) – “Grilled Beef Tenderloin with Baby Spinach with Bacon and Cheddar Custard on a Roasted Tomato, with Cheesy Horseradish Potatoes” – since he is unable to resist beef at any time of day.

Each part of the dish was well cooked, and tasted fresh. It was a filling portion but not as large as some servings at Disney can be. He said the bacon and cheddar custard just tasted like an egg dish, which made him happy, as you can see it was a solid, not a sauce.

The beef was well seasoned, cooked perfectly as he had requested (medium rare), and the potatoes were nice and cheesy, with only a very subtle horseradish flavor. He said he would definitely choose this again.

I chose the Imperial Delight – which was kind of like a thinner version of Tonga Toast – French toast stuffed with cinnamon and bananas, drizzled with syrup and a strawberry compote.

I really liked this dish, but I was surprised that it was coated in crunchy breadcrumbs. This was nice for a while, but added to the feeling that I was eating something with a lot of oil. I guess that’s how they make sure the thing cooks as a whole. I would have it again, but I would choose a drink to go with it that was a bit more sour or sharp. “Chosen the chocolate milk I should not have,” as Yoda would say!

Then we had our “sweet surprise” we had been promised. This was a super-fun presentation, with a server wheeling a cart around the restaurant filled with dry ice, glow cubes, and colored lights. She gave each diner a small portion of what she described as an inter-glactic strawberry mousse, with strawberry bubbles and orange nuggets.

Honestly, the mousse didn’t look very visually appealing to me, and was definitely the weirdest part of the meal. It was very sweet — and this is from a girl who had just eaten a plate of sugar drenched French toast — it really was sweeeeeet!

The strawberry bubbles were fun -– they were little pockets of juice that were suspended in the mousse, so that as you put them in your mouth they burst and flood your mouth with strawberry juice. The orange nuggets I guess were the bits on top, but honestly the thing just tasted of strawberries and nothing else to me. It was fun, and I did quite enjoy it, but was the only thing we tried that I didn’t finish. I think kids might love this more than I did.

Overall

We booked this meal based on blind faith in Disney. With no idea of the set-up or menu, the $48 price tag felt pretty steep, but I am glad we took the chance because we had a great time. The character interactions were fun, our server was good, and the food was enjoyable.

My tip for you if you’re dining here is to practice your camera settings somewhere internal with low artificial lighting — I would suggest the wait line for the Seas with Nemo in Epcot, or other darkened queues. That way you can capture a great photo with a Stormtrooper in between bites of breakfast. Be aware that Darth Vader and Boba Fett did not circulate around the restaurant — they stayed outside in the entrance hall, so your only interaction with them is as you arrive.

If Disney keeps running this event, we would definitely return, and we both recommend this meal to other Star-Wars loving guests, too. If you don’t like the films though, save your money, and go for something different. The food was really nice, but it wasn’t worth $48 if you didn’t enjoy the characters and experience, too.

But for us, the Force was strong with this event, and recommend it, we do!

For more information, check out more details on the Star Wars Character meals offered through June 15, 2014.

Miranda Roberts is British and lives just north of London, but she and her husband come to Florida at least once a year to visit Disney World. They are both such Disney fans that they got married at Disney’s Wedding Pavilion several years ago! They hope one day to be rich enough to stay in deluxe resorts and stay at Disney at least four times a year.