Where is your 'First Night Dinner' and why?

This is gonna be my first trip (BF has been to WDW before but never staying on site or with DDP) and we arrive on a Saturday afternoon so I picked 1900 Park Fare for our first dinner (despite staying at a different resort).

Reasons: 1) It's my first trip! I wanna see at least some characters without a queue, lol!
2) Cinderella is one of our top 5 Disney stories.
3) The menu I found acceptable (not dashing but as long as they offer a couple of things that suit our palates, we're happy).
4) Chance to take the monorail at dusk

I do think there are a TON of options, depending on what kind of experience you're looking for. Disney is fantastic just coz of that!
 
Over the past few years are go to place had been Trails End. Our home resort is BR at Wilderness Lodge, so the boat ride to Fort Wilderness is relaxing especially since we are always up and traveling early from the northeast. The food is good and simple. And if the spirit moves us after dinner we take the boat to MK and take in the sights .
 
We're coming from CA and won't do red eye flights, so we're never there early enough to visit a park on the first day. (Darn that 3 hour time difference!) The first two trips, we stayed at POR so we took the boat to (what was back then) Downtown Disney and ate at Planet Hollywood, which we thought was fun.

This time, we aren't landing until 7:20. We're planning to eat at Beaches and Cream the first night since we're staying at YC and they're open late. That way we can hang out in the Epcot resort area the first night.
 
we never go to the parks on arrival day, but hit up Disney Springs for the evening instead. So we always eat there
 


We have the same routine each trip. Arrive at SSR around 2-3, unpack and take a short break from the drive, boat over to DS and have a moscow mule or 2 and an app at Jock Lindseys, hit up a few shops and then on to Splittsville to catch part of a game on TV and an order of Macho Nachos and 1 or 2 beers then boat back to DS and crash and get ready for our first full day at WDW.
 
It's not dining plan but we love going to Grand Floridian Garden View Tea Room for Afternoon Tea. Unfortunately we can't this trip because we are flying in and I don't trust the weather will cooperate.
We love sipping tea, eating yummy sandwiches with decadent desserts and scones ... oh the scones. The meal fills us up and we just love the whole experience of Afternoon Tea :)
 


We typically take the first morning flight out. We'll go to a park for a couple of hours and then head back to the resort for dinner. It's been Boatwright's when staying at POR or Boma when staying at AKL. For our trip in August we are planning on Jiko for our arrival day. After a long day we'd rather be at the resort for dinner. Sometimes we pass out right after, sometimes we might hang around and have a drink or late night swim before crashing and sometimes we get a second (or third, or fourth) wind and head back out to the parks.
 
Where we are staying and if we had a car would greatly impact our first meal; assuming you aren't hitting a park that day. But our favorites are:

Hoop-Dee-Do Revue
'Ohana
1900 Park Fare
Chef Mickey's
Somewhere at Disney Springs

I haven't eaten here yet but I would add Storybook Dining at Artists' Point to the list.
 
It could be at a resort or Disney Springs. I don't like having to rush to get to an ADR on the arrival day, so I prefer anywhere I can go as a walk-in, whether it's quick service or a less busy table service place.
 
Our first meal for some reason has always been Ohana breakfast. Usually arrive late evening, and have Ohana next morning.
 
We used to go to Chef Mickey's on our first night. We got to knock off the characters from the get-go and it got us in the Disney mood.
 
The day we fly in we do Tusker House in AK. When we first started going with our DD5 in 2016 we knew we'd go to AK on the first day and wanted her to have a character meal. It just kind of stuck as "tradition" now. Plus the characters there have always been awesome with DD. She's special needs and takes a bit to warm up to non face characters and they've always gone the extra mile to get her comfortable.
First full day is always Magic Kingdom though and that means dinner at Liberty Tree. Our other favorites are Garden Grill and 1900 Park Fare.
 
My wife insists on making Chef Mickey's our first stop. She loves the characters, but... I actually don't understand the appeal.

There is nothing "great" there, but they have great choices. Some of the food is awesome, but simply doesn't match anything else offered. The best ham, ice cream and green beans. The menu (it's a buffet, so not a real menu) doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

I never say no to Chef Mickey's but it is more embracing the weird than anything else.
 
We land at 1730 with our first night at Boulder Ridge, so we are having a late girls night dinner at Storybook Dining. I can’t wait to meet Dopey.
 
We always catch the earliest flight we can and plan to go to Magic Kingdom in the afternoon after we are unpacked. We love Liberty Tree Tavern for our first meal. Not as hectic as most the restaurants and good comfort food. We do several character dining and buffets through our trips, those can get stressful with all the getting up and down for food and pics. After a busy morning getting to WDW we like to maximize our park time and eat in a relatively less stress place first. Our kids are 6 and 3.
 
My wife insists on making Chef Mickey's our first stop. She loves the characters, but... I actually don't understand the appeal.

There is nothing "great" there, but they have great choices. Some of the food is awesome, but simply doesn't match anything else offered. The best ham, ice cream and green beans. The menu (it's a buffet, so not a real menu) doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

I never say no to Chef Mickey's but it is more embracing the weird than anything else.

We will often book CM for our first night. WE find it to be a fun way to kick off a WDW trip, complete with a spin on the monorail, a stroll through the CR, and then dinner with the Fab 5. For my family, even though my DGD is now 17 and a far cry from the star struck 4 YO who was dressed in her Tinker Bell costume, hanging on to her autograph book for dear life, the memories of her first experience there, we share every time we go. And that brings up more memories.

I think that for many people dining is a way of evoking those warm memories of prior trips, either on a WDW vacation or any other, and people choose to be "traditional" for those memories.
 
Usually we either go to Disney Springs to eat at Wolfgang Puck Express or make a same day ADR at Boatwrights. Staying at POFQ we try for something close on the first night.
 

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