Ever wanted to dine like royalty?

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.)

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.)

So let’s break down what you get for $62: 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.

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 worth $62. So let’s put this out there into the universe: maybe Disney will surprise us.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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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Will you be trying to grab a reservation for Cinderella’s Royal Table for when it reopens? Let us know in the comments!

The post Disney World’s Charging HOW MUCH To Eat In The Castle Right Now? first appeared on the disney food blog.