Hi Monica,
Welcome back to the Disney Parks Moms Panel! Thank you for bringing this question to us. The monorail is my favorite mode of transportation at the Walt Disney World Resort!
More than likely, the monorail will be running after 10:00 p.m. on the evening you have dinner. As a general rule, it runs 30 minutes prior to the earliest park opening and one hour after the latest park closing. For more information, check the
Resort Monorail guide. Also, check the
Park Hours for the date of your dinner to be sure.
Be advised that the lines for the monorail can be quite long when Magic Kingdom closes. So, if possible, time your departure from dinner before or after Magic Kingdom closes. Or, you could honestly walk to Magic Kingdom and catch the bus from there to the Polynesian if the monorail lines are extraordinarily long. The walk to Magic Kingdom from the Contemporary is about 10 minutes. After eating all of that delicious food at the California Grill, you may want to walk!
The last time we visited the
California Grill, we arrived to our reservation about 30 minutes early and requested a table by the window. We were lucky enough to get one and stayed through the Magic Kingdom fireworks.
Dinner took us about two hours for our family of four but that included taking a complete break to watch the fireworks.
I do hope you have a magical dinner!
-Donyell