5

Disney Snack Round-Up

As you know we recently returned from a week long trip to Disney World, which you can read about here.  While we enjoyed the rides and meeting the characters,  my husband and I were probably most excited about the food!  We purchased the basic Disney Dining Plan which includes one quick service meal, one sit-down restaurant meal and one snack per person, per day.  What counts as a “snack” credit differs by park and includes everything from bottled water, a bag of chips or all of the items featured below.  When looking at each kiosk’s menu, the items that can be used with a snack credit have a Disney Dining purple and white square symbol next to it.   Below is our Disney Snack Round-Up of the snacks and desserts that we ate on our trip!  Please note that the four of us SHARED all of these treats.  This sometimes meant just a bite or two of something.  I did not gorge on all of these snacks by myself (though sometimes, I really wanted to)!

Note:  *It is no secret that counter service restaurants and kiosks will provide you with a cup of ice water at no charge.  It was super hot while we were in Disney  and we took full advantage of this!  However, the water at Magic Kingdom had a funny taste to us and we did not like it at all!  I recommend bringing water with you to this particular park.  All of the other parks had water that tasted fine!

ANIMAL KINGDOM:

 

We got this Chocolate Chip Cookie Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich from Dino Bites at Dinoland in Animal Kingdom.  This cookie sandwich is gigantic!  A huge scoop of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two large, soft chocolate chip cookies = deliciousness!

EPCOT:

 

Now, we have not tried the famous Cronut from Dominique Ansel in NYC.  However, we picked up this Croissant Doughnut at the Refreshment Port near Canada in Epcot.  It’s covered with cinnamon sugar and was delicious!  Sweet on the outside and soft, pastry-like layers on the inside.

 

We had these Churros con Cajeta as the dessert selection for one of our quick service lunches at La Cantina de San Angel in the Mexico section of World Showcase at Epcot.  However, these can be purchased using a snack credit.  They were sprinkled with cinnamon and come with a caramel dipping sauce.  They are served hot, but by the time we got around to eating them they were warm and had lost their crispiness.

 

This Watermelon Paleta was our second quick service dessert selection from La Cantina de San Angel.  This also can be purchased using a snack credit.  These Mexican ice pops comes in other flavors including Mango, Lime and Coconut. This was a nice refreshing treat on a hot day!  It wasn’t super sweet and you can taste the watermelon.

 

We got this Berry Cream Puff at the Kringla Bakeri og Café in Norway at the World Showcase.   This was a giant cream puff with fresh berries (blackberries, raspberries and a strawberry).  The cream was not too sweet and we really enjoyed this.

 

We also got this Kringla Sweet Pretzel with Chocolate at the Kringla Bakeri og Café.  I have to say that this pretzel looks better than it tastes.  This pretzel is not a traditional tasting pretzel (like the Mickey pretzel), but is more pastry-like.  It’s a sweet raisin pretzel topped with icing and a chocolate drizzle.  I found this pretzel to be a bit dry and wasn’t the biggest fan.

 

We stopped at L’Artisan des Glaces in France at the World Showcase and the kids ended up choosing this Mixed Berries Sorbet Waffle Cone to share. This French ice cream shop sells 16 different flavors of ice cream/sorbet so there’s sure to be a flavor to please everyone!

My husband and I shared this Peaches & Cream Macaron Ice Cream Sandwich from L’Artisan des Glaces.  The macarons were larger than the typical size, but not huge and I found them to be a bit on the sweet side.  Not my favorite dessert, but it was cool and refreshing on a hot day!

 

We ate a quick dinner at the Electric Umbrella in Future World at Epcot and were able to choose two desserts as part of our quick service meals.  The first one we chose was this Strawberry Cheesecake.  There’s a thin graham cracker crust layer on the bottom.  This was a creamy cheesecake and the kids loved the strawberry gel swirls.

 

There were pretty slim pickings, dessert-wise to choose from at the Electric Umbrella.  The second dessert we chose was this Chocolate Cupcake topped with vanilla icing and sprinkles.  The icing was a bit on the sweet side but the cupcake itself was moist and chocolate-y.

*Not pictured:  We stopped by Karamell-Kuche in Germany at the World Showcase in Epcot.  There we bought a large bag of Caramel Popcorn as well as a Caramel and Peanut Covered Apple that we brought home with us.  The person helping us had cut the apple into four pieces for us.  When we got home, we realized that we shouldn’t have had her cut it, as the apple turned brown.  It still tasted really good though!  The popcorn was really tasty and addicting as well!

HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS:

I had read about and was really looking forward to having a seasonal milkshake at Min and Bill’s Dockside Diner.  When I found out the seasonal milkshake flavor was blue raspberry, I opted to pass. A blue raspberry milkshake did not sound at all appetizing to me!

 

We had a late lunch at Pizza Planet and chose these two cupcakes as our dessert choices with our quick service meals.  The Olaf Cupcake was a carrot cake cupcake.  It had cream cheese icing and little white candy sugar crystals.  The Cappuccino Cupcake was a chocolate cupcake with a mocha chocolate icing.  We loved the toffee bits that decorated the outside of this cupcake.  These were both really good!

 

This Funnel Cake with Soft Serve Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberry Topping and Chocolate Sauce was our “best-bang-for-your-snack-credit” find!  We found this gem at the Oasis Canteen located near the entrance to the Indiana Jones Stunt Show Spectacular.  Yes, this can be all yours for ONE snack credit!  Out-of-pocket this costs over $8!  Ice cream on funnel cake….the hot with the cold…. I cannot believe we had never seen or heard about this until now! This was so good!

MAGIC KINGDOM:

 

By far, one of our favorite Disney snacks is the Dole Whip Float.  This tasty treat is found at Aloha Isle in Adventureland.   Pineapple soft serve is swirled into cold pineapple juice for a cold, tasty and refreshing treat!  Dole Whip Floats can also be found at Disney’s Polynesian Resort.  The Pineapple Whip soft serve is also available at Tamu Tamu Refreshments in Animal Kingdom and can be ordered with Coconut or Dark Rum over it (but not available as a snack credit!).

 

We got this Cinnamon Roll at Gaston’s Tavern, but it’s also available at the Main Street Bakery.  I had read about this snack before traveling to Disney and was excited to try it.  I found it to be a bit dry though and wasn’t very impressed.  My husband reminded me too late that the secret is to ask for extra icing!

 

We got our Mickey Pretzel at the Lunching Pad in Tomorrowland, but they are available throughout the park.  A Sweet Cream Cheese pretzel is also available.  This is your classic soft pretzel, an amusement park staple!

POP CENTURY RESORT:

 

We only had one quick service dinner at the Pop Century Resort where we stayed.  This was a late after 9 PM meal after a very long day at Hollywood Studios.  We weren’t impressed with the dessert selection but after seeing a picture of this Tie Dye Cheesecake on a poster every time we went in the elevator, we decided we had to try it.  This was a single serving, small, round container with a very thin cake layer bottom and a cheesecake top.  It tasted like regular cheesecake and wasn’t bad.  We’ve had better and worse, as far as cheesecake goes.

What are your favorite Disney snacks? 

4

Disney Vacation Recap

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And we are back from our six night, seven day Disney vacation.  If you follow along on Instagram, then you have seen some of the fun and food (yes, there was LOTS of food) we had on this trip.  The last time we went to Disney, our kids were 3 and 5.  My son doesn’t remember anything from his first trip, except for what he sees in the scrapbook that I made of the vacation.  We were really excited for this trip because he’s now seven and we could all ride the roller coasters together.

We ended up leaving on Wednesday night at 10 PM and driving straight through the night.  The goal was for us to get past Washington D.C. before morning rush hour.  We actually made it to North Carolina by 7:30 AM, where the Weekend Chef took a little detour to get some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and of course….coffee!

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We had hotel reservations in Savannah Georgia and made it there by 2:00 PM with lots of bathroom and stretch breaks along the way.   We ate at our first Waffle House and then went to the hotel and crashed for several hours.  We woke up, watched some television and by 10 PM we were all asleep again.  We were exhausted!  We woke up around 6:30 the next morning, had breakfast at the hotel and then left for Disney.  We arrived at Disney Pop Century hotel around 1 PM and were able to get into our room early.

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We unpacked and then headed to the pool.  We decided not to do a park the first day since we weren’t sure what time we’d get to the hotel and had 6 PM dinner reservations at Cape May restaurant at the Beach Club Resort.

Saturday we spent the day at Magic Kingdom with a lunch break at Whispering Canyon at the Wilderness Lodge Resort.

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Sunday we spent the day at Animal Kingdom with dinner reservations at Tusker House with Mickey and other characters.

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Monday we had breakfast at the Contemporary Hotel with Chef Mickey and Friends and then headed to Hollywood Studios for the day.

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Tuesday we spent the day at Epcot and had dinner at Akershus in Norway with the Princesses.  Wednesday we were back at the Magic Kingdom and later had dinner at Ohana at the Polynesian Resort.

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Thursday we spent the day at Epcot and ended up leaving around 8 PM to start our drive back home.  We stayed at the same hotel in Savannah, Georgia Thursday night, got up at 6:30 AM (or more like 7 in my case!) and spent the entire day driving home.  We ended up getting home at 1:30 AM!

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Despite the heat and crowds, we had an amazing trip to Disney.  With my super planning before we left, coordinating Extra Magic Hours, Fast Passes, dining reservations, etc. we feel like we did everything that we wanted on this trip.  We rode all the major rides and my son only cried after Space Mountain, Expedition Everest, Tower of Terror and Haunted Mansion (I had to walk him out after the intro of Haunted Mansion, he didn’t even make it on the ride!).

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We have tons of character autographs including at least three different Mickeys, Aladdin, Princess Tiana and Dr. Facilier (as seen above, from The Princess and the Frog, which we own and I’ve never seen!) Mary Poppins and Alice in Wonderland! I referred to Disney lover Brenda from Chatting Over Chocolate prior to our trip about the Memory Maker package and ended up purchasing it.  Between our cell phones, our DSLR camera and the Memory Maker package we have TONS of photos!

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And of course, we tried to make the most of our meal plan, trying new restaurants and eating lots of yummy treats!

Unfortunately, the way we do Disney (at the park when it opens and staying until the fireworks/night time show/etc.) is not relaxing.  We’ve spent the weekend catching up on sleep and getting readjusted to “real life.”  We think we may do another Disney vacation in four years or so, with our next big vacation being something more relaxing!