Halloween decorations on Main Street, Disneyland
The faint vibration of bass and the muffled, familiar lyrics to “This is Halloween” float through my front door. No doubt it’s being played at full blast and I can vividly picture my best friends bouncing along to the chorus as they wait for me outside.
It’s 7:30AM.
Today is our annual Disney Day, and while our Disney Days have always been planned ordeals, this one is particularly meticulous. We've conducted our meetings, we’ve done our research, and our Excel file is ready with lists of foods, rides, and our full itinerary planned. We are set to make our one day as park hoppers fulfill our Disney cravings for the whole year. Bellowing along to the music, we coast into the Mickey and Friends parking lot, $100 collectively in our pockets and our sole mission to try as much Halloween Disney food as we can embossed into our minds.
It’s 7:30AM.
Today is our annual Disney Day, and while our Disney Days have always been planned ordeals, this one is particularly meticulous. We've conducted our meetings, we’ve done our research, and our Excel file is ready with lists of foods, rides, and our full itinerary planned. We are set to make our one day as park hoppers fulfill our Disney cravings for the whole year. Bellowing along to the music, we coast into the Mickey and Friends parking lot, $100 collectively in our pockets and our sole mission to try as much Halloween Disney food as we can embossed into our minds.
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Disney’s history with Halloween time has always been as playful and energetic as everything else Disney has produced. Its beginnings can arguably be traced to the 1929 Disney animated short “The Skeleton Dance,” which featured whimsical dancing skeletons that have been one of the postmarks of Halloween reaction images online even to this day. Disneyland itself has been incorporating Halloween treats into its menus for quite some time now, and, as of recently, the Disney “Foodie” community is expanding exponentially. Search up “Disneyland Halloween Food” and you’ll get thousands of food guides. In my search, I found great blogs that were all fine and dandy, but most of them seemed to have one gaping problem in my eyes.
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I’m not an Annual Pass holder. I’m a broke college student who spends the year looking forward to one night of Disneyland per year. I love numbers and specifics and clear directions, and when I couldn’t find a guide that fit my standards, I set out to create my own. With that sole burning mission in my mind, I roped my two best friends into helping me curate what I hope is a helpful food guide on a budget of $100.
California Adventure Entrance Gate
Sleep-muddled and breakfast-deprived, we hobble into California Adventure and beeline to Cars Land for our first meal of the day.
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1. Slow Burnin' Mac & Cheese Cone ($8.99)
The first item on our checklist was the one that we were especially excited about: the Slow Burnin’ Mac & Cheese Cone found at Cozy Cone 3 in Cars Land. All three of us are lovers of spicy food and mac & cheese, and so this combination was our dream dish. We went into it expecting a true spicy punch, but were met with a cheesy mixture that more closely resembles spicy nacho cheese rather than the true phantom sliding burn of a spicy pepper. Though it was not truly that spicy, this cone was definitely one of our favorite Halloween dishes that Disney had to offer. We savored every last bite, mourning the texture of putty cheese as we resigned ourselves for a morning full of sweets. |
Amount Left: $100-$9.69= $90.31
2. Pumpkin Spice Shake ($5.99) The onslaught of sweets began with a strong start in the Pumpkin Spice Shake found at Flo’s V8 Café in Cars Land. It was a gorgeous beverage with a generous portion of whipped cream, graham crackers, and pumpkin spice sugar to top it off. If you look closely, you can even spot ghost-shaped glitters nestled into its pillowy cream. After scooping up the whipped cream with our graham cracker bits, we sucked down some of the shake in delight at its intense caramel flavor. But as we kept going, we realized that it only tasted of caramel, not pumpkin, and that pure caramel flavor got overpowering quickly. The three of us got around halfway through the drink before deciding to throw in the towel. It was simply too sweet and too much caramel for our tastes, but we would highly recommend getting it if you have a sweet tooth and have a family of 5 to actually finish it with. |
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Amount Left: $90.31-$6.45=$83.86
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3. Caramel Apple Smoothie ($5.99) Slightly nauseated by the amount of sweet we had just consumed, we continued onto our next task, which was to get a Caramel Apple Smoothie from Schmoozies in Hollywood Land. The drippings of caramel sauce swirled the drink like an omen and we turned to each other with a wince before trying the first sip. It wasn’t horrendous, but it definitely was my least favorite drink of the day. It tasted like applesauce, which I love the taste of, but not as a drink. I could live with the gulps of apple pulp, but the drink immediately lost any redeeming qualities it had when we reached the bottom of it. The whipped cream and lumps of suspiciously neon green apple shot their way through the straw, leaving a mouthful of clashing textures and, frankly, clashing flavors. We had already had enough sweets to last the week, but the day had only begun. |
Amount Left: $83.86-$6.45=$77.41
4. Fire Dragon Tacos ($10.99) Our savior from a sweet overdose came in the form of soft-shelled Fire Dragon Tacos found at the Studio Catering Co. food truck in Hollywood Land. We received our three bite-sized tacos, the perfect number for the three of us, and clinked them together before we scarfed them down. After that horrendous smoothie, these tacos tasted like heaven. In hindsight, the meat was on the tougher side and a little too charred, but the taste of them was still great. I’m very much the type of person who separates each different type of food on my plate so that they don’t touch each other, but the mess of toppings on this taco worked perfectly together. But don’t let the name fool you; these tacos were not spicy in the least. |
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Amount Left: $77.41-$11.84=$65.57
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5. Green Apple Spell Lemonade ($5.99) Our savory cravings sated for the moment, we steeled ourselves to continue our decent into sweets madness with the Green Apple Spell Lemonade found in Smokejumpers Grill in Grizzly Peak. This was the one sweet drink that I found myself getting excited for. I held out for the lemonade to have a tartness to it so that the sweet from the cherry syrup and poppers wouldn’t be too unbearable, and it fulfilled my wishes. This was by far my favorite drink of the whole day as far as taste and texture. The cherry poppers were softer that what I was imagining, but were nonetheless great fun to eat. I thought they would be firm enough to make a “pop” when bitten into, but they were surprisingly plush. A distant voice in my mind reminded me of a comment I had heard about it feeling like we were eating Nemo eggs, and I promptly submerged that voice and told it to let me enjoy my lemonade in peace. |
Amount Left: $65.57-$6.45=$59.12
6. Slow Burnin' Mac & Cheese Cone... Again ($8.99) I have a confession to make. We broke from our itinerary. Originally, this slot was supposed to be for the Bat Wing Raspberry Sundae found at Clarabelle’s Hand Scooped Ice Cream on Buena Vista Street, but our shriveled sweet teeth were begging us for mercy. With finality, I set the lemonade down and leveled my gaze on my two best friends. “I’m making the executive decision to replace this raspberry sundae with more mac & cheese.” The second mac & cheese was just as great as the first one, and we, unsurprisingly, don’t regret not getting the raspberry sundae, especially since we had another raspberry treat lined up soon. |
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Amount Left: $59.12-$9.69=$49.43
Disneyland Entrance Gate
After our second cheesy meal, we hopped over to Disneyland for the rest of our food escapades.
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7. Maleficent Churro ($6.25) Right off to the side of the iconic Sleeping Beauty’s castle, we made our first stop in Disneyland at a churro cart that sold the Maleficent Churro. Disney introduced a wide variety of Halloween-themed churros, but this is the one we decided to purchase due to the others mostly being themed off of green apples, caramel, pumpkin spice, and other flavors that we had already tried earlier in the day. The churro was a sight to behold. It had black cookie crumbs coating the outside with a mix of green and purple dyed sugar. We opted to get the marshmallow dipping sauce for an extra dollar because life’s too short not to get marshmallow dipping sauce for an extra dollar. The churro itself tasted essentially identical to the Oreo churro, but it looked beautiful while it lasted. |
Amount Left: $49.43-$6.25=$43.18
 Photo credit to Heather Sievers from DisneyFoodBlog.com
8. Enchanted Black Rose Mousse ($6.99) We then entered Fantasyland’s Red Rose Tavern for the Enchanted Black Rose Mousse. This was another dessert that I was initially very excited for because I read that it was covered with a dusting of glitter. Once we received the dessert, I immediately whipped out my phone’s flashlight to see the glitter in action. To my immense disappointment, not even a flicker blinked back at me. The mousse is likely covered with a dusting of some sort of sugar, but it’s certainly not glitter. Despite it appearing significantly less ethereal than what I had built it up to look like in my mind, we dug in and were pleasantly surprised by how good it tasted. The chocolate mousse was very light and airy, and the raspberry tart at the bottom melded perfectly with the dark chocolate. By now you’ve likely pieced together that our group isn’t overly fond of sweets, but we scraped the bottom of the plate for every petal of this rose. |
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Amount Left: $43.18-$7.53=$35.65
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9. Frozen Abuelita Chocolate and Horchata ($5.99) Stepping into Frontierland, we were greeted by bright flowers and friendly skeletons from the movie Coco. Their smiling faces energized us for the drink we would be trying at Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante: the Frozen Abuelita Chocolate and Horchata. The orange glob perched right on top was somewhat daunting in how rich it looked, but we dove our straws in and took a deep sip. It was... strange. It didn’t quite taste like horchata but it didn’t quite taste like a chocolate shake either. Furrowing my brows, I took a second sip. And a third. And so on, until I had drained half of the container and still didn’t quite know how I felt about it. I took this as a sign that I didn’t like it, and after some further deliberation with my friends, we decided to chuck the drink and move on. My final verdict on it is that it tasted more like chocolate than horchata, and it tasted like it was made with some kind of dairy or soy milk instead of rice milk. |
Amount Left: $35.65-$6.45=$29.20
10. Pumpkin Spice Beignets (3-pack) ($5.49) Beignets are one of our favorite Disney treats year-round. They hold a special place in our hearts, right there with Dole Whip and clam chowder in a bread bowl. Perhaps this is why we were skeptical of these Pumpkin Spice Beignets from the Mint Julep Bar in New Orleans Square. From the first bite, we could unfortunately tell that they were no match for the original beignets. They certainly do taste like pumpkin spice if you’re a fan of that, but they were heavier than the regular beignets. The breading seemed thicker, it was chewier, and, in our opinion, the pumpkin spice did not compliment the dough as well as powdered sugar does. We’d recommend that you skip these seasonal beignets and get the originals. |
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Amount Left: $29.20-$5.49=$23.71
California Adventure Pixar Pier
Originally, we were going to stop by Carnation Café on Main Street for a Firehouse Chicken Sandwich to end the day off with; however, our plans were thwarted when the server informed us that we needed to have reservations in order to enter the café. While we weren’t particularly heartbroken about not paying $17 for a chicken sandwich, we quickly had to reroute our plans for those final $20. We headed back over to California Adventure.
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11. Anti-Vampire Pizza (2 slices) ($8.99 ea.) Speeding to the backend of California Adventure, we picked up two slices of Anti-Vampire Pizza from Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta in Paradise (Pixar) Pier. As far as flavor goes, it was an alright pizza. We found that its claims of the presence of garlic were over-exaggerated. It tasted like a plain pizza that was a bit on the starchier and doughier side. We were quickly loosing sunlight at this point, and realized that we still had $5 to our name. |
Amount Left: $23.71-$19.37=$4.34
12. Mummy Donut ($5.49) I left my two best friends with the pizza slices as I grabbed my camera and made a mad dash across the park to get to Schmoozies in Hollywood Land for a Mummy Donut. We had attempted to get one in the morning when we got the Caramel Apple Smoothie, but the employee informed us that these donuts typically sell out in the morning, and the second batch isn’t delivered until 3:00PM. Luckily, they were in stock with I arrived panting to the window. This donut is heavy. I carried it all the way back across the park and it felt like I was cradling a newborn. People eyed me as I walked by with it, and some even approached me to ask where I got it. I felt very much like a new mother having her baby gawked at and formed an instant bond with this strangely large, heavy donut. I felt saddened slicing into him, but that sadness quickly morphed into slight concern as I noticed that I could barely get the knife through. It is dense, and resembles a croissant more than a donut. The peanut butter jelly insides were not filled enough to cover the sheer amount of dense bread this pastry has, and so, sadly, it was one of my least favorite snacks of the day. |
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Amount Left: $4.34-$5.92=-$1.58
Mickey and Friends Parking Lot
Our Recommendations (in no particular order):
When the sun finally set, we were released from our food scavenger hunt and dove directly into our rides checklist. We stayed until the parks closed, determined to ride all of our favorite rollercoasters at least once by the end of the night. It was nearing 1:00AM by the time we stumbled back to our car. One of my best friends dozed off in the back seat while the other voiced her sadness at leaving that mac & cheese behind between singing along to her Halloween playlist. We laugh and I belt along to the tunes with her. We may be $100 poorer, but we’re already starting our Excel sheets for next year.
- Enchanted Black Rose Mousse
- Maleficent Churro
- Slow Burnin' Mac & Cheese Cone
- Green Apple Spell Lemonade
- Fire Dragon Tacos
When the sun finally set, we were released from our food scavenger hunt and dove directly into our rides checklist. We stayed until the parks closed, determined to ride all of our favorite rollercoasters at least once by the end of the night. It was nearing 1:00AM by the time we stumbled back to our car. One of my best friends dozed off in the back seat while the other voiced her sadness at leaving that mac & cheese behind between singing along to her Halloween playlist. We laugh and I belt along to the tunes with her. We may be $100 poorer, but we’re already starting our Excel sheets for next year.
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