Disney Parks and popcorn go together like Mickey and Minnie and today is a great day to celebrate the yumminess because it’s National Popcorn Day! As if we needed another reason to enjoy another delicious Disney snack…
Nothing beats the smell of salt and butter filling the air as you walk by a popcorn cart. Whether it’s while walking around the parks or watching fireworks glitter in the sky, popcorn is the perfect on-the-go snack to munch on while enjoying the magic of Disney Parks and Resorts.
To start off, did you know that Pop Secret is the official popcorn of Disney Parks? That’s right! You can find their delicious buttery kernels at popcorn carts located across both Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts. And while you may enjoy that classic buttery flavor, there’s a few places where you can even find some unique specialty popcorn – such as the Cozy Cone Motel at Cars Land in Disney California Adventure park. Here, you’ll find a delicious array of flavors such as dill pickle, buffalo ranch, white cheddar, Sriracha, pizza and garlic parmesan. You can even order it in a cool Lightning McQueen souvenir bucket!
Over at Walt Disney World Resort, Epcot is ‘poppin’ with some fun specialty popcorn offerings. If you head over towards Future World West, you’ll find a popcorn cart that sells buffalo bleu cheese, sour cream and chive, and cheddar cheese popcorn. And if you’re looking for a little sweetness to add to your salty snack, you’ll want to travel over to Canada in the World Showcase for some maple popcorn. Or if you’re in the Germany pavilion, you can stop by Karamel-Küche, presented by Werther’s Original, to try some sweet and salty kernels. There you’ll find their popular fresh-made caramel-coated popcorn, and you can even watch while it’s being made!
Another fun popcorn offering at Epcot is available for a limited time during the Epcot International Festival of the Arts. If you visit the Odyssey Festival Showplace, you’ll find a popcorn pairing flight at The Painter’s Palate Food Studio. This flight comes with three unique beers each paired with a different flavor of popcorn. The first pairing is North Coast Brewing Co. Scrimshaw Pilsner Style Beer with Bacon Barbecue Popcorn; the second is M.I.A. Beer Company Jazz IPA with Jalapeño Ranch Popcorn; and the third pairing is Central 28 Beer Company Miss Mary Brown Oatmeal Brown Ale with Buffalo Bleu Cheese Popcorn.
In addition to these fun specialty popcorn offerings, you’ll also find Main Street Popcorn Company pre-packaged popcorn at select merchandise locations at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resorts. This popcorn comes in traditional flavors like caramel, kettle corn, cheddar and confetti. But you’ll also find some more unique options like Sriracha kettle corn, parmesan garlic, kettle corn with red alaea salt, truffle, maple bacon, and one of the most popular ones – churro!
So whether you prefer that classic buttery popcorn or those fun flavors, you’ll always have something to snack on for National Popcorn Day!
Delivery service is available daily between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.
For more portable versions, go to the Mint Julep Bar in New Orleans Square, where an order of three comes in a paper bag and is dusted with plenty of powdered sugar. (Note: Those lime-and-mint beverages in question are non-alcoholic.) With the return of the Fantasmic evening pyrotechnics show in Frontierland, the Mint Julep Bar is now also serving purple-sprinkles-covered Blackberry Beignets.
This non-dairy frozen treat debuted at Disneyland in 1976, created exclusively for Adventureland by the folks at Dole Pineapple. It has developed a passionate cult following—it has been called “a work of art” and has a podcast named after it—and is now offered at other Disney parks, as well as a few other scattered locations. The original, though, is at the Tiki Juice Bar stand outside the Enchanted Tiki Room. Order yours as a soft-serve, a float with pineapple juice, or be a rebel and ask for the lone pineapple spear. A pleasant surprise: the classic Dole Whip soft serve has only about 100 calories.
These mountain-shaped coconut treats—covered with white-chocolate icing and sugary “snow”—are a rarity among Disney-themed goodies in that they’re based not on a character, but an actual ride. The classic Matterhorn coaster is even within view of the macaroons’ Main Street home, the Mary Poppins-themed Jolly Holiday Bakery Café (look for the telltale weather vane on top).
The jumbo drumsticks offered at hot-food carts around the two parks—like Edelweiss Snacks in Fantasyland and the hot-foods cart in Hollywood Land—have inspired so much awe that an urban legend once floated around that they actually came from ostriches (they don’t). Granted, the hickory-smoked legs look large, even for a turkey (they come from male Toms) and the salt curing gives them an almost ham-like flavor. To be sure, they are a commitment: Each one weighs 1.5 pounds.
There are more than a dozen churro carts dotting the parks—from outside The Haunted Mansion in Disneyland to A Bug’s Land in California Adventure—and the fried-dough treats have even inspired their own souvenir shirts over the years. Keep an eye out for limited-release variations, like golden-sugar-dusted churros in honor of Pirates of the Caribbean, or the Jedi-worthy, red- and blue-sugared “light-saber” churros in Tomorrowland.
In its cultural and culinary rendering of the Golden State, Disney California Adventure Park has embraced one key representative of San Francisco: Ghirardelli Chocolate. The Disney branch of the Ghirardelli Soda Fountain & Chocolate Shop, located in the Pacific Wharf section, offers up scoops and chocolate-doused sundaes, as well as the clearly-meant-for-sharing Earthquake, with eight scoops of ice cream, eight toppings, bananas, whipped cream, and more. Don’t miss the mural of San Francisco in the shop, which reacts to your order: Buildings shake when you order an Earthquake, and a prospector pans for gold if you get the hot-fudge-and-peanut-butter Gold Rush.
In the Cars Land area of California Adventure, “refueling” takes on new meaning at the Cozy Cone Motel, a snack stand with five different cone-based treat options, from the chili-filled Chili Cone Queso to breakfast scrambles. Reviewers have especially loved the stand’s Chicken Verde Cone and the Red’s Apple Freeze, a slushy made with apple juice, passion fruit, toasted marshmallow syrup, and mango foam.