Who’s your friend who likes to play? Bing Bong! The fluffy pink, imaginary friend from the Disney•Pixar film “Inside Out” isn’t here just to play, but he’s also going to be bringing you some sweet treats at his new shop, Bing Bong’s Sweet Stuff, at Disney California Adventure park!
Located along Pixar Pier, new shop will open later this summer as a delightfully colorful merchandise and confectionery location. In addition to Bing Bong’s sweet candy tears, you can pick up saltwater taffy and rainbow cotton candy, as well as other must-try sweets!
Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of the exciting treats to look forward to!
Let’s start with the cake pops – If you’ve seen the adorable Nemo and Baby Dory Cake Pops available for Pixar Fest, you’ll be excited to learn that they will be part of a series of seasonal “Buddy” Cake Pops offered at Bing Bong’s Sweet Stuff! Every so often, these pops will change out to feature new characters, such as Wall•E and Eve, or Buzz and Woody. In addition, you’ll find cake pops inspired by “Inside Out,” featuring some of your favorite emotions.
Next up are the awesome apples, like the Rainbow Unicorn Apple or the Bing Bong Apple. These Granny Smith apples are dipped in caramel and chocolate and decorated with colored sugar, fondant and marshmallows, and are definitely treats to satisfy your sweet tooth!
Also available at Bing Bong’s Sweet Stuff will be an array of Pixar-themed popcorn, lollipops and candies, including Lemon Drops, Red Licorice and Sour Apple Balls. Saltwater taffy lovers can enjoy an assortment of flavors like Strawberry Banana and Peaches and Cream. Rainbow cotton candy will also be available in flavors like Blue Raspberry and Orange.
Lastly, the shop will serve Memory Refreshers – frozen drinks that will come in all colors and flavors! One of the drinks is the Rainbow Unicorn, with grape soda, blue raspberry soda, lime, cherry, lemon-lime and rainbow candies. Another one is inspired by Bing Bong himself, Imaginary Pal, which will be made with pink lemonade and grape soda with rainbow cotton candy, topped with a marshmallow flower.
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.
