REVIEW: A Ridiculous Amount of New Food Just Debuted at Disney World and We Tried 13 of Them

There’s a LOT that has changed in such a short amount of time and any good celebration deserves food, right? The opening of Disney World’s newest focal point in EPCOT brought us another food location. Disney’s Animal Kingdom is kicking off a massive celebration for a milestone anniversary of The Lion King. And, Disney’s Hollywood Studios is hitting us right in the feels with new treats, sippers, and popcorn buckets making us super nostalgic and giddy for the newest Pixar film to debut soon!

You already know we like to push the limits of what we can accomplish in a day at Disney World (and if you don’t already know that, you should totally check out our challenge videos on our YouTube channel) but we didn’t know if getting through a full food challenge across multiple Disney World parks could be accomplished in such a short amount of time. We tackled 13 new eats and treats that JUST dropped at Disney World so you can decide what you’re grabbing for yourself on your next Disney World visit. Take a look!

Disney World has done it again, and this time they went BIG! We anticipated a few new treats along with several changes to entertainment across multiple Disney World parks, but we didn’t imagine it would lead us to eat treats our entire day long at Disney World (alright, with a couple of savory things).

Listen, we’re not complaining (just living the dream over here), but, we quickly discovered that not all the new Disney eats and treats that dropped recently are of the same caliber, and we tried them out to tell you all about them!

EPCOT

It’s hard to believe that the walls are finally down around EPCOT’s CommuniCore Hall and Plaza and with that, a NEW food stop! Festival Favorites was teased to open soon when we previewed the CommuniCore Hall for the first time, and when we went back for its official opening day, we were surprised with brand new foods to try!

So, of course, we had to grab them (in the name of research and not totally because we were famished). Here’s what Festival Favorites is offering at its debut! We tried the Cheese-stuffed Arepa with Chicken and Avocado which we picked up for $6.50. There was A LOT happening with the flavors in this one!

The chicken wasn’t overcooked and dry which was impressive, and the avocado added a nice freshness that acted as a solid counterbalance to the sweetness of the corn arepa. Ok, so not bad at first bite! Texturally though, this is where things took a turn for the worse. As we let it sit (especially outside in the Florida heat), it started to get a bit mushy and the avocado started to get slimy on us. While it wasn’t all bad, we just felt like it was missing something that really could have made this dish something special.

Next up, it was time to try out the Cheese-stuffed Arepa with Cilantro-Lime Crema and Cotija which cost us $5.25. This version of the new arepas was DEFINITELY our favorite!

The cotija cheese found sprinkled on top was satisfyingly salty, and we thought it was the perfect pairing to the sweetness you get from the corn arepa base. The cilantro-lime crema was lovely and added a tangy yet herby creaminess that really brought the whole dish together. Sweet corn arepa and melted cheese? SIGN US UP!

Of course, we couldn’t forget dessert so we also snagged the Coconut Tres Leches Cake which cost us $5. We just saw this dessert return for the 2024 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival that JUST ended mere days ago, so if you were missing this one, you didn’t have to for long!

This treat is made of vanilla cake soaked with oat, almond, and coconut milk and topped with toasted coconut. Most tres leches cakes are typically saturated in multiple milks and super moist, but this one tasted dry, surprisingly. We’re not sure if it just didn’t sit long enough in the three milks to soak up into the base of the cake, but it certainly didn’t taste like what we’re used to. The flavors themselves were fine and similar to what we’d expect with this treat, but the consistency here became a bit of a disappointment.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Over in Disney’s Hollywood Studios, a whole slew of treats were just begging us to come try them out — and we were all too happy to oblige!

Most of the new treats celebrated Pixar characters, which we thought was a nice theme for their release. Let’s take a closer look at everything we tried here!

We kicked things off with The Incredibles Chocolate Cake from ABC Commissary. This treat is made with a chocolate cake covered with dark chocolate ganache and topped with lemon and strawberry buttercream and strawberry jam for $6.29. If that doesn’t get your taste buds watering, we don’t know what will!

This treat is decadent and THICK! It’s a rich chocolate cake with a thin outer dark chocolate ganache layer to coat it all. When you get the topping with your bite, it’s so much better! The lemon is definitely the more prominent flavor, but you can taste the strawberry in the undercut with it too, however, it is a bit more subtle.

The strawberry jam is thick and there’s not a ton of it, so it’s almost a “blink and you’ll miss it thing” that we could have done without and the treat would have still been just fine. The chocolate mask piece is cute and gives it a nice touch to tie in the theming to The Incredibles animated film heroes.

Over at Rosie’s All-American Cafe, we picked up the Lightning McQueen Spare Tire for $5.79. This treat is made of chocolate cake in the shape of a doughnut filled with raspberry jam enrobed in dark chocolate mousse, coconut glaze, chocolate flakes surrounding the outside, and a chocolate coin.

We honestly went into this one not anticipating much out of it but found ourselves surprised in a good way! It’s VERY CHOCOLATELY, though, and can get melty on you if it’s out in the heat too long, but it’s decorated adorably and tasted even better than it looked. The chocolate and coconut flavors are what you’re hit with first when you take a bite, but the raspberry jam in the center breaks up all of that heavy chocolate flavor and gives it something extra to make it stand out.

We gotta warn you though — because this treat is so rich, it might be in your best interest to have someone lined up to share this one with otherwise, all this chocolate could make you lose your appetite for a while.

Our wandering eyes couldn’t keep us away from a neighboring restaurant’s new treat, but it’s also not available to just anyone to snag! Over at Hollywood Scoops, they’ve debuted a limited-time Annual Passholder Exclusive Lighting McQueen Ice Cream Sundae which you can pick up for $7.79. It’s made of your choice of hand-scooped ice cream topped with hot fudge, whipped cream, red and yellow sprinkles, and a chocolate-coconut cake doughnut.

We thought this was a fun and inventive “spin” on a sundae for Disney World, but nothing we’re scrambling out to buy again soon. The doughnut cake in this is very similar to the one anyone can pick up at Rosie’s All-American Cafe that we just talked about, and if you pair it with ice cream, you’ve practically recreated the same treat.

The difference here is the cake has no raspberry filling on the inside center of the doughnut, and the medallion with Lightning McQueen is found on the side of the bowl instead of covering the center of the cake. We opted for standard vanilla ice cream scoops since that was what Disney World had pictured on the display card for the treat which was fine, but nothing life-changing.

If you were to ask for this treat, we’d recommend spicing it up with another interesting flavor and see how that pairs against all of the chocolate and coconut creaminess of the doughnut cake! Just like with the Lightning McQueen Spare Tire treat, we’re going to recommend a backup plan for a second or more people to help you out with this because there’s a lot of cake, chocolate, and ice cream to this one!

At Backlot Express, they’re now offering a Mike Wazowski Cupcake that looked almost too cute to eat! We picked up this adorable treat that’s made of vanilla cake filled with raspberry jam topped with pistachio buttercream and butterscotch chips for $6.29. I mean, would you willingly bite into little Mikey?

If you can get past the undeniable cuteness of this treat, that’s half the battle! The pistachio and raspberry in this cupcake paired so well together and was certainly the way to go with this one. While the vanilla cupcake wasn’t anything special on its own, it served as a solid base for the sweet raspberry filling which tastes like a true raspberry fruit jam and not just a gel against the pistachio icing.

We think kids and adults will love this one, and parents can appreciate that due to its lighter tint to the green icing, it won’t leave your kids stained green the rest of the day!

Then we found ourselves a bit thirsty so it was time to move on to the newest beverages around the park. We picked up the Kinda Blue-berry Chai Iced Latte for $5.99 at either The Market, Neighborhood Bakery, or Catalina Eddie’s. This is one of two beverage treats inspired by Disney’s upcoming animated film Inside Out 2, which hits theaters later this month. It’s made of a blueberry chai iced latte with notes of clove, cinnamon, and orange blossom.

There’s no denying the sweet blueberry taste of this latte, that’s for sure! We definitely tasted the combination of clove, cinnamon, and orange blossom, which gave it almost a gingerbread taste with blueberry hints. We love how cold it was served, and the blueberry (although it’s kind of a weird combo with the earthier spices) really works for this one as something different to give a try.

Ok, last on our list here was the Frazzled Float from Epic Eats! This float is made with Minute Maid Passion Fruit Orange Guava (POG) juice, Sprite, vanilla soft-serve, and chocolate sauce topped with candied orange and chocolate bark and costs $6.79.

This treat actually raised our anxiety a bit — we’re not totally sure that was the goal, but let us explain. We couldn’t quite place the flavor of the float juice at first (even though we’re avid POG juice drinkers — yes, POG!), and our tastebuds wanted it to be an orange Fanta soda so badly because it’s mixed with the Sprite soda for the added bubbles.

We found our heads and our taste buds fighting each other to sort this out, but alas because of the conflict, the POG juice really was lost on us when all was said and done. We really wanted to like this one, especially since it was paired with cool offerings like the candied orange and chocolate bark but we just couldn’t get out of our heads about it and left feeling very indifferent about the whole experience of this treat.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom

*Deep breath in… and out* You didn’t think we were done yet, did you?! NOPE! Disney’s Animal Kingdom is celebrating The Lion King‘s 30th anniversary, and we can’t think of a more appropriate way than with a few more themed treats added to their menus for a limited time!

We started our treat trail out at Harambe Market when we picked up the You Follow Old Rafiki Cheesecake for $6.49. This treat is made of passion fruit-mango cheesecake with a coconut-lime crust, vanilla bean chantilly, and a chocolate medallion featuring a meditating Rafiki.

It’s very pretty, but we found this one pretty tough to eat, surprisingly! The coconut-lime crust was so hard to cut into, we actually broke some of our plastic utensils trying to pry this thing open and look at the inside of it. Ultimately, we had to resort to eating the rest of the layers off of it and then picking the crust up to eat it like a cookie. However, that doesn’t take away from how delicious the crust tasted! It was crispy with lots of coconut and a hint of the lime flavor. We thought it just should be a cookie instead of a crust.

The main inside of the treat is billed as a passion fruit-mango cheesecake but what we tasted was a plain cheesecake base with a passion fruit-mango glaze on top. The glaze had the consistency of a jelly. This was topped with a vanilla bean chantilly cream, which was light and delicious too, but also had a green powder which we thought for a moment might have been matcha but instead seemed to be something more consistent with a colorful confectioner’s sugar along with buttercream icing for the grass and leaves and a sugar flower. The Rafiki meditating medallion on the top was made of white chocolate.

Overall, we really enjoyed this one once we finally cracked into it, and found it to be very light and not overly sweet, but we still think it could use a new crust to it.

Our hunt led us to our next treat over at Tamu Tamu Refreshments. The Zazu Ice Cream Sandwich is made of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two blue cake-coated sugar cookies with a chocolate medallion on top for $7.29.

At first glance, this just looked like two standard Disney sugar cookies with the standard (Edy’s) vanilla bean ice cream between them. Sure, it’s zhushed up a bit with some blue sprinkles and a Zazu white chocolate coin on top but, hear us out!

We LOVED these sugar cookies! They had hints of lemon and they were perfectly crumbly and moist. We also had no complaints about the standard vanilla bean ice cream, either. But the real magic with this treat starts when the ice cream starts to melt a little and softens up those cookies! It’s a whole other level of melty goodness in your mouth! It’s an all-around good treat. It won’t be the most exotic, delicious, or memorable treat you’ll pick up at Disney World, but it’s definitely a crowd-pleaser, especially for kids and those with less adventurous taste palates. It’s also huge, so bring your Disney bestie and dig in!

Around various snack carts and popcorn stands you might just find your next favorite treat! We picked up the Simba Paw Cookie for $4.50 and this thing is HUGE! It’s a basic shortbread cookie with yellow fondant frosting.

Simba Paw Cookie

Right off the bat, we had issues with its presentation. It’s served in a plastic wrapper and the fondant melts so fast in the heat and humidity of the Florida weather. You’ll probably find yours melted a bit in the wrapper by the time you pick yours up. We kind of wish that Disney had opted for this one to be made with the royal icing that hardens on the cookie and makes it easier for transport, but alas that’s just not the case here.

It’s a basic shortbread cookie and nothing more special than that. It’s in the shape of Simba’s pawprint and has a cute design, but if you’re grabbing one of these and it’s already a bit melty in the bag, don’t expect it to be any better once you’ve unwrapped it and know you’re enjoying the cookie for its sustenance and not necessarily it’s prettiness.

Over at Trilo-Bites, we picked up the Zazu Dole Whip Lime and Coconut Float for $6.49. This float is made of Dole whip lime swirled into Sprite with coconut and blue cuacao syrup topped with a white chocolate character medallion.

When we had our float made, we were told that the medallions hadn’t arrived yet that’s pictured for the treat so ours came without them, but that didn’t affect what we thought of the main components of this treat. While we might be big lime fans, we weren’t too fond of how this Dole whip lime tasted, and somehow we entirely missed tasting any coconut-flavored Dole whip (which was really sad because we were looking forward to it)!

While the float itself was undeniably bright blue, we didn’t taste much of the blue curacao which was a disappointment. Honestly, if you’ve been missing that Peter Pan float that used to be sold in Magic Kingdom years ago, this might be the closest thing Disney World currently has to it.

To wind down or adventure, the last treat we tried out was the Rightful Ruler Cupcake. This cupcake can be picked up for $6.29 at either Pizzafari or Restaurantosaurus and is made of a red velvet cupcake with chocolate buttercream and cookies and cream cheese filling with a white chocolate medallion.

This was almost too pretty to eat, too (why is that a thing with Disney’s new cupcakes?) — Anyway, we found it to be VERY sweet! The red velvet cupcake is good as in moist with a good crumb, while the cookies and cream filling has cream cheese mixed into it and is incredibly rich and sweet. The chocolate buttercream frosting on top is good — there’s just a TON of it to dig through. We probably could have done without the filling inside the cupcake, but we think astute red velvet fans will really like this one — and yet again, we’re going to recommend you split this one too since it’s soooo sweet!

At the end of the day, we think we totally curbed our Disney World treat sweet tooth and found a few treats that rose above the rest and a few that feel flat to us. We hope this helps make your decision on which of the new treats to spend your money on next easier, but don’t just take our word for it — try a few yourself!

We want to hear YOUR thoughts! Leave a review right here on AllEars for the restaurants you’ve been to so you can help out fellow Disney lovers planning their next trip!

We’re constantly looking for all the latest updates, changes, and new additions around Disney World! Be sure to stay tuned with us at All Ears for more soon!

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Which of these new treats and eats are you most excited to try? Tell us in the comments below!