For me, one of the most fun parts of a vacation is eating food I didn’t have to cook. I think I get it from my mom, she’s very much the same way. One of my frustrations with going to Disneyland has always been the food. It’s not that good. We had a couple of restaurants that we would eat at and not stray. We had figured out how to feed five of us at Carnation Café and Café Orleans for as much as it would cost to eat off site. But, that meant we had to eat almost every meal at those two restaurants.

This last trip though, Disney had revamped a lot of their menus and opened a new restaurant. They also closed Carnation Café for refurbishment and expansion. Here are a few of the things we ate from the new menus and what I thought:

My sister and I were most excited to try Jolly Holiday Bakery. We ordered and shared the Chicken Waldorf Sandwich, the Caprese Sandwich, a mini apple pie, and a cupcake:

We both liked each sandwich, but our preference if we had to chose was the sandwich we each started with, for me that was the Waldorf. We agreed that the cupcake looked much better than it tasted. It really was not anything very special except that we were at Disney. I could have bought it at the grocer store and not known the difference.

We really liked the balsamic dressing and the fresh basil on the Caprese sandwich. I loved the addition of the smoked turkey and craisins in the Waldorf.

The apple pie was wonderful! We talked about going back for another, but never made it back (short weekend trip). It was really, really good!!

Next stop, a snack at the Bengal Tiger

I like to try and get a snack at the Bengal Tiger at least once per trip. It’s across from Indiana Jones and has little to no seating. The food though, is very good. I love the bacon wrapped asparagus, vegetable skewer, and beef skewer. My sister liked the chicken. Because the portions are super small, it can get expensive to eat a meal here.

Jolly Holiday for Breakfast

We were really excited about eating breakfast at Jolly Holiday, but were a bit disappointed. The quiche was very similar to something I get at Panera but was almost $9 at Disney. The Abuelita, however almost made up for it. Cinnamon (syrup not powder) flavored hot chocolate…so YUMMY!! The next day, we decided to split a breakfast at Mimi’s and then hit Jolly Holiday for an Abuelita. We spent about the same amount of money and had a lot more food!

World of Color Dinner at Wine Country Trattoria

A year ago, my family and I ordered the World of Color picnics. They were a pretty good value considering you got a bag and WOC passes and didn’t have to go to the machines and gamble on getting them. I got sick from my meal though and most of us were still hungry.

My sister and I decided since it was just the two of us, we would splurge and try WOC at Trattoria. I forgot to take pictures of my main course and didn’t take any of her meal at all. I had the vegetarian pasta (no meat, but not vegan), and she had the steak. She said it was a really, really good steak. Here’s my soup (which was really good) and our deserts, which were just okay (lots of coffee and espresso flavored stuff, yuck):

One more place on site that we were excited to try was Hungry Bear

We had heard great reports about the fried green tomato sandwich, onion rings, and salad with watermelon, and cupcake.

Everything here was just okay. Nothing I would be super excited to go back and have again.The cupcake here was better than the one at Jolly Holiday, but I would still prefer the pie!

We went to Paradise Garden Grill in Disney California Adventure a couple of times. There are a couple different sections here with different menus. One side has pizza, pasta, and salads and the other has skewers. Here’s the skewer menu:

The skewer menu was a little confusing at first, then I noticed the “step 1” and “step two” and was able to figure it out. I had the Vegetable and Tofu skewer (I actually really like tofu…bordering on love) with the Tzatziki sauce. As described in the menu it came with rice, pita, and cucumber salad.

This was probably the largest mean for the price I had while at DL. Everything was quite good. The pita and cucumber salad were both good and I really liked the skewer with the sauce. The rice was more like a minute rice, but wasn’t bad with the sauce on it. I should have asked for extra sauce though because of this.

My family ate the pasta and pizzas and really liked them. Between all of us we had several different dishes (barbeque chicken pizza, cheese pizza, Caesar salad, and a pasta with alfredo). Everyone seemed to like their dishes.

Brats and Baked Potatoes at Troubadour

This is a hidden treasure back by the Princess Meet and Greet area. It’s not usually crowded and there is plenty of seating. We ate lunch here a couple of times. We had combinations of brats and baked potatoes which were all very good. The pretzel bread bun was super good. I have an issue with soggy bread though and with the sauerkraut the bun got soggy fast. The next time, I hurried and took everything off the bun and ate the separately. Our last day in the park, my kids were riding Indiana Jones one last time, so I grabbed some skewers from Bengal Tiger and then we booked it over to Troubadour and got the kids brats (they love them). We sat near the theater and the girls were able to see the princesses changing shifts, it was fun. No photos, sorry, not sure what I was thinking there.

Other Treats

• The Mickey cookie from Jolly Holiday was quite good.
• We also enjoyed churros from the vendor across from Toy Story Mid Way Mania (I still hold the family record for this game and won our car several times). The churros were great to snack on while waiting in line. I was actually surprised at how good the Disney churros were, but that might be because I am used to Costco churros, which are horrible.
• We got popcorn in a souvenir bucket (the bucket was equal to two of the regular popcorns and was slightly less expensive).
• Hot chocolate when I was there in the rain with my sister.
• The flourless chocolate cake at Jolly Holiday which had a great texture and great flavor, I was so glad I was sharing it with my sister because it was super rich.
• A candy apple (cinnamon) from the candy store by Winnie The Pooh. They don’t slice them for you anymore (boo) so we had to wrestle with a plastic knife, but it was worth it!
• Corn dogs and cheese dogs, I love the corn dogs. I got a cheese dog this time because I love them at the mall and it was just too much. I could only eat part of it and was wishing I had ordered the dog instead.

Overall, I would say that I am really happy with the overhaul of the menus and the new restaurants that have opened! I will be glad when Carnation Cafe is open again and has indoor seating. That is by far, our favorite place to eat at Disney! I’m also happy with the fruit choices they are adding to things. It’s always nice to have a bag of apples to snack on once in a while!