Almost as long as there have been theme parks, there has been theme park food. From funnel cakes and deep-fried soda at state fairs to the iconic hot-or-frozen Butterbeer at Universal Studios Orlando’s Diagon Alley, chowing down is an integral part of the theme park experience—and, arguably, no one does it better than the Disney Parks. Over 63 years, Disney’s six parks have expanded their fare from expected offerings like hot dogs, popcorn, and ice cream to more elaborate dishes: jambalaya at Blue Bayou in New Orleans Square, ukiwah shrimp buns at Tokyo DisneySea, chili-ginger glazed pork drumettes at the newly-opened Lamplight Lounge in Disney California Adventure’s Pixar Pier.
While modern theme park food has drastically departed from the simple dishes of the 1950s and 60s, the philosophy behind Disney Parks cuisine remains the same. That’s because Disney approaches food the way they approach everything else: with the desire to create a fully immersive, innovative experience. Let’s take a look at how the parks have interpreted that philosophy over each of the past six decades.
The 1950s: “Good Eating Land” at Disneyland
Image: Ken Lund, Flickr (license)
Two days before Disneyland opened its gates on July 17, 1955, a special souvenir program ran in the Independent Press Telegram. Interested visitors could read up on the history behind Fantasyland’s historic carousel or get hyped for the replica of an 1890 grocery store (today, Market House is little more than a turn-of-the-century façade for Main Street, U.S.A.’s only Starbucks location). For the aspiring foodie, an entire section of the paper was devoted to the new eateries around the park.
“Good Eating Land at Disneyland!” the Telegram proclaimed. “Like Adventureland and Fantasyland, the new ‘Kingdom of Good Eating’ at Disneyland is another great attraction. Fine restaurants, unique refreshment stands and interesting luncheon spots abound in Disneyland. Dining Disneyland style is an unforgettable experience. The food’s as fabulous as the fun, too!”
What made the proclamation so interesting wasn’t Disney’s claim that the park cuisine could be as unforgettable as the rest of its attractions, but rather that Walt wasn’t responsible for the majority of the restaurants and food stands within the park berm. He was instead dependent on vendors to sponsor and operate their own businesses inside Disneyland—according to historian Sam Gennawey, many of the vendors were unable to keep their stores and restaurants open every day or stick to scheduled hours of operation, nor were they eager to do so given their uncertainty about the viability of the park.
During the first half-decade of Disneyland’s operation, guests were treated to a variety of unusually-themed food stalls and sit-down dining experiences. Tomorrowland’s futuristic Space Bar supplied diners with a wall of vending machines and standard counter-service burgers and chili dogs. On the bank of Frontierland’s Rivers of America, breakfast aficionados were treated to syrup-laden pancakes and waffles at Aunt Jemima’s Pancake House. Hungry (or, as was more often the case, “hangry”) kids could run over to Casa de Fritos and grab a nickel’s worth of Frito chips from the vending machine. The crème de la crème, however, was the Red Wagon Inn (now Plaza Inn), which offered Swift Meats-sponsored dishes like grilled halibut steak, baked ham, and chicken pot pie. The building itself was easily the swankiest on the property, decked out in the Victorian style and elegantly decorated with antiques. Not only was it rumored to be Walt’s favorite restaurant of the time, but it doubled as a prototypical Club 33, with private quarters for the park creator and his guests.
Walt didn’t just want to ply his guests with stereotypical carnival snacks—popcorn, cotton candy, and the like—he intended to bring them never-before-seen dining experiences as integral to their enjoyment of Disneyland as a trip on the Jungle Cruise or a spin on King Arthur’s Carrousel.
The 1960s: Blue Bayou is born
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Walt introduced his guests to an array of unique themed dining experiences in the 1950s, but as with everything he created, he was constantly finding new ways to plus the park’s restaurants and food stands. Amid tamer offerings—including Adventureland’s über-popular French Polynesian restaurant, Tahitian Terrace—he began experimenting with something that took the idea of themed dining one step further. Finally, a decade past Disneyland’s grand opening, he had struck gold.
On March 18, 1967, Blue Bayou opened to the public.
According to Marcy Carriker Smothers, author of the definitive guide to Disneyland cuisine, Eat Like Walt, Blue Bayou was considered among the first themed restaurants in the United States. While Walt oversaw the creation of the restaurant, he refused to open it to the public during the premiere of New Orleans Square in July 1966. Pirates of the Caribbean—one of two marquee attractions within the land, and the picturesque backdrop for Blue Bayou’s faux outdoor dining area—was still under construction and wouldn’t open for another eight months. Walt was content to wait until the attraction was finished and guests could have a more complete dining experience. For that reason alone, both Pirates of the Caribbean and Blue Bayou were scheduled to debut on the same day.
Blue Bayou was proof that theme parks could offer guests more than cheap thrills and assorted junk food: They could transport guests to an entirely new location through gourmet cooking and immersive dining areas. For the first time in theme park history, parkgoers were permitted to dine within an attraction—and what a view they found in New Orleans Square. In the perpetual twilight of the bayou, diners were ushered to candlelit tables and invited to select from a range of decadent dishes, including the iconic Monte Cristo sandwich (over 1 million of the sandwiches sold in the restaurant’s first 45 years of operation), herb-crusted racks of lamb, surf and turf, and bone-in steak. While Disney continues to add to its gourmet dining options year after year, few restaurants have tried to replicate the Blue Bayou’s total immersion in another attraction.
(Fun fact: It was around this time that the Enchanted Tiki Room was initially drawn up as an Audio-Animatronic dinner theater, rather than the musical revue it is today.)
The 1970s: Dining post-Walt
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
Nothing as innovative as the Blue Bayou distinguished the 1970s, but Walt Disney’s untimely death in December 1966 sparked a few changes in the way the company approaches in-park dining. Perhaps the most noticeable one: the company chose not to honor Walt’s vow that a cup of coffee would cost no more than 10 cents as long as Disneyland existed. With inflation, that would just be around 77 cents in 2018 (though it’s worth pointing out that the go-to coffee company in those days was still provided by Hills Bros.; Starbucks didn’t become an immediate household name following its inception in 1971). It was an unsustainable business practice, but one that spoke volumes about Walt’s desire to keep Disneyland affordable and enjoyable for every family that passed through the turnstiles.
On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World opened for business. The company hadn’t broken any new ground in the Magic Kingdom, at least as far as immersive dining experiences and gourmet dishes were concerned, but true to form, they paid close attention to the theming of every sit-down restaurant in every land: the American Revolution-era Liberty Tree Tavern in Liberty Square, Red Wagon Inn-esque décor of the Crystal Palace at the end of Main Street, U.S.A., and the elegant King Stefan’s Banquet Hall, nestled in the very heart of Cinderella Castle itself.
The 1980s: Introducing the Dole Whip
Image: Candice, Flickr (license)
Within their first 20 years of operation, the Disney Parks had set themselves apart with unique dining areas and cleverly-themed restaurants; now, it was time to focus on the food. In 1986, the modest Tiki Juice Bar added two new offerings to its menu of pineapple spears and fruit juice: the Dole Whip and its sister, the Dole Whip Float. The dairy-free pineapple soft-serve wasn’t exclusive to Disneyland—as Jean Trinh of LAist.com pointed out, Kent Precision Foods Group licenses it out to various establishments around the Los Angeles area—but it soon attracted a rabid (er, ravenous) fan base among parkgoers. Today, the pineapple treat is considered one of the most, if not the most iconic Disney Parks snack.
The Dole Whip wasn’t the only memorable snack to land on guests’ radars at the time. The park’s infamous 720-calorie hickory-smoked turkey legs were featured at a snack stand in Frontierland during the late 80s and, as the legend goes, were quickly adopted as another staple of the “Disneyland Diet.”
These snacks weren’t any different from those you’d find at a festival or fairground food stall, but thanks to the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from the public—and their strong association between the snacks and their overall park experience—Dole Whips and turkey legs, (and churros, and pretzels, and Mickey ice cream bars) became an integral part of the Disney Parks themselves. Snacking and dining was no longer an afterthought, but a compelling reason to visit the Disney Parks in the first place.
The 1990s: The birth of the Food & Wine Festival
Image: Josh Hallett, Flickr (license)
The parks’ next big innovation arose out of little more than sheer desperation. Fans were still flocking to Disneyland and Walt Disney World for their fill of Dole Whips and churros, but they tended to flock in the summer months and migrate away from the parks in the autumn and winter. In order to keep their numbers up, Disney needed to devise a way to counter the lulls in attendance by motivating guests to return to the parks year-round.
In the 1990s, a solution presented itself at long last. Walt Disney World President, George Kalogridis, was inspired to replicate the Food & Wine Classic hosted in Aspen, Colorado each year. He began developing a food festival that would take parkgoers around the World Showcase in Epcot and, in the fall of 1995, Disney’s inaugural International Food & Wine Festival made its formal debut. Celebrity chefs hosted seminars and amateur musicians turned out to serenade diners as they moved from marketplace to marketplace.
The festival proved all too popular among guests, who were taken with the variety of cuisines and the novelty of getting to drink freely within the parks. Not only did it solve Disney’s immediate issue (getting more people to the parks during the offseason), but it continued to grow in size and prominence with every year that followed. By 2017, the modest 30-day event had swelled to 75 days, with booths from 20+ different countries, musical performances, a themed runDisney half-marathon weekend, and gourmet bites that included Beijing roasted duck bao buns, pistachio cardamom Bundt cake, and warm goat cheese pudding, among hundreds of other dishes.
The 2000s & 2010s: Marrying film and food
Image: HarshLight, Flickr (license)
There’s no question that dining at the Disney Parks is nearly as popular an activity as checking out the latest Space Mountain overlay or meeting a new face character. If guests aren’t enjoying one of Disney’s classic dining experiences, whether a fancy dinner at Blue Bayou or character dining at Cinderella’s Castle, they’re Instagramming millennial pink macarons and neon green glasses of Infinity Fizz. Even trying to keep up with every new dish and cocktail can be an event all on its own.
Disney isn’t just in the business of making delicious and picture-worthy food for its own sake, though. Rather than giving more restaurants over to sponsors, as Walt was forced to do in Disneyland’s formative years, the company steered their theme park cuisine down a different path. With heavily-themed dining areas like Be Our Guest Restaurant, Red Rose Taverne, Flo’s V-8 Café and the Cozy Cone Motel snack stands, today’s parkgoers are treated to more than a good meal: They’re able to step within the vast, colorful and delicious world of Disney’s own films. Disney married the appeal of Blue Bayou’s immersive dining experience with iconic locations (the Beast’s castle, Flo’s diner) and dishes (cupcakes topped with “the grey stuff,” perfectly-plated ratatouille) from their own stories.
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Of course, just because Disney Parks cuisine has continued to evolve over the years doesn’t mean that Walt’s spirit—or his culinary preferences—has been forgotten. Those feeling particularly nostalgic (yet unable to crack the exclusive guest list at Club 33) might sample Walt’s favorite chili at Carnation Café or swing by the Plaza Inn, which now offers character dining in addition to its delicious fried chicken. What dining experiences do you find yourself most drawn to at the Disney Parks?
