In addition to all the delicious food (and drinks) at the Festival of Holiday booths there are other delicious holiday offering all over the parks, hotels and Downtown Disney.
At Smoozies in California Adventure there was a very festive Peppermint Crunch Shake. It was topped with green whipped cream which made it look like it was topped with a Christmas tree. This shake was delicious and worth the wait I had while it was being made. Smoozies tends to only have a couple of people working at a time so sometimes it takes a while for you to get the drinks after you order them.
No visit is complete without a visit to the Carthay Circle Lounge and this year their holiday drink was called the Sleigh Ride. It is a gin based drink with lavender but you can also request it be made with vodka if gin isn't your thing. I like gin so I went with the original. Like the Halloween drink it comes with a glow cube. The snowflake glow cube has a couple of different settings but all of them are flashing so I turned that off pretty quickly. I really enjoyed this drink but other than the snowflake it didn't really feel particularly holiday to me.
Also a holiday special at Carthay Circle Lounge was this Pumpkin Hummus with marinated veggies and warm pita. This was just plain delicious and after a day with very few veggies it is always nice to have something a little healthier to counteract all the other things I had eaten that day. I actually liked this dish so much that I had it a second time on another day.
The decorations in the lobby of the Grand Californian were not quite done being set up while I was there (I think the tree went up the last day I was there) but the little food/treat station was open and ready. Like at Halloween the treat station had all kinds of delicious sweets including the cookie shot! The holiday cookie had peppermint sprinkles which were actually a nice combination with the Baileys I had.
One afternoon I went to Lamplight Lounge in hopes of having their holiday cocktail and the Turkey Carnitas Poutine. As you can probably tell from the picture below I was only successful in half of this mission. Apparently the Turkey Carnitas Poutine is only available in the upstairs bar (the part that used to be Cove Bar) and not in the downstairs restaurant part which is quite the opposite of what you would expect since the downstairs is the part with the full menu. Oh well I got something else to eat and had my holiday cocktail. It was tequila and hibiscus based with a rim of tajin. It was delicious and tasted a bit like a margarita but like the Carthay Circle holiday drink it didn't really give me a holiday feel.
I know it seems like I drank my way through the parks but actually most of the holiday foods I ate came from the Festival of Holidays booths and most of my holiday drinks were from other places hence the lopsided seeming reviews. This drink was a Mistletoe Mule and had cranberry-orange lemonade in it. It also had a little gummy orange slice on top that I ate quickly before it became soggy. This mule was pretty good but a little sweeter than the blood orange one at the festival booth.
At the Mint Julip Bar in New Orleans Square I had the peppermint beignets. They always have a seasonal flavor in addition to the regular powdered sugar ones and the last couple of years the seasonal flavor has been peppermint. I do like the peppermint ones but I feel like it is time to move on to a new flavor. Oh or you know go back to the butterscotch favor they had a few years ago that was beyond amazing.
And lastly to add to the plethora of drinks (though this time non-alcoholic) I had the Frozen Abuelita Hot Chocolate from Rancho Del Zocalo in Frontierland which I didn't manage to take a picture of. I was a little worried it would be too much cinnamon for my taste but it actually just had a nice spice to it without being overwhelmingly cinnamon.
Hopefully I haven't made you too hungry but enjoy!
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