If you have eaten something I’ve made… let me start over. If I have miraculously managed not to burn something, it was probably a Disney Park recipe. For years I have been recreating Disney Park food at home. It’s my way of bringing Disney home with me. Some people craft, some people plan their next trip, and I bake.
Sometimes the recipes taste exactly like the park food, and sometimes they taste exactly like the second-cousin’s-step-brother’s-friend of the one I had in the parks.
For years, people have been asking me where I get the recipes. They think it’s some secret Disney food society I belong to that has a secret handshake. Can you imagine Mickey trying to do a fancy secret handshake? I don’t know how detailed that could get.
Disney used to give out recipes per request in the restaurants, but they have recently stopped. It probably just got too expensive and time-consuming. I thought it would be fun today to talk about places you can find your favorite Disney Park recipes.
I really encourage you to try some at home. It may sound corny, but it really makes the parks feel closer to me. I’ve also met some pretty fantastic fellow Disney cooks and bakers through the process.
Disney Family
If you have never checked out the Disney Family site then you really should. It’s filled with activities, crafts and, most importantly, recipes.
The site has hundreds of recipes, but most are Disney-inspired and not from the parks. They are super fun and your family will love them, but we are looking for Disney Park recipes here.
You’ll have to search through all the pages, but there are a handful of Disney Park recipes in there too. The best way to find them is to use the search function on the top left-hand side. It should show you most of them.
I encourage you to try the other recipes though. There are some amazing Baymax cupcakes, Mickey cookies, and Tangled smoothies.
Click here for the Disney Family site recipes.
Disney Parks Blog
Disney Parks Blog is an awesome resource for all things Disney Parks. Use the search function to find recipes from Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Aulani and the Disney Cruise Line. The site will usually publish new recipes around holidays and festivals. They like to theme the blog posts, so if you are looking for a recipe for a specific occasion, this is a great resource. During the fall they post lots of pumpkin recipes, during the spring they post park recipes with fresh vegetables, and during the winter holidays they post plenty of festive park drinks.
Click here for the Disney Park Blog
Oh My Disney
This site can be really hit-or-miss. It’s awesome for family articles and Disney-themed activities. They will have recipes, but nothing compared to the last two sites. It is more a site for movie reviews, quizzes and things like that. It will have some recipes sprinkled in, but mainly anything that looks like a recipe will actually be a link to the Disney Family site or the Disney Parks Blog.
Click here for the Oh My Disney site recipes.
Disney Jr. for Adults
This is one I only just found out about. There really are only a few recipes on here, but it’s worth a look if you have time. It looks like Disney is starting to add more recipes to this page, so check back in the future.
Click here for the Disney Jr. for Adults site.
Babble
This site has a lot of recipes, but not a lot of Disney Park ones. There are some in there, but it’s a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. You will eventually locate one, but it will take a long time and you could have just gone to the sewing store to get it.
Click here for the Babble site recipes.
You might not think of Disney planning sites as a great place to get recipes, but most will have a decent selection. They can be a really great resource for recipes since the site owners are always in the parks. They are also in contact with Disney. It would make sense they would have contacts for new Disney Park recipes.
Here on wdwinfo.com, you can find numerous Disney recipes. You can find some of the most popular recipes from Walt Disney World and Disneyland. You won’t find thousands of them, but you will find a good variety. Everything you are really looking for, especially ones from the Food and Wine Festivals. Who doesn’t want to recreate that marketplace treat you had in the past?
You may be able to find some recipes on Disney planning sites, but if you are looking for a bigger selection then a fantastic option is to check out a Disney fan recipe site. They are created and curated by Disney cooking fans just like you. The fantastic thing about these sites is they are strictly devoted to Disney recipes. That’s what we are looking for right?
I’m part of a group of Disney baking nerds who bake and mix our Disney lives together on www.ohsweetdisney.com. There are hundreds of printable Disney Park and Disney-inspired recipes. We try to mainly use official Disney sources and blog three or four times a week. The recipes concentrate on the sweet side of Disney food: baking, desserts, and candy.
While our site concentrates on Disney Baking, other sites concentrate on the main course and some strictly deal with alcoholic drinks. Whatever course you are looking for, someone is blogging about it. These people have done the work for you. You don’t have to spend hours searching through sites that might or might not have what you are looking for.
Another fantastic thing about these recipe sites is that they are normally categorized. It makes it so much easier to find what you are looking for. For example, on Oh Sweet Disney! we have categorized the recipes by location, type, character; and if that doesn’t help you, there is even a search bar to bring you exactly to what you are looking for. Some sites specialize in recipes for dietary needs too. There are recipe sites that devote themselves to making vegan or vegetarian meals, for example. If you are looking for it, it’s on one of these sites.
Another great thing about these Disney recipe sites is that you will be able to find a lot of older recipes. The Disney planning sites will have the most searched recipes, but what if you are looking for that bread pudding you had in the 80s? A Disney recipe site is the place you are going to find it. They are the obsessed foodies who collect the old cookbooks.
Click Here to check one out (Oh Sweet Disney!)
Disney forums are a fantastic way to find recipes. The recipes can sometimes be a little tricky to locate in all the information, but there will usually be a section just for dining and a subsection for Disney Park and Disney-inspired recipes.
DISBoards.com has hands down the best I have found on a forum. The amazing fans have carefully indexed a few thousand recipes on there. The people on the boards have been collecting them for years.
Many of the recipes will be from the other sources listed in this post but some will be from the chefs themselves, which means the DISboards members would have asked the chefs directly for recipes. Speaking of original sources, pay attention if the poster has listed where they found the recipe. Some will be “close to the original” or “best guess” recipes. If that’s what you are looking for then that’s fantastic. If you are looking for the exact dish you had in the park, you might want to keep looking through the thread. I’m sure it’s in there; they have really done an awesome job indexing it.
I also love that people will comment how their dish turned out when they tried the specific recipe. Those replies really help you figure out if the recipe is a good one or not.
Click here for the link to the thread.
I, like a lot of Disney food fans, collect Disney cookbooks. I try to get my hands on as many as possible. You can buy the new editions in the parks and old ones online. That’s really where I get most of mine, actually. So many are out of print, but Amazon is full of them. You can get them so cheap and they are filled with awesome recipes. Let me correct that. You can get them incredibly cheap online if you ship them within the USA. You can still find deals internationally, but they are harder to come by.
I need to mention one note about the old Disney Park recipe cookbooks, because they can be tricky. Disney was a huge fan of changing the cover and the name of a cookbook and marketing it as a new one. They might have changed one recipe, but the other 99% were exactly the same. This can be hard when you think you found a new collection, order it, and find out you already own it, just under a different name. It can be frustrating.
Disney also used to forget a few ingredients in the old cookbooks. For example, one cookbook has a recipe for Farmers Market BlueBerry Muffins but doesn’t mention anything about the Blueberries. Those are kind of important. For the most part, the recipes are great. It can also be a walk down memory lane. For example, if you have only been going to Walt Disney World for a few years Cinderella’s Royal Table is all you know, but if you have been going for a long time you know it used to be King Stefan’s Banquet Hall. They had an Apple-Blackberry Cobbler that people loved. The older cookbooks can be a Disney Parks history lesson as well as a recipe book.
On a side note, most of the newer Disney cookbooks are written by a lady called Pam Brandon. She is a food writer for Disney — she has my dream job. I would allow myself to be stuck on “it’s a small world” for days with only burnt quick-service hamburger hockey pucks to get a chance to audition for her job. If she wants to retire early, I’m here to take her position and eat Disney food all day as an actual career. I know there is more to the job, but in my mind she drinks Violet Lemonades and eats Beignets all day.
Magazines
Disney does publish a series of magazines and will sometimes include Disney Park recipe articles. Keep an eye out for them. A lot of people will scan them online, so that’s normally where I see them because Disney doesn’t ship many of their magazines internationally.
Disney does license out the rights to companies to publish magazines under their name as well. Some are specifically dedicated to baking and recipes.
Just like the official ones, there are lots of unofficial Disney Park cookbooks on the market. The unofficial ones are usually endorsed by Disney. So I guess that makes them half official, to be honest.
Authors might also include a recipe or two at the end of a book they publish. Maybe the book is about Walt Disney’s eating habits and they include his famous chilli recipe.
Do you love Disney Springs and Downtown Disney? Many people will forget some of those restaurants will have their own cookbooks too. For example, do you love Sprinkles Bakery? They have their own cookbook for sale anywhere they sell books. It’s awesome and I totally recommend it.
Remember to check used bookstores as well. I never really thought about this option until recently. I was in the basement of this overcrowded bookstore and stumbled cross the Babycakes Cookbook. Guests of Walt Disney World will know the bakery as Erin McKenna’s Bakery NYC. Keep your eye open for other restaurant cookbooks, too.
Ebooks
I will just say there are some good unofficial Disney recipe ebooks and there are some not-so-good. The good ones tend to be included in Disney planning sites’ ebooks. They will have one or two recipes worked in. You can also sometimes download them from online booksellers.
Magazine and Newspapers
Lots of magazines will publish Disney Park recipes. You might think that’s crazy, but it’s true. They do it less and less these days, but you can still find some print publications that publish Disney recipes when they are discussing Disney events. For example, a local paper might publish a Disney Park recipe around the Flower and Garden Festival in conjunction with a review of the food.
Swan and Dolphin Recipe Club
A lot of people don’t even know this exists, and it’s awesome. One day I was looking at the Swan and Dolphin Food and Wine Classic and I stumbled across a link to their recipe club. I’m so happy I did, because they have some awesome recipes that you can’t find anywhere else. You simply fill out a form with your name and email to join the club. Each month they email you a recipe from one of their restaurants. It could not be easier. The emails will also have a link to recipes they have sent in the past. The only issue here is that they don’t always tell you what restaurant it came from, just that it came from one of their resorts.
D23 Fan Club
This is a recent source I have found, and I was so excited. It’s like a weird treasure hunt for me.
After you sign up for the free D23, it takes a little time to find them on the site, but I’ve found some Disney Park recipes that I haven’t located anywhere else. To be honest, I’m not sure if they have more when you sign up for the Gold membership.
Festival Pins
During the Food and Wine festival, Disney will sell every kind of merchandise. There will be hats, shirts, over-sized statues that you think you need at the moment but later realize it’s way too big to bring home in your suitcase.
Some of the more popular things to buy are the Disney Pins. During the festival, Disney will sell pins with a recipe attached to it. They are little cards and very collectible.
Festival Handouts
Similiar to the festival pin recipes we just discussed, during special events and festivals Disney will hand out recipe cards. This happens more at Disneyland than Walt Disney World, and Disney doesn’t do it as often, but you can still get them on occasion.
AP Days Hand Outs
Disneyland has special days where it celebrates its annual passholders. Usually themed, it’s a time for Disney to thank its passholders and provide them with special merchandise and experiences. They call them AP Days, and during these days Disney will sometimes hand out recipe cards for some of the most popular Disneyland dishes. It’s a fantastic way to find exclusive Disney recipes. Many guests will collect them over the years and treasure them.
As people get more into making Disney Park recipes at home, more Disney podcasts are including recipes in their shows. The Disney Dining Show podcast did a recipe episode that you can check out by clicking the link below. The guys talked about their favorite recipes and some they made up.
Click here for the link to the Podcast.
Any of these sources are great ways to find recipes. Also, if you have Disney friends or family ask them if they have any recipes they could share. Sometimes the best solution is the one closest to you.
So, if you have a special dish you remember from your trip, don’t hesitate to bring it from the Disney Parks into your Disney kitchen. You will love it and so will your family.
Happy cooking everyone!
