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On my last trip to Epcot, I decided to take a walk around the World Showcase and partake in the Holiday Cookie Stroll. If you don’t know, the Holiday Cookie Stroll usually happens during the Epcot Festival of the Holidays (this year called Taste of Epcot International Festival of the Holidays). We have six cookies to try plus one bonus cookie, so let’s take a stroll!
The first cookie on our stroll is the Linzer cookie. This cookie was basically two shortbread cookies with jam in between them. They put TONS of powdered sugar on the top, so be warned that it will get everywhere. The jam was rather tart and I almost feel like there wasn’t enough of it, but the cookie was still really good.
The next cookie we have is the Chocolate Crinkle Cookie. This one was absolutely my favorite, and almost anyone could like this. The center of the cookie was gooey chocolate with a bit of a harder shell and covered in powdered sugar. My family and I have made these before at home, and this one was definitely tougher than the ones we made at home. Personally, I prefer softer cookies, but that was the only thing I didn’t like about this cookie. The cookie was huge, and can easily be shared between two people.
Moving on, we have the Black and White cookie. Unlike the crinkle cookie, this one was my least favorite. I was expecting it to be better since last year it had a lemon-like cake with decent chocolate icing. However, this year’s cookie was dense and moist (and didn’t have any lemon flavor), and the icing tasted like icing you might find on a donut. The vanilla icing was really not good at all, and we only ended up eating a few bites.
We next traveled into the World Showplace pavilion, where we got the Gingerbread Cookie. This cookie was very soft with a strong gingerbread taste. It wasn’t my favorite, but if you like gingerbread, then this cookie would be a great one to try.
The Peppermint Pinwheel Cookie from the Yukon Holiday Kitchen (pictured at top) was probably the best-decorated cookie in my opinion. It had a fun, festive look to it. I don’t have much to say about it, other than that it was a soft cookie, and reminded me more of breath mints rather than peppermint like last year’s cookie did. The cookie was otherwise pretty good, but not one I would recommend.
Once you have bought the other 5 cookies and gotten the stamp for each in your Festival Passport, you can get the completer cookie for free. The Minnie Peppermint cookie was pretty much just a shortbread-like cookie with generic peppermint icing on top. Nothing special, but it’s to be expected from a free, packaged cookie. I will say though that this cookie was definitely a step up from last year’s free cookie, which was a bland sugar cookie.
Bonus Cookie
As a bonus, we also headed to the World Showplace pavilion to pick up the Salted Caramel Spaceship Earth Cookie. This cookie was comprised of two cookies, stuck together with a glob of salted caramel chocolate. I was expecting not to like this as much, but it was actually really good. The top sugar cookie was more of a cocoa sugar cookie, while the bottom one was vanilla. The cookie was topped with tons of sugar crystals and a hard sugar candy. They didn’t put a lot of the filling in between the cookies, so it was only in the center. We wrapped it up and put it in our bag to finish later.
Overall, the cookie stroll was an enjoyable experience, but not as good as last year. This year, most all of the lines at the booths were very long, and we ended up taking about 3+ hours to complete the cookie stroll. An express line for the cookie stroll would be a nice addition. Also, some of the cookies weren’t as good as they were last year. But, if you are coming to Epcot on your next trip and have some extra time, I would definitely recommend trying a few, if not all, of the cookies around World Showcase.
James is a teen currently in high school from Maryland. He loves all things Disney and has been going to Walt Disney World in Florida with his family every year since 2007. He and his family are DVC members at Bay Lake Tower.
