A Little Bit of Tiki Room in Cleveland

One of my favorite attractions at Disneyland is the Enchanted Tiki Room in Adventureland.  You know, the show with singing animatronic tropical birds?   The wait time is never more than 10 minutes, it's cool and dark inside, you can sit down, and these robotic birds are just singing to you.    It's wonderful.

But it wasn't until last month that I tried another popular feature of the Tiki Room - the Dole Whip.  Outside the entrance to the Tiki Room (which has been sponsored for decades by Dole) is the Tiki Juice Bar, which serves, along with Dole Pineapple Juice and Dole Pineapple Floats, the Dole Whip, a pineapple soft serve ice cream.  It's one of the most popular treats in Disneyland, like churros and the mint julep. 

If you want to be served quickly though, order from the side of the stand that is outside the entrance, NOT the side that is inside the Tiki Room waiting area like these people.  Trust me.

The Dole Whip is light and sweet and pineappley, and a nice change of pace from the usual concession stand options. 

But now I find I don't have to go all the way to Disneyland for a Dole Whip. 

Because Dairy King has them too!

And at half the price!

Disneyland also did not mention that they are apparently lactose-free, fat-free, gluten-free, cholesterol-free, and vegan.  Which is good, because normally such a list of attributes would make me think it's taste-free.  But it's not sugar-free, so there you go!

Disneyland Mint Julep, At Home

Despite the daily pleas from Princess Goat and the Goatling, no, we can't go to Disneyland every day.

But we can have the Disneyland mint julep, or a pretty close approximation of it, courtesy of a slightly revised recipe from the Disney Food Blog:

1 cup sugar
3 tsp lime juice concentrate
3 cups water or club soda
1/2 can of thawed lemonade concentrate
6 Tbsp creme de menthe syrup (not the liqueur! this is usually found in the coffee aisle)
Optional garnishes: mint leaves, pineapple slices, maraschino cherries

Warm the sugar, lime juice, lemonade and water/club soda on the stove until the sugar has completely dissolved.  Remove from heat and add creme de menthe. Chill.

To serve, combine about 3 parts syrup to 5 parts cold water/club soda. If you're feeling fancy, add mint, and skewer two pineapple slices and a cherry.

Disneyland Mint Julep

After spending far too long at the Cleveland airport, going from one United representative to another trying to get our reservations fixed (personal observation: the United-Continental merger is not having the smoothest transition), and one long cross-country flight, Foodgoat, Princess Goat, the Goatling, and I finally arrived to our much anticipated destination:  Disneyland!

I've been to Disneyland many times, but because this time we came with a 3-year old and a not-quite-one year old, we did a lot of things that I hadn't done before.  The Storybook boats.  The Casey Jones railroad.  The picnic area outside.  And there is a certain magic of seeing Disneyland through the eyes of little girls who are seeing it all for the first time. 

The Disneyland parade was a major highlight. We have re-enacted the parade many times.  MANY times.

You should have seen her in the Tiki Room. Who knew animatronic birds could made a baby so happy?

Disneyland food, alas, isn't so magical.  Much of it is just okay, some of it is downright awful (Tomorrowland pizza, I hope to never see you again), and all of it is expensive.

But there are some good things.  The newest thing we discovered on this trip:  the Disneyland Mint Julep. 

Bright green and so refreshing.  Even the baby enjoyed it.

Found in an out of the way window of New Orleans Square, the Disneyland Mint Julep, according to my mixologist brother, tastes absolutely nothing like a real mint julep, which is almost entirely straight up bourbon.

The Disneyland version is a sweet cold drink that tastes of mint and lime and comes with a skewer of pineapple and maraschino cherry, it's a lovely, refreshing alternative to soda/pop or bottled water. 

The highlight of a Disneyland trip is never food. Disney food is crappy and overpriced. But their 50 anniversay firework show, complete with a real live Tinkerbell zip-wired around Sleeping Beauty's Castle, could squeeze the ooohs and aaaahs out of the meanest, most hardened cynic. Especially if you score a comfy bench instead of the cold sidewalk or shuffling sideways through the fire lane.

Why Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth

Among the things that I ate this weekend:

Caramel apple
Mint chocolate chip ice cream
Giant turkey leg
Chicken and waffles
Candied yams
Popcorn
Churro
Pretzel
Foot-long hot dog
Nachos with shredded beef
Chips
Chocolate-covered pretzels
Sour candies
Tacos
Hamburger
Broccoli and cheese soup in a sourdough bowl

Disneyland is the one place we can gorge on junk food without my mom making the Frowny Face.

In the Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room

Ahh, Fridays ... the work week ends ... but the house work only begins.

Now that there are no shingles or vacations to deter us, we'll be a'fixin' up the ole homestead. Which means we have to settle on decor themes.

Foodgoat has final decision-making authority over rooms from the kitchen on down, so I must employ all my persuasive powers to convince him that the wet bar in the basement should inspired by the Tiki Room at Disneyland.

After all, how cool would it be to have this Monster Cabinet (via sensory impact)?

Mall food, Hollywood-style

Lowlight #3

"New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin." (Mark Twain)

Unfortunately, not so when you pick up a late dinner at Downtown Disney's Jazz Kitchen Express. It's a bad sign when you're looking at right at them, but can't tell which one is the gumbo and which one is the jambalaya. I'm not even sure we were able to taste the difference. It was particularly disappointing since Foodgoat & my brother were hungry from a fierce air hockey battle at the ESPN Zone in which the puck went flying into the crowd several times.

I think the food was a little better at CityWalk, where you see Foodgoat having Cuban food two years ago at Versailles, across the way from the Hard Rock Cafe.

Considering that it's all really just mall food, I guess you really can't expect too much, even if they are stylish, showy, and glitzy "entertainment complex"-type malls.

Chicken pot pie: $15
Meeting Goofy: Priceless

California Highlight #2

Normally lunch at Disneyland consists of quick burgers from an outdoor stand or leftover bagel sandwiches sneaked out from the Embassy Suites free cooked-to-order breakfast. Not this time. This time, when we went to Disney's California Adventure, we dined at Ariel's Grotto. Instead of a $7 burger in the hot sun I had a $15 Ship-Shape Cheesy Onion Soup and Cove's Chicken & Biscuit Pot Pie (both huge though a bit salty), really good sourdough bread (probably made at the on-site sourdough factory, which has tours and free samples; there was also a tortilla factory, which was much less interesting and gave a pretty untasty sample), and a pile of after-dinner cotton candy in air-conditioning and a table with a view. Between everyone, I think we got almost all of the entrees on the menu, and they were all just fine. I am chagrined to find out only now that the child menu items can also be ordered in adult-sized portions: I could have gotten the Ursula's "Octa"-dog with Mac 'n' Cheese!!! What a missed opportunity.

But enough about the food. The really fun thing is, of course, the Disney characters that visit/pose for pictures with you during the meal. It was our first time at one of these character-dining places, and, I'm not ashamed to say, I liked it. I couldn't quite bring myself to pose with what we suspect is a career Ariel at the front who gets wheeled into the back at the end of her shift, nor could I squealingly ask Chip (or was it Dale?) and Pluto for their autographs, like the trio of fully grown Japanese women at the next table did. But it's a whole 'nuther thing when Goofy comes around. As you can see, Foodgoat was more than happy to make the sacrifice and be the one behind the camera.