Mickey Bars are in Town!

by Beth Keating

Review

DisneyBizJournal.com

July 7, 2020

Without a doubt, my favorite snack at Disney World is the Mickey Premium Bar.  And I can’t go to Disney World without eating at least one – or three. These babies are so beloved by Disney fanatics that their likenesses have been made into plushies, tee-shirt designs, Christmas ornaments, tote bags, jewelry, pet chew toys, Mickey ear hats, purses and more.

I was admittedly jealous when various bloggers started reporting last year that they had discovered Mickey Bars in their local grocery stores. Not only did we not have any shipments to our area, we didn’t even have the kind of grocery store here that seemed to be the recipient of these frozen delights. No Publix here in the northeast!

Imagine my recent surprise when a random trip to my local Shoprite revealed the elusive sky blue box with Mickey’s smiling face. I grabbed the box and drove right home. Miraculously, I resisted the urge to rip the box open right there in the car.

So, after waiting months longer than everyone else to get this novelty, how does it measure up to its parental unit in the parks?  Let’s give it a little taste test, shall we?

The result is that the grocery store version is good, but maybe not quite as good as the ones in the Magic Kingdom. Is it perhaps because there’s a little extra pixie dust while sitting in the shadow of the castle, eating the melting chocolate in the Florida sun? Or is it something else?

While the ice creams are the identical iconic shapes, the grocery store version of the Mickey Bar is slightly smaller than the park’s premium bar. The chocolate coating also seems to be a bit thinner than the Lake Buena Vista variety, and it might be my faulty memory, but the vanilla ice cream in the Magic Kingdom has a richer quality to it. My local grocery store version was vanilla ice cream flavored, but it was made with light ice cream. That gave it a slightly less creamy texture to the feel of the ice cream, but the benefit is that the at-home Mickey bars only have 210 calories and half the fat. I don’t know how to calculate whether that is more or less calories than the Disney World version, though, since we all know that calories eaten at Disney are counted as “zero.” Wink, wink.

Mickey Bar at the Parks

How does the price stack up? The box of six in my grocery store was $6.99, while a single Mickey Premium Bar in the Disney parks is currently selling for $5.69. Obviously, the price point is much better on the grocery store box.

All in all, I’ll still buy the box of six again when I’m feeling nostalgic and need a Disney fix without flying four hours to get to the “most magical place on earth,” but that little bit of magic when you pass under the Disney archway definitely makes everything taste better. The grocery store Mickey ice creams are good, but they didn’t quite reach the “premium” mark.  

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Beth Keating is a regular contributor to DisneyBizJournal.