by Beth Keating
Review/Lifestyle
DisneyBizJournal.com
December 11, 2023
For more than two decades, Disney World’s pastry chefs have been whipping up creative holiday visions like the gingerbread house at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. If it’s your first time stepping into the soaring atrium of the Grand Floridian to see the life-sized cottage, it’s a good probability your jaw will drop in awe. For several years, we’ve been filling our holiday fêtes with a stop at the Grand to pick up some gingerbread goodies and visit the spectacular house.
This year, though, it wasn’t easy to visit. We decided to make a festive event out of the trip, and had made reservations at the Grand Floridian Café to have lunch and see the gingerbread. We pulled up to the guard booth at the Resort about half an hour before our dining reservation, were greeted warmly, then told to swing around, make a right at the stop sign and a left into the overflow parking at the next traffic light. Then we had to walk across the street, down the long driveway, and up to the portico of the Resort. We were given a dashboard certificate that granted us three hours of parking to see the house and have lunch. Turns out that if we’d decided to opt for dessert with our lunch, we never would have made that three-hour window.
As expected, the Grand Floridian Café was a busy place, and our dining reservation ran twenty minutes behind schedule. (Lunch was very good, by the way.) We finished the meal and headed out to take a few pictures in the atrium in front of the enormous tree, then hopped on line to get our goodies at the gingerbread house. The line was long, but it only took us about 25 minutes to make it to the front of the line. Next, it was a quick stop upstairs at M. Mouse Mercantile to do a little Christmas shopping (didn’t even have time to hit up the other shops), and by then, our three hours were up. We hustled back across the street to overflow parking, and moved out. If we’d stayed at the café for dessert, we would not have remotely made it back to the car in under three hours.
Truthfully, if we had known ahead of time about the three-hour limit on parking, we probably would have skipped the dining reservation at Grand Floridian Café, and parked at the Ticket and Transportation Center (TTC) and taken the monorail over to the Grand Floridian to see the gingerbread house. Then we not only wouldn’t have been pressed for time, but we could have also taken the monorail to the Contemporary to see their gingerbread display. It would have opened up a lot more dining opportunities at the Contemporary and the Polynesian as well, as both resorts are on the monorail line.
All that being said, we were still thrilled to visit the gingerbread house. This is the 24th year for the life-sized cottage, and this year it came from the imagination of Pastry Chef de Cuisine Kristine Farmer and her team. They spent over 500 hours baking gingerbread, and 480 hours decorating the house with 10,000 pieces of gingerbread. An 85 pound, hand-painted chocolate Santa stands on the porch, or maybe he’s just searching for the 24 hidden Mickeys!
The culinary team used 1,050 pounds of honey; 140 pints of egg whites; 600 pounds of powdered sugar; 700 pounds of chocolate; 800 pounds of flour; 35 pounds of spices; and a bit of pixie dust to pull this house together!
If you’d like a special treat while you are visiting the Grand Floridian’s gingerbread house, or even a gift to take home for family and friends, the Grand Floridian will sell you your snacks right from the window of the gingerbread house. The cottage is big enough for cast members to work inside, dishing out the goodies. Among a multitude of items, this year’s sweets include dipped Mickey Gingerbread ears and gingerbread shingles ($11.50); Stollen Bread ($25.00); Brownie Christmas Tree Pops ($7.50); Peppermint Bark ($15.00); Gingersnap Cookies ($5.50); House-made Gingerbread Ornaments ($14.00); Create Your Own Gingerbread Ornament kits ($25.00); Gingerbread Houses ($85.00); Peppermint Marshmallow Pops ($4.00); Gingerbread Cranberry Muffins ($4.50); Milk Chocolate Pecan Fudge ($9.00); and a Grand Floridian Gift Box featuring assorted treats ($60.00).
The Grand Floridian house will be available until January 1, 2024, from 9:00 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. (Just make sure you make the right parking choices!)
If you are doing the “monorail gingerbread crawl,” and are heading to the Contemporary Resort, their Cinderella castle gingerbread display is now in its 12th year. Created by pastry chef Jeff Barnes and his 40 elves, this 17 feet tall, 25 feet wide, Mary Blair-inspired display will be shown off until January 6, 2024. It took twelve days to assemble the over 4,000 castle gingerbread bricks. (You thought you had it rough at your family gingerbread competition!)
You’ll need to head up to the fourth floor to see this gingerbread creation, which honors the Disney100 celebration. The Contemporary’s tableau was made with 612 pounds of sugar, 439 jars of honey, 1012 pounds of flour, 112 pounds of gingerbread spice, 51 pounds of chocolate, 67 pounds of modeling chocolate, 88 pounds of rolled fondant, 43 pounds of Royal icing, 512 eggs, and 12 gallons of milk.
And instead of hidden Mickeys on this backdrop, you’ll be hunting for 12 five-legged goats hidden in the artwork. What? You don’t know about the five-legged goat? It’s a tribute to the five-legged goat that Mary Blair herself placed in the giant mosaic in the Grand Canyon Concourse at the Contemporary. (Some say it’s there to make the statement that nothing is ever perfect. Either way, we think it’s fun, and a challenge to locate this special goat in the tiles on the Concourse wall.)
Disney’s Contemporary Resort also has a selection of special treats for purchase, among them Gingerbread Castle “Bricks” ($6.50); Paint Your Own Cookie boxes ($25.00); Christmas Tree Butter Cookies ($5.29); Gingerbread Loafs ($5.29); Pistachio Linzer Cookies ($6.29); and 5-Legged Goat Cookies that are Gluten Friendly ($5.49).
We hope you and your friends and family have a great time exploring the gingerbread treats in the Magic Kingdom Resort area.
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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.
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