Grand Floridian Gingerbread House Wows, But Isn’t Easy To Get To… And Stop By the Contemporary’s Gingerbread, Too

 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.

__________

 

Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

 

Support the Daily Dose of Disney with Ray Keating podcast at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1724143. Subscribe at the $8 or $10 level, and get The Disney Planner: The TO DO List Solution by Ray Keating. Remain a supporter and you'll get a FREE BOOK by Ray Keating every six months going forward. Thanks!

Grand Floridian Café Offers Relaxed and Varied Menu

 by Beth Keating

Review

DisneyBizJournal.com

March 24, 2023

 

The first time we went to the Grand Floridian Café, we were expecting the dining room to match the rest of the Grand Floridian Resort – upscale and maybe too fancy for our theme park t-shirts. But we were new to Florida at the time, and hadn’t yet been able to get annual passes, so we had been making the rounds of the various Disney Resorts, getting a Disney fix without breaking the bank buying individual park tickets, biding our time until the annual pass sales resumed.  Grand Floridian Café turned out to be a lovely evening, and so much more relaxed than we’d anticipated.

Now, a few years later, we were heading over to the Grand Floridian to take in the chocolate Easter egg display (see our article and video here), and we decided to check out the Grand Floridian’s lunch offerings.  It was once again a lovely, albeit extended, meal.

 

The Grand Floridian Café does offer breakfast, lunch and dinner seatings, but there is a brief closure between lunch and dinner. The café is closed from 2:00-5:00 so the cast members can prepare for the meal switchover.

 

Lunch at the Grand Floridian Café is served as “Blunch,” as our cast member explained. It’s the opportunity to order lunch items, but breakfast items continue to be offered as well. It’s not a large menu, but the widely varying offerings include everything from Banana Foster Oatmeal, steak and eggs, avocado toast, quiche, pancakes, and Brioche French Toast, to Reubens, salads, burgers, salmon, and Lobster Benedict.

 

We were hoping the famed Strawberry Soup from the not-yet-reopened 1900 Park Fare next door was available, but alas, it wasn’t on the day’s menu.  Instead it was a butternut squash soup ($12.00), which we skipped in favor of the Chilled Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail ($16.00) and the Heirloom Apple Salad ($13.00).

Normally, you would see a shrimp cocktail served draped over the edge of a stemmed glass, hovering over a splash of cocktail sauce.  But this delicious appetizer was far from the ordinary presentation of shrimp cocktail.  The Grand Floridian Café’s rendition featured five very large, very chilled shrimp, perched on top of a bed of greens and a layer of grapefruit sections, paired with a side of freshly sliced avocado.  It was, indeed, served with the obligatory cocktail sauce, but the dish was so fresh and citrusy tasting that you really didn’t need it. 

The Apple Salad was also an unexpected treat, a pretty substantial starter-sized salad of organic baby lettuce, tossed with heirloom apples and sharp cheddar, and topped with crunchy pecan brittle and a salty prosciutto.  It was dressed with a sweet honey-apple vinaigrette that I would love to have again and again.

Our entrées had a delightful twist as well.  I ordered the Buttermilk-fried Chicken and Waffle ($26.00), which came with two hand-breaded crispy chicken cutlets served with a sriracha-honey drizzle that was just delicious.  The drizzle was sweet, with the barest hint of a kick from the sriracha, and it was expertly applied, because it was the perfect amount of glaze. The chicken wasn’t drowning in the sauce, but it also had an adequate amount that flavored the chicken without overwhelming the crunchy texture.  But the big surprise was the malted waffle that was the centerpiece of the dish.  It was one large waffle, fluffy and uniquely flavored… and in the shape of Mickey!  How can you not love Mickey-shaped food at Disney World?   My son, who was dining with me, thought I was nuts because I was so excited over the Mickey waffle.

 

My son chose the Lobster 'Thermidor' Burger ($26.00), a dish that the Grand Floridian Café is famous for, and it did not disappoint. A 7-oz burger patty topped by a creamy lobster-parmesan Thermidor sauce, the burger is served on a seared brioche bun, with a bonus cheese crisp perched on top. The burger came with a small handful of seasoned fries on the side.  The Thermidor sauce was exceptional, and was happily more lobster than sauce.  There were large, whole pieces of tender lobster, which made for a decadent feel to our lunch. It was more “luncheon” than “lunch.”

Sadly, we were so full by the time we finished that we did not make it to dessert, which was disappointing because there were several interesting choices, including a Key Lime tart, and a cookies n’ cream Mickey Dome.   

 

The Grand Floridian Café is a good choice for lunch, with its very diverse menu, but for us, we were glad that we were not staring down Lightning Lane reservations at the Magic Kingdom for the afternoon.  While the service was excellent, the kitchen was very slow, with an hour and a half meal time for us.  To be fair, it was Spring Break week, and there wasn’t an open seat in the restaurant, and I suspect there were also conferences going on because we watched large trolleys of food trays heading down the sidewalks during our meal, but meals were slow to come out of the kitchen.  It wasn’t a problem for us because we were meandering our way through the chocolate egg displays that afternoon, but just be aware that your yummy lunch may take longer than you thought.  Take it as a sign that you should relax and stay awhile.

 

The restaurant itself was clean (in the care taken at the restaurant, as well as the architectural lines of the room) and bright, with lots of huge windows looking out on the beautiful grounds of the Grand Floridian.  It was a lovely, peaceful meal, and I am sure we’ll find ourselves dining here again in the future.  Especially knowing there’s a few Mickey-themed foods waiting for us!

 

_______________

 

Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.