Festival of Holidays is Disney California Adventure’s Christmas-themed Food & Wine Festival, with some multi-cultural entertainment added to the mix. This guide has tips for what food to order, what not to order, good value menu items, and other recommendations Festival of the Holidays.
For starters, some background info. After the smash success of the Disney California Adventure Food & Wine Festival, it’s no surprise that Festival of Holidays actually expands upon that event, with 14 booths for this event that are open daily from 10:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. nightly during the Holiday Time at Disneyland (Resort) season. This all officially starts November 10, 2016, but we were at DCA for the soft opening yesterday (it’s also open today).
Prices range from ~$4.50 for desserts to ~$7-8 for savory foods. (That’s no typo.) There are also a number of wines, craft beers, and seasonal mixed drinks, all of which are sold around the normal price points you’d expect at Disney California Adventure.
Just as important to Festival of Holidays is the entertainment. There are 5 stages set up throughout Disney California Adventure for musical acts that are inspired by the diverse holidays Californians celebrate this time of year, including Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas/Navidad, and Three Kings Day. In this guide, we will cover both the food and the entertainment.
We’ll start with marketplace menus, then reviews of specific things we tried, followed by our overall impressions of the event.
Let’s get started…
Marketplace Booths
There are 14 marketplaces at Festival of Holidays, up from the 8 booths at the DCA Food & Wine Festival. Here are the menus for each booth:
Abuelita’s Kitchen
Chicken Cilantro Tamale with roasted Tomatillo salsa verde
Beef and Cheese Tamale with red chili sauce
Chorizo Bean Sopes with Cotija cheese and fresh crèma
Spiced Peanut Brittle
Pomegranate Margarita
Brews & Bites
Holiday Cheese Ball with crackers & pretzels
Seasonal & Craft Beers and tasting flights
Fiesta en Familia
Green Chile Pozole with Vegetables
Red Chile Pozole with Pork
Fresh Fish Ceviche with chili-lime tortilla chips
Guava Agua Fresca
Good Fortune’s Feast
Adobo Pork Bao with shaved red onion and crispy garlic chicharron
Smoked Duck & Vegetable Spring Roll with cabbage and sweet plum sauce
Chilled Papaya Shrimp Salad with chili-garlic vinaigrette and crispy noodles
Winter Mint Milk Tea
Heritage Cottage
Braised Beef Short Rib with smashed potatoes and sauerbraten sauce
Weisswurst Sausage & Sauerkraut with stone ground mustard and pretzel crumble
Vanilla Rice Pudding with apple compote and cinnamon streusel crunch
Making Spirits Bright
Wines by the glass and tasting flights
Warm Holiday Spiced Wine
Sparkling Apple-pomegranate Juice
Mistletoe Morsels
Holiday Swedish Meatballs with creamy gravy and Lingonberry sauce
Classic Crab Cake with lemon tartar sauce
Shrimp Cocktail Martini with chili sauce and jalapeño olive
Holiday Eggnog Cocktail with whipped cream and nutmeg dusting
Merry Berry Sherbet Punch
Mosaic Delights
Roasted Lamb with masala spice Basmati rice and poached raisins
Mini Falafel donuts with pickled vegetables and Tahini drizzle
Baklava with walnuts, pistachios and honey
Iced Moroccan Mint Tea
Nosh & Nibbles
Brisket Potato Croquette with horseradish crème
Sweet Spiced Noodle Kugel
Reuben Potato Smash with Russian dressing and Rye toast
Spice Salutations
Chicken & Potato Curry with Kefir cream and grilled naan
Carrot & Chickpea Fritters with coriander-almond sauce
Cardamom & Saffron Sweet Cheese Tart with mulled fruit
Mango Lassi
Southern Home Holidays
Grilled Spicy Chicken Sausage with red beans and rice
Southern Mac & Cheese with jalapeño cornbread crumble
Sweet Potato Pie with candied pecans
Cranberry Sweet Tea topped with berry foam
Treats for Santa
Mickey Snowman Cookie Decorating Kit
Harvest Puff Pastry
Assorted Cookies
Classic Panettone
Candied Chestnut Panettone
Peppermint Bark
Pumpkin Seed Brittle
Walnut Fudge
Warm Bourbon Cider
White Hot Chocolate with house-made peppermint marshmallows
Holiday Fruit Punch
Winter Sliderland
Roasted Turkey Slider with cranberry sauce and gravy
Kalua Pork Slider with pineapple jam and cider slaw
Praline & Bourbon Whoopie Pie
Sparkling Apple-cranberry Juice
Yuletide Yummies
Mini Turkey Pot Pie with cranberry drizzle
Pesto Puff Pastry Twist
Gingerbread Bundt Cake with orange-vanilla sauce
Eggnog Cheesecake with spiced whipped cream
Mocha Yule Log with candied chestnuts
Raspberry Linzer Tart
Sticky Toffee Pudding with Brandied Cream
Frozen Chocolate Milk with whipped cream and sprinkles
Pumpkin Spice Hot Chocolate with house-made cinnamon marshmallows
Inspired wine and beer selections
Christmas Dessert Reviews
There is no sugar-coating it: the menus for Festival of Holidays at Disney California Adventure gave us sticker shock. Given portion sizes at the earlier DCA Food & Wine Festival, we decided this time around that we were not willing to purchase anything above $6.
Once the reality set in that this meant we wouldn’t be trying anything except desserts, we decided to go all-in on that and just do all of the desserts. We’re pretty satisfied with that decision…
Let’s get the bad out of the way first. The Eggnog Cheesecake. Back in the day when we were broke college students, we used to buy this really cheap, pre-mixed eggnog with mystery booze in it. I get nauseated just thinking about it now. This cheesecake tasted like that. I wouldn’t be surprised if rubbing alcohol or maybe even anti-freeze were one of its ingredients.
Next up was the Gingerbread Bundt Cake. This tasted like a cross between gingerbread and Terry’s Chocolate Orange. This might seem like an odd mix, but it really worked. Part of that might be that those chocolate oranges were a staple of my Christmas stockings growing up, but to me this tasted very “Christmas-y.” Highly recommended.
The Mocha Yule Log is basically a smaller version of the Plaza Inn Yule Log, which everyone knows is a national treasure. The portion here was larger than expected, and as such, this is also highly recommended.
The Sticky Toffee Pudding was another home run. This was a relatively dense dessert, but still had an “ooey gooey” quality to it that made it a consensus winner. One of the best desserts we tried and, once again, highly recommended.
Neither Sarah nor Guy liked the Cardamom & Saffron Sweet Cheese Tart, with both calling it bland. I wasn’t quite so hard on it. It definitely wasn’t as decadent as a cheesecake, but the flavors were still sufficiently pronounced, making this a good, lighter option. It doesn’t attain “highly recommended” status, but it was good.
The Raspberry Linzer Tart was a lot like a cupcake with insufficient filling: dry…until you got to the rich raspberry center. Those few bites were fantastic, making this 70% meh, 30% incredible.
The Vanilla Rice Pudding completely surprised all of us. No one really wanted this…until we tried it. The flavor was fantastic, and not at all what I expected out of rice pudding. It was more like apple cinnamon streusel with some rice pudding underneath. Highly recommended.
As far as desserts go, the Pesto Puff Pastry Twist was quite the departure from everything else. Savory rather than sweet, it reminded us a bit of the cheese bread twists over in Fantasy Faire, except of a higher quality (and smaller size). I’d tepidly endorse this, but it’s still near the bottom of the pack of a very solid lineup of desserts.
Props to Disney for having a surplus of actual tables. While I was tempted to revert to my roots and eat the desserts hunched over a trash can a la the Epcot event, I could get used to this new-fangled, fancy-pants ‘table eatin’. <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f609.png" alt="