8 best things I ate at Disney’s Festival of Holidays 2025

Disneyland chefs have whipped up another batch of food mashups and tasty treats for this year’s Festival of Holidays that brings together familiar and unusual tastes from Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Navidad and Three Kings Day.

I taste tested several menu items at Disney’s Festival of Holidays on Friday, Nov. 14 during the kickoff of the seasonal event that runs through Jan. 7 at Disney California Adventure.

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A steady band of rain showers dampened the opening day of the food festival on Friday morning. Fortunately, the skies cleared by mid-afternoon and gave soaked visitors a chance to dry out and enjoy the new offerings.

The 2025 Festival of Holidays features six marketplace booths offering small plates highlighting winter holiday eats and drinks. Several other DCA eateries and food stands also serve festival fare.

Disney’s Festival of Holidays specialty menu includes more than 60 food and drink options to choose from this winter holiday season.

Sip and Savor passes are back again this year that allow visitors to purchase a $49 prepaid card ($46 for Magic Keyholders) good for six individual items at food and beverage locations throughout the event.

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That works out to about $7.65 to $8.15 per item — an important factor to keep in mind when you’re weighing the relative value of each dish or drink.

Here are the eight best things I ate at Disney’s Festival of Holidays using the Sip and Savor Pass.

1) Al Pastor Mac & Cheese

Holiday Duets festival food booth

Served with tortilla crumble and cilantro.

Mac & Cheese is one of my four basic food groups — so I was predisposed to like this year’s twist on the classic side dish.

The pork was tender, chewy and plentiful.

There was a tiny bit of heat combined with a barbecue tang.

The Disney chefs always have a couple Mac & Cheese dishes on the Festival of Holidays menu and this year’s newcomer is another winner.

2) Spicy Cajun Loaded Fries

Smokejumpers Grill

French fries topped with hot links, cheddar cheese, corn and bell peppers.

The loaded fries were the most shareable of the new items on the Festival of Holidays menu.

The peppers added a little color and flavor to the hearty and filling dish.

I’m always worried when I see “spicy” in the name of the dish — since I can’t do anything too spicy.

This is what I would call “theme park spicy.” A little hot, but nothing that would offend the taste buds of a typical parkgoer.

The heat came from a hot sauce on the fries rather than the hot links.

Unlike some restaurants, Smokejumpers offers a full-size portion of the loaded fries with the Sip & Savor pass.

3) Holiday M&M’s Eclair

Merry Mashups festival food booth

Filled with milk chocolate mousse and topped with whipped ganache and M&M’s milk chocolate minis.

The holiday eclair tasted almost as good as it looked.

The whipped ganache filling was delicate, moist and fluffy.

The flavors were more like a cream filled donut than the light and crisp French pastry you’d expect with a traditional eclair.

You could easily share this scrumptious dessert — or eat it all on your own.

4) Strawberry Basil Churro

Terran Treats vending cart

Churro topped with strawberry sauce, basil dust and whipped topping.

I would never order a plain churro at Disneyland. There’s just not much there. It’s fairly neutral.

The genius of a churro is it’s the perfect vehicle for creative culinary inspiration — because it doesn’t get in the way of the flavors.

This year’s holiday treat tasted like strawberry shortcake with just a hint of the churro’s crunch and sweetness.

To my surprise the strawberry and basil paired very well together.

It was fresh, delightful and gone as fast as I could eat it.

5) Orange Yuzu & Cranberry Agua Fresca

Cocina Cucamonga

House-made with cinnamon and clove.

I was perplexed by the yuzu flavor in the blended fruit juice.

Yuzu has a fairly complex citrus taste that combines the tartness of a lemon, sweetness of a mandarin and bitterness of a grapefruit.

It’s an acquired taste that perfectly feeds my desire to try something new at a food festival.

The more you drink, the more you’ll like it.

It’s a fun take on a punch that’s full of fall flavors and fits perfectly with the yuletide season.

6) Tropical Holiday Punch

Merry Mashups festival food booth

Made with pineapple, orange and lemon juices, blue raspberry syrup and coconut puree garnished with a blue raspberry gummy candy.

The neon teal punch looked like a cross between a lava lamp and a melted popsicle.

Fortunately the punch wasn’t as sweet as it looked — always a concern with any Disney seasonal drink.

The refreshing and surprisingly sour punch would be ideal on a hot day.

The fruity punch tasted like the base for a cocktail. So much so that Disney offered the drink with rum — but just not as a Sip & Savor option.

7) Mint Chocolate Chip Cotton Candy

Little Mermaid vending cart

Other than the green color, there was nothing different here beyond your average cotton candy.

The mint flavor was very subtle. I didn’t taste any hint of chocolate.

The fact that I was trying cotton candy on the Sip & Savor card speaks to how few new items were on the Festival of Holidays tasting menu this year.

Disneyland has trimmed the holiday menus over the years and reduced the number of festival booths from 14 in 2016 to only six today.

8) Hot Blueberry Cider

Rita’s Turbine Blenders food stand

Hot blueberry apple cider.

Like all cider, this would be great on a cold day.

The more I drank, the more I liked it.

The blueberry flavor intensified the cooler the cider got.

But at the end of the day, it’s just a cup of cider.

Compared to everything else on the list, it was fairly ordinary and uninspiring.

There weren’t many compelling new options on the Festival of Holidays tasting menu this year. Most of the 26 Sip & Savor items were returning fare from past festivals.