A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

YOUR PERSONAL DISNEY LIBRARY (42)

By Jim Korkis

• The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook by Ashley Craft

Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle, who thought he had slept for a few hours, but it turned out to be years. It seems that when I was not looking and blinked my eyes, the marketplace was flooded with both official and unofficial books filled with recipes of food items from the Disney theme parks.

Certainly, food is a major factor not only in enjoying the Disney parks but also in making them unique from some other entertainment venues.

If Walt Disney World Resort was an independent food service company, it would rank 45th among the world’s largest restaurant chains. As an example, 10,000 dessert soufflés a year come out of the oven at Victoria & Albert’s at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa.

Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano at Disney’s Hollywood Studios serves 720 pounds of pasta every day. At least 125 orders of meat loaf and mashed potatoes are requested every day at the 50’s Prime Time Cafe at DHS.

Walt Disney World produces huge quantities of its food items every day. When you try to recreate one of these items at home, you quickly find it takes a huge investment of time, labor and expense as well as not quite tasting the same as it does in the parks.

Also be advised that you might need some additional kitchen items to complete a recipe. It is cheaper and easier to just get it at the park. However, if you are unable to go to a Disney park to get your favorite treat, these recipe books are a good alternative.

I picked The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook to review because it focuses on the parks with over a hundred pages (divided into Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney Hollywood Studios and Disney Animal Kingdom) of its 229 pages devoted to just Walt Disney World.

The other two chapters are for Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. The first forty or so pages of the book are devoted to a short history of each Disney park in the book and the tools that will be needed in your kitchen to make some of the recipes. Scattered throughout the book are occasional “Did You Know?” paragraphs.

I also picked this book because it had over five thousand five-star reviews on Amazon. The few negative reviews for the book were buyers who tried the recipes and were disappointed for a variety of reasons.

Primarily the negative concerns were that quantities for some ingredients were incorrect, or that recipes were not done from scratch but rather made use of pre-mixed things. I am not a cook nor a baker, so I have not tried to make any of the recipes in this book.

I found the price for The Unofficial Disney Parks Cookbook very reasonable considering it features one hundred recipes and the interior is beautifully designed. The color photos are of Ashley’s creations of the Disney food and not every recipe features a photo.

The recipes are generally for the simpler items like Dole Whip, Blue Milk, and Turkey Legs. In addition, the vast majority of recipes are desserts rather than savory treats.

Author Ashley Craft grew up in Anaheim, California with frequent visits to Disneyland. When she was older she did two internships at Walt Disney World. She has her own blog AshleyCrafted.com where she began sharing recreated Disney park recipes.

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Thanks, Jim! and come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his new books Kungaloosh! The Mythic Jungles of Walt Disney World and Hidden Treasures of Walt Disney World Resorts: Histories, Mysteries, and Theming, much of which was first published on this site.

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