We’ve been to a couple of Not-So-Scary Halloween Parties and have tried the majority of the treats offered as both party exclusive and daily offerings. We’ve compiled a list of the offerings as well as our thoughts on whether or not they’re a trick or a treat!
Hades Nachos – $12
Turn up the heat with the Hades Nachos. These black bean nacho chips are topped with fiery buffalo chicken and your choice of toppings from the topping bar!
Pecos Bill – We’ll start with our favorite “entree” of the evening. All black nachos sit beneath a generous helping of buffalo chicken and a nacho cheese sauce. We’re used to seeing a lot of “fiery” or “spicy” items at Walt Disney World end up barely north of neutral on the heat scale, but these are somewhere around a 7 or 8, depending on your tolerance.
Not only is the heat present, but the flavoring on the buffalo chicken is really well done. These could easily pass as a daily item and do quite well, in our opinion.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Worms ‘n Dirt – $4.49
Chocolate pudding topped with Gluten-Friendly Cake Crumbs, Gummy Candy Worms, and a Chocolate Gravestone
Pecos Bill – A fun dessert that delivers on taste and presentation. It’s a small portion, maybe 5 bites total. A layer of cake crumbs sits atop a chocolate pudding base that delivers all the flavors you’d expect. The cake was surprisingly rich and enjoyable. A really well executed chocolate gravestone delivers wonderful details. It’s quite the photogenic treat and will become a daily offering starting October 1st.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Treats at the Cider House (Cinnamon Doughnuts – $4.99, Chilled Apple Cider – $3.49, and Caramel Pretzel – $4.79)
The “Cider House”, or Golden Outpost, is a new location at this years Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and features a trio of offerings.
First, let’s take a look at the Cinnamon Doughnuts. Six doughnuts greet you from inside a slightly themed bag. They vary slightly in the amount of cinnamon and sugar you’ll find on them, but the general consensus was that they earn a pass. Somehow they managed to be too doughy while remaining airy. It was an odd texture and quite overpriced for what’s delivered.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Next up was the Chilled Apple Cider. Perhaps the perfect slushy to both cool you down during what is bound to be a warm Orlando night, while retaining a distinctly “Fall” flavor as if to try and remind you that you’re at a Halloween party. The apple is really well executed here with a spiced apple flavor almost exactly like what you’d expect from an apple cider. It’s reasonably priced for a beverage of its size and the flavor hits the spot.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Finally, we arrive at the Caramel Pretzel. It’s the same pretzel as what you could previously find at The Lunching Pad over in Tomorrowland, so we’ll defer to our glowing review of it at that location. Suffice it to say that the caramel works wonderfully with the salt and is worth a taste if you didn’t already get to try it during its brief stint in Tomorrowland.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Madame Leota Dessert – $5.99
The Madame Leota Dessert has a vanilla tart shell filled with toasted marshmallow pastry crème and topped with crispy pearls, chocolate, and a hard candy garnish.
Liberty Square Market – Time for our first “picturesque” dessert of the evening. Of course, we use the term “picturesque” quite loosely as the press image didn’t exactly meet our expectations. The crystal ball effect was lost completely due to condensation and the treat only went downhill once we took a bite. An uninspired cream was only upstaged by a dry, bland crust. Leota herself was printed really nicely, but not enough to save this treat, even for the Instagram crowd.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Hitchhiking Ghost Dessert – $5.99
Cream puff filled with cookies and cream mousse and topped with a chocolate piece featuring the Hitchhiking Ghosts.
Aloha Isle – Perhaps the most anticipated dessert of the evening was the Hitchhiking Ghost Cream Puff. A really smart use of a cream puff as a doombuggy complete with chocolate Hitchhiking Ghosts created quite the social media buzz prior to the first party. While we really love the idea, the execution left some to be desired. A lazily applied lap bar ended up being a bit comical. As far as flavor was concerned, it was a complete disappointment. The cream puff tasted terrible, and the consistency of it was chewy and difficult. The cream wasn’t anything special as far as flavor is concerned, and certainly not enough to combat the horrible cream puff. The only redeeming factor was the chocolate that the Hitchhiking Ghosts came printed on, but you can’t really mess up chocolate.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Oogie Boogie Meringue – $4.99
Pomegranate-cherry gelée with gummy worms is topped with glow-in-the-dark meringue
Gaston’s Tavern – This was a weird dessert. While we’ve seen some truly frightening artistic attempts at making this dessert resemble Oogie Boogie, ours came out about as nicely executed as you could hope for. That said, it was quite an odd tasting dessert. The Pomegranate-cherry gelée as the base just didn’t work. It was mostly cherry as far as taste was concerned, but the real odd part was the texture. The gelée wasn’t quite jello, but wasn’t quite liquid. There were textured bites that were firm like jello, sitting in a slightly firmer than liquid surrounding. The glow-in-the-dark meringue was just ok, coming out like a whipped marshmallow in both texture and taste. Overall, it’s a really unique dessert that didn’t sit well with us, but might be worth a try for the uniqueness alone.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Maleficent Dessert – $5.29
Lime soft-serve in a black waffle cone and topped with purple sugar and chocolate horns.
Storybook Treats – The surprise winner of the desserts for us was the Maleficent Ice Cream. It’s a wonderfully tart key lime soft serve that executes well in both presentation and taste. It does melt quite quickly, so get your photos of it fast, but its a real treat to enjoy the tart lime set against chocolate horns in some bites and waffle cone in others. If we had to say something negative about it, it might be the size. Smaller than what you might expect for a “regular” size ice cream, the Maleficent cone makes up for the size with a wonderful flavor to justify the $1-too-high price.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Muenster Smash Burger – $13.99
Topped with Tots, Bacon, Muenster Cheese and Sriracha Aioli on a Black Bun
Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe – Another party-exclusive “entree” is the Muenster Smash Burger. A little bit of spice from the sriracha aioli combines nicely with the muenster cheese, while the tots add a bit of a crunch to the texture of the burger. While we enjoyed the toppings, the burger itself didn’t hold up to the taste test. It was rather bland and the dry black bun only dried out our bites. It’s a decent enough concept, but if you’re looking for an entree to get you through the party, we still recommend the Hades Nachos.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Not-So-Poison Apple Cupcake – $6.99
Red Spiced Jumbo Apple Cupcake with Pecan Crunch and Buttercream
Main Street Bakery – A daily offering through the end of October, the Not-So-Poison Apple Cupcake is as tasty as it is Instagramable. A moist cupcake base sits beneath a nice and crunchy pecan layer before a generous layer of buttercream tops the treat off. For $6.99, you really get your money’s worth here. The cupcake is so big its served in a bowl and can easily satisfy two or three people.
Trick or Treat: Treat
Candy Corn Milkshake – $7.99
Auntie Gravity’s – Trying to capitalize off of the popular and gone-too-soon Millennial Pink Milkshake, the Candy Corn Milkshake falls flat in comparison. What is billed as a candy corn flavor ends up just being vanilla flavor behind an orange-colored facade. The cotton candy and Mickey head marshmallow are nice and make for a nice photo, but the drink earns a pass from us.
Trick or Treat: Trick
Zero Waffle Sundae – $6.49
Pumpkin-flavored Waffle Sundae with Ice Cream and Caramel Drizzle
Sleepy Hollow – We’ve saved the best for last. Two airy, fluffy waffles only have a crunch on the exterior as required to create the image of Zero from Nightmare Before Christmas. The waffles have a hint of pumpkin, but retain a classic Disney waffle mix flavor as well. A generous portion of vanilla ice cream falls between the two waffles and is joined by whip cream and a caramel drizzle. The whole dessert works about as perfectly as a dessert can, and comes highly recommended! It’s a “party exclusive” until October 1st, at which point Disney claims it’ll enter the daily rotation through the end of October.
Trick or Treat: Treat
