Earlier today, the Toy Story Land popcorn and snack kiosk opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. The new kiosk offers some standard items such as popcorn and churros, but one item that caught our eye was the Pizza Planet Spring Roll. Of course, we had to get it. Here’s our review of the Pizza Planet Spring Roll from Toy Story Land.
Pizza Planet Spring Roll | $9.49
You read that right: $9.49! I typically don’t like focusing on the price right away during a review, but there’s no way around this. Yes, it’s the same price as the spring rolls at Magic Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean that those are reasonably priced either. I guess I should be happy that it’s not higher given that the going rate of a spring roll hasn’t gone up in nearly two years. Ok, with that complaining out of the way, let’s get to the nuts and bolts of this review.
Earlier today, the new “Popcorn and Snacks” kiosk opened at Toy Story Land in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. At first, we were just there for photos of the kiosk and then moving on with our walk around the park. However, once we saw something labeled “Pizza Planet Spring Rolls”, we had to wait for the 10am opening to order some ourselves.
Actually, a quick bit of housekeeping here. As you’ll see on the menu, the Pizza Planet Spring Rolls are not supposed to be offered until 10:30am, but Cast were ready for us shortly after 10am, spring rolls at the ready. Here’s a look at the kiosk and full posted menu.
The rest of the menu is rather standard, and as someone who is a big fan of the Jack & Coke machines that have popped up around Walt Disney World in recent years, we’re happy to see some adult beverage options for those hot summers with no shade in Andy’s backyard.
At nearly $10 for our spring rolls, we decided to hit up a few photo ops within Toy Story Land to really milk it for all its worth.
As you’ll note in the photos above, the Pizza Planet Spring Rolls come with a prepackaged Red Gold Marinara Sauce. I thought the sauce was good, although it is sitting at 3.5 stars on the Walmart website, so what do I know?
Tearing open the spring rolls, we encountered the standard, flaky crust that you would expect to find. I thought that these were extra flaky, which is a compliment when compared to the sometimes soggy spring rolls you can find at Magic Kingdom’s popular Adventureland spring roll cart. Could just be a matter of luck too.
I will say that the first impression that I received when tearing these open was lukewarm (the spring rolls were hot). One word came to mind: airy. As in, a lot of empty space. Not exactly what I’m hoping for when spending more than $10 (with tax) on two spring rolls.
That said, we’ll soon find that first impressions aren’t always right. If we continue to zoom in, we’ll see two things that really “save” these spring rolls. The first is an abundance of herbs. To our taste, we figured that there was some basil and oregano – classic additions to any pizza.
Indeed, I thought that these rolls were particularly savory, and the herb blend was doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
One bite into our pepperoni spring rolls, and we discovered that they were far denser than they looked. Now, they aren’t stuffed by any means, but as you can see in the photos below, pepperoni was usually added 2 or 3 at a time, and then folded over. That meant that each bite was packed with pepperoni, in addition to the mozzarella and herbs.
I’ll close by addressing the article title and some slander thrown at PizzeRizzo. Honestly, I’m not sure why I’m picking on PizzeRizzo, given that it is no longer with us. However, I did eat there from time to time while visiting Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and I was always blown away by how poor the food quality was. That said, PizzeRizzo was the go-to pizza place within Hollywood Studios after replacing the former Pizza Planet restaurant, ironically enough. Given that these are pizza spring rolls, my mind immediately went to PizzeRizzo, and the comparison was born.
PizzeRizzo had a cult following among Disney fans, mostly for the Muppets theming (I hope), but there were a fair number of guests who also went there expecting some good pizza. I can’t imagine anyone left happy on the culinary front.
All that to say is that when I took my first bite of my (overpriced) Pizza Planet Spring Rolls in Toy Story Land, I couldn’t help but think about how much more these tasted like actual pizza, and a decent pizza at that, compared to anything at our dearly departed PizzeRizzo.
At the very great risk of overselling these spring rolls (which I’m almost certainly doing at this point), these might be the best quick-service “pizza” you can get at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. That’s probably more of a condemnation of pizza at Hollywood Studios than it is an endorsement of the Pizza Planet Spring Rolls, but I digress.
I wouldn’t go out of my way for these spring rolls, but it is nice to have an option outside of the Adventureland snack cart at Magic Kingdom. I would say that these are just as good as the Magic Kingdom version, if not a bit better, but that could be the lack of shade talking. Might be time for a Jack & Coke slushy.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
