Brunch de Domingo Con Cones
By Reuben Gutierrez
7 April 2013
The greatest moment when visiting a Disney theme
park is when you suddenly find yourself in the same exact world of
the Disney characters. Sometimes it's more an 'inspired by' world
(see Pizza PlaNOT), other times a 'you never saw this but you know
it's there' world (see Cinderella's Royal Table), but much of the
times it's the world in which the Disney characters inhabited and
the parks allow us to visit such lands. Carsland in Disney's
California Adventure is pretty much a faithful replica of Radiator
Springs from Pixar's Cars. With each character's 'home'
recreated, guests find themselves visually in Radiator Springs,
though their little highway town had been redone to better
accommodate the human guests, making Carsland not so much the world
of Cars, nor an inspired by world, but something in between.

Case in point, Sally's Cozy Cone Motel looks just
like it did in the movie, complete with cone windmill water feature,
but it's actually not a motel at all. As great as it would be to
sleep overnight in a Disney park inside a giant, orange, rubber
cone, the Imagineers and Sally have instead turned the Cozy Cone
into a court of snack stands! Save for one, each cone has a
different cone inspired snack and serves beverages in a traffic cone
souvenir mug.


Naturally at the Disneyland Resort, the one non-cone
snack is of course the Churro, served as churro bites with Cinnamon
spiced Chocolate Sauce. Also available at Cone 1 is the first of
several Cars themed beverages: Ramone's 'Pear of Dice' soda,
a pear flavored soft drink.

Cone 2 serves the expected Ice Cream Cones, with
soft serve vanilla, chocolate, or twist. Additionally, there is also
an option to dip your soft serve ice cream cone in chocolate. The
Cars themed beverage here is the 'Route' Beer Float.

We'll visit Cone 3 in a moment, but for now we drive
down to Cone 4 where Sally serves Frozen Cone-coctions. The snack
item here is Pretzel Bites with a cheesy sauce. The Cars
themed beverage is Red's Apple Freeze, which will be strikingly
familiar to guests who have had
LeFou's Brew at Gaston's Tavern.

The Popcone at Cone 5 serves scoops of flavored
popcorn in either a regular popcorn box or a Lightning McQueen
souvenir bucket. The flavors seem to rotate daily and when we
visited, we found regular butter popcorn and a sweet and salty
flavor. The beverage here is Doc's Wild Grape tonic.

Finally, Cone 3 is the Chili Cone Queso, one of the
more witty play on words and also recipes! This cone serves bread
cones filled with either Chili 'cone' Queso or Chicken Verde. At
breakfast time, this is the only cone open, serving a Bacon Scramble
cone (scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese sauce, and bacon) and the Verde
Scramble cone (Scramble eggs, Salsa Verde and Queso Fresco). At my
first visit to Carsland, this was the cone we made sure to try!

My number one dining companion Alex had the Chile
Cone Queso and I had the Chicken Verde. Alex found her cone to be
delicious to the last bite, as it was covered with cheese. My
tastebuds cried in terror when they encountered the salsa verde in
my cone. In my research salsa verde is supposed to be mild, so I
guess I'm a wimp. But overall, the cone food experience was really
fantastic as it was an incredibly unique and novel new way of eating
familiar foods. The bread cone was fresh and soft with a crisp
crust, much like a pretzel. Portion size as seen above is enough to
comfortably fit in your hand and serve as a quick meal. Of all the
cone inspired snacks, this one was certainly the winner.

The Cozy Cone has some cone covered
tables for seating and they seem to employ bussers whose hair color
matches the d'cor.
As I write this blog (and every time I write for
this blog), I crave for another bread cone concoction. While I am
lucky to live near Walt Disney World, there is no Carsland or Cozy
Cones serving my new favorite Disney snack. As fate would have it,
the bread cones have managed to find their way over to my home
Disney resort! While not in one of the parks, these crazy cones can
be enjoyed at the Downtown Disney Marketplace, accessible to anyone
willing and able to make their way to the popular shopping
destination.

Marketplace Snacks across from the Team Mickey store
and Guest Relations, sells refreshments including the popular Chili
Cone Queso and the new Meatball Cone. The Meatball Cone is filled
with marinara sauce, turkey meatballs (a 'healthy' choice), and
provolone cheese. It was a rather blustery, rainy day when I made my
way to the Marketplace, and this meatball cone was my ticket to
warmth and to assuage my cone craving.

The Cozy Cone at Disneyland is such a fun, zany, and
quirky food court, it definitely is a must-see when visiting the
Disneyland Resort as it thrusts you into the world of Cars.
The crazy cone inspired snacks make it a must-dine location as well.
Thankfully the popularity of the cones have managed to motor across
the country and allow the East Coast Disney park fans a chance to
also enjoy the quirky, fun snacks I've discovered Disneyland is
known and remembered for.