Epcot Festival of the Holidays 2025: Best and worst new food
The Epcot International Festival of the Holidays is back for 2025, and we determined the best and worst new festival food with reviews of standout dishes and misses.
Epcot International Festival of the Holidays 2025
The Epcot International Festival of the Holidays is an annual event celebrating global holiday traditions. In 2025, the festival runs from Nov. 28 – Dec. 30. A significant highlight is the Candlelight Processional, a nightly performance at the America Gardens Theatre featuring a celebrity narrator, a choir, and a live orchestra retelling the Christmas narrative. Throughout World Showcase, Holiday Storytellers share seasonal folklore and customs from their respective countries.
Other returning favorites include Olaf’s Holiday Tradition Expedition scavenger hunt and the holiday light display on the Living with the Land attraction, known as “Glimmering Greenhouses.” The festival, included with park admission, transforms Epcot into a cheerful destination, offering a mix of cultural education, stunning performances, and delicious treats for a truly worldwide celebration of the season.
Guests can also enjoy seasonal flavors at the Holiday Kitchens, outdoor food studios serving festive cuisine and beverages from around the world. For this reason, we visited on Nov. 28 to try all the new food options at the 2025 event.
Full list of all the new food for 2025
This year’s event involves plenty of sweet treats. 2025’s event includes 21 new food items, depending on how you count them. (We followed Walt Disney World’s pattern, distinguishing shakes and slushes as beverages, not food items.) These 21 new food items are:
- Prototype Cookie: Sugar cookie with orange-cranberry icing and dark chocolate (CommuniCore Hall)
- Ginger-Molasses Cookie with cream cheese icing (CommuniCore Hall)
- Cranberry-Oatmeal Cookie (The Odyssey)
- Red Velvet Cake Pop with festive sprinkles (The Odyssey)
- Tostada de Carne: Braised beef tips slowly cooked Mexican-style atop a fried corn tortilla with black beans, crispy onions, and queso fresco (Mexico)
- Tamal de Pollo con Mole: Shredded chicken and mole in corn masa topped with mole negro, queso fresco, crema Mexicana, slivered almonds, and sesame seeds (Mexico)
- Dulce de Leche Churro sprinkled with cinnamon sugar (Mexico)
- BBQ Char Siu Pork Fried Rice with Chinese La Chang sausage, egg, yellow onion, green onion, and sesame (China)
- Spiced Shrimp Stew with Jollof Rice (African Outpost)
- Salsiccia e Peperoni: Sweet sausage, roasted peppers, and focaccia (Italy)
- Pizza e Cioccolato: Fried house-made pizza dough with sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate (Italy)
- Apple Pie Sundae: Apple pie filling with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce topped with streusel (Fife and Drum – American Adventure)
- Chocolate Cookie featuring Snickers bar pieces and salted caramel (American Adventure)
- Red Velvet Cookie Funnel Cake topped with powdered sugar, vanilla ice cream, cream cheese whipped cream, red velvet cookie pieces, mini chocolate chips, and chocolate syrup (Funnel Cake Stand – American Adventure)
- Strawberry Bun: Soft pink dessert bao containing sweet strawberry cream filling finished with a light coconut sauce (Japan)
- Mickey-shaped Almond Black and White Cookie (L’Chaim! Holiday Kitchen – between Morocco and France)
- Macaron de Noël aux Épices: Large gingerbread macaron with spiced filling (France)
- Dinde Rôtie, Sauce et Garniture, servi avec Patates Douces: Roasted turkey with mushrooms, pearl onions, bacon, turkey gravy, and roasted sweet potatoes (France)
- Maple Leaf Shortbread Cookie with maple buttercream (Canada)
- Pan de Jamón: Traditional Latin Christmas bread, rolled ham, raisins, and green olives (Nochebuena Cocina – between World Showcase and the Imagination! Pavilion)
- Liquid Nitrogen Chocolate-Peppermint Mousse featuring M&M’S Holiday Mint Chocolate Candies (Swirled Showcase)
Best new food at Epcot Festival of the Holidays 2025
We found one standout new Festival of the Holidays food option and one other food item for our best list. We hoped to add more new Epcot festival food items, such as the Liquid Nitrogen Chocolate-Peppermint Mousse, Maple Leaf Shortbread Cookie, and Tostada de Carne. However, each of these potentially best new Epcot festival food items displayed weaknesses such as a lack of robust flavor or significant texture issues.
Additionally, the Dinde Rôtie, Sauce et Garniture, servi avec Patates Douces (a roasted turkey dish from France), deserves an honorable mention. However, the overuse of pearl onions dominating the item causing it to fall below the best list. Guests looking for turkey should visit the tried-and-true American Adventure Holiday Kitchen version.
So, what made our nice list for Festival of the Holidays?
Ginger-Molasses Cookie with cream cheese icing
- Price: $3.50
- Location: CommuniCore Hall
This cookie surprised us with its quality and value. This cookie offers nothing fancy. However, it also presents a simple cookie done well. The ginger flavor does not overwhelm the cookie. Also, neither does the molasses.
We found the cookie soft and well crafted. Those characteristics will be downfall of cookies on the naughty list. However, the Ginger-Molasses Cookie has plenty of icing, leading to potential messes. In our case, we did not mind that issue. This Epcot festival food item is one we will get over and over during the event. It costs only $3.50. Guests can also purchase it to earn a prize as a part of the Cookie Stroll. Guests can find it inside CommuniCore Hall.
Tamal de Pollo con Mole
- Price: $9
- Location: Mexico
While the $9 price of this menu item concerned us, it shows creativity and flavor. The Tamal de Pollo con Mole consists of shredded chicken and mole in corn masa topped with mole negro, queso fresco, crema Mexicana, slivered almonds, and sesame seeds. The presentation deserves high marks.
While we desired a more robust flavor, it still stood out for its unique components. The mole negro complimented the tamal. Additionally, the portion size of chicken helped elevate this dish to the best Epcot festival food list. Those looking for something more authentic Mexican versus Tex-Mex should give this a try.
Worst new food at Epcot Festival of the Holidays 2025
With every Epcot festival, some new food items must fall to the bottom of the list. For Festival of the Holidays, we found several candidates.
Prototype Cookie
- Price: $4
- Location: CommuniCore Hall
In CommuniCore Hall where we found the Ginger-Molasses Cookie, we also tried this sugar cookie. The best feature of this cookie revolves around design on the dark chocolate. It look like a geodesic piece of Spaceship Earth. However, the dark chocolate on top comes in two thin layers and those layers fall apart easily. The orange-cranberry icing is found on the bottom of the cookie.
One member of our group enjoys dark chocolate, cranberry, and sugar cookies. Nonetheless, they felt those flavors failed to work together with the prototype cookie. Despite this being an improvement over some of the options found at CommuniCore Hall in 2024, it falls on our naughty list.
Cranberry-Oatmeal Cookie
- Price: $3.50
- Location: Odyssey Building
We really cheered for this plant-based cranberry-oatmeal cookie, found in the Odyssey Building. It offers festive flavors.
Still, the texture and lack of a robust cranberry flavor hinders this cookie. We got one of these cookies at noon on the opening day of the event. Despite that, this Epcot festival food option was hard and difficult to chew. It lacked freshness. We got mostly average oatmeal flavor. The cranberry hangs in the background not doing very much. One colleague compared it to a crunchy granola bar.
Pizza e Cioccolato
- Price: $7
- Location: Tuscany Holiday Kitchen (Italy)
Over at the Tuscany Holiday Kitchen in the Italy section of World Showcase, we encountered another below-average sweet treat. Pizza e Cioccolato consists of fried house-made pizza dough with sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate. Guests will get four or five bite-sized dough balls.
Our notes and reasons for placing this creation on the naughty list are simple. They include:
- Dough overly chewy
- Chocolate just average
- Failed to offer a definitive sweetness
- Costs twice as much as Ginger-Molasses Cookie
For more information about the 2025 Epcot International Festival of the Holidays, please visit the official Walt Disney World website.
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