Disneyland places restriction on popular holiday item, as demand soars
Disneyland Resort guests looking to stock up on a favorite holiday treat will have to settle for just a few per customer this year, or get creative as some have.
Mickey Mouse-shaped gingerbread cookies are currently selling for $7.49 each, but are limited to "five per person, per transaction," according to the online menus for park eateries, including the Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe and Market House.
"It’s literally Christmas in a cookie," parkgoer Tiffany Calderon said to SFGATE. She said her family visits Disneyland three times a year, making it their mission to collect 20 Mickey gingerbreads during the holidays in over to freeze at home and eat year-round. "It feels like home," she added. "Just cuddling up on a couch, watching some Christmas movies, getting a gingerbread cookie out and just — small bites, make it last. Make it linger."
This year, however, Disneyland is trying to prevent hoarding – not only by capping the amount people can buy at one time, but also by occasionally suspending mobile sales to keep the items from selling out.
Some guests, however, are going around the park to place orders for the treats at multiple storefronts – and even heading over to the Grand Californian Hotel, where they sell for $10 a pop. According to the Disney Food Blog, the cookies are soft, Mickey Mouse-shaped, and iced.
Many say they don't just love the taste of the snack, noting that it has sentimental value too.
"This is how Christmas started," Jennifer Walker told SFGATE, remembering how she and her parents "would do the Holiday Time at Disneyland Tour, and they would serve that specific cookie."
Walker said she collected 24 cookies during her last visit to the "Happiest Place on Earth," with a total of 35 this year. But they're not all for her.
"One of them went to my parents’ graveside," she told SFGATE. "So my mom still gets her Mickey gingerbread."
She passed out others as work gifts.
"It turned out my coworker had the same tradition with her mom," Walker said. "Christmas would start when they would have their Mickey gingerbread. So when I had it on her desk, she literally cried because she wasn’t going to make it this year. She’s like, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to help us keep a Christmas tradition.’"
Gingerbread is big business at Disney parks, and not just in edible form. There is a lot of merchandise featuring the festive treat, such as clothing and gingerbread house popcorn buckets, which can also be found all the way across the country at Walt Disney World in Orlando, for those who are lucky.
Disneyland did not immediately respond to a Fox Business inquiry.