Gingerbread houses are being built at Walt Disney World for Christmas 2025, with new and returning lifesize displays in the hotels. This post covers details of those, plus the special holiday foods coming to the resorts.
Before we dig in, it’s worth mentioning that as of November 3rd, decorations are already starting to go up at both Walt Disney World. Magic Kingdom is now fully decked out for the holidays with garland, wreaths, and displays. The holiday season is unofficially underway, with the Christmas tree is up and Jingle Cruise tours are departing daily!
Officially, Christmas doesn’t start at Walt Disney World until next weekend. That’s when entertainment and substantive seasonal offerings begin, for the most part. The big exceptions are Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and Jollywood Nights, which start this weekend, and the EPCOT Festival of the Holidays, which begins after Thanksgiving. For everything you need to know about the holidays, see our Ultimate Guide to Christmas 2025 at Walt Disney World.
Let’s start by looking at the Christmas menus at Walt Disney World resorts, which are another thing that are now being offered…
Barcelona Lounge
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Location: Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort
- Snowflake Cinnamon Roll: Fondant icing with sugar snowflake décor
BoardWalk Deli
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1; mobile order available)
Location: Disney’s BoardWalk Inn
- Candy Cane Cheesecake Brownie: Peppermint cheesecake, decadent brownie, and dark chocolate ‘sleigh bell’ truffle
- Snowflake Cinnamon Roll: Fondant icing with sugar snowflake décor
Capt. Cook’s and Kona Island
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1; mobile order available at Capt. Cook’s)
Location: Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Festive Cupcake: Chocolate cupcake, peppermint mousse, streusel, and chocolate décor
Carousel Coffee
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Location: Disney’s BoardWalk Inn
- Snowflake Cinnamon Roll: Fondant icing with sugar snowflake décor
Gasparilla Island Grill
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1; mobile order available)
Location: Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa
- Gingerbread Brownie: Gingerbread-spiced brownie with salted caramel ganache (New)
- Let It Snow: Almond-praline mousse, confit apricot, and orange chiffon
- Stollen Bites (New) (Available starting November 18)
As a reminder, Gasparilla Island Grill is a sleeper pick for some of the best desserts at Walt Disney World. See our recent Review: Top-Tier Restaurant for Magic Kingdom Day or Late Night Dining.
Le Petit Café
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan.1)
Location: Disney’s Riviera Resort
- Gingerbread Eggnog Entremet: Gingerbread financier, eggnog panna cotta, and raspberry gel
- Gingerbread Cookie: European-style gingerbread, dark chocolate, and sugar glaze
Primo Piatto
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Location: Disney’s Riviera Resort
- Gingerbread Cookie: European-style gingerbread, dark chocolate, and sugar glaze
Pineapple Lanai
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Location: Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort
- Olu Mel Holiday Float: DOLE Whip Lime with DOLE Pineapple Juice, white chocolate piece, and strawberry popping candy (Non-alcoholic)
Roaring Fork
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1; mobile order available)
Location: Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
- Peppermint Igloo: White chocolate igloo filled with white chocolate-peppermint mousse and dark chocolate cake
Trail’s End
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Location: Fort Wilderness Campground
Snowflake Cinnamon Roll: Fondant icing with sugar snowflake décor
Various Counter Service Restaurants
(Available Nov. 3 through Jan. 1)
Sausage and Butternut Squash Ragu: Fennel sausage, butternut squash, and kale in a creamy tomato sauce (New) (Mobile order available)
- End Zone Food Court
- Every Pop Shopping and Dining
- Intermission Food Court
- Landscape of Flavors
- Riverside Mill Food Court
- World Premiere Food Court
Gingerbread Cake: Gingerbread cake, caramel ganache filling, caramel crispy pearls, eggnog pastry cream, and white chocolate (New) (Mobile order available)
- Centertown Market
- End Zone Food Court
- Every Pop Shopping and Dining
- Good’s Food to Go
- Intermission Food Court
- Landscape of Flavors
- Riverside Mill Food Court
- World Premiere Food Court
Candy Cane Shake: Choice of vanilla or chocolate peppermint shake with whipped cream, peppermint pieces, and a cherry (New) (Non-alcoholic)
- End Zone Food Court
- Intermission Food Court
- Landscape of Flavors
- Riverside Mill Food Court
- World Premiere Food Court
Gingerbread Houses
Gingerbread houses are one of the things usually going up ahead of the holiday season. These lifesize edible displays are a staple of holiday festivities at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, and are quite the sight (and scent!) to behold. After months of hard work and creativity from the talented culinary teams, these displays are brought to life before our very eyes and are well worth the visit to the parks and resorts.
Normally, Walt Disney World releases a guide to these lifesize gingerbread displays at the beginning of November. That guide includes menus for all of the locations, along with dates that each display will open and close. This year, they instead buried a list of the gingerbread displays at the end of the menus for the resort hotels.
It’s possible that a full gingerbread house guide is still to come. That we’ll get menus and all of the usual dates and details.
My guess is that we won’t, and the likely reason for that is Walt Disney World not wanting to draw further attention to the Gingerbread House at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa NOT Returning for Christmas 2025. That was the longest running display, celebrating its 25th Anniversary last year.
That was the gingerbread display most Walt Disney World fans looked forward to, and would be a conspicuous omission in a guide about gingerbread houses. That would explain the brief list, and lack of other details. Or perhaps we’ll wrong, and a fully-fledged gingerbread guide will drop within the next few hours or days.
What Walt Disney World has announced is that if you want to see gingerbread brought to life by our talented pastry teams, simply follow the smell of gingerbread. You can take a quick trip over to the following resorts this holiday season to see their mesmerizing (and delicious) work through January 1, 2026:
- Disney’s Contemporary Resort
- Disney’s BoardWalk Inn
- Disney’s Beach Club Resort
- Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge
- Disney’s Wilderness Lodge
No start dates have been announced, nor have menus. However, past precedent is pretty instructive, so what follows are the full details from last year:
Taking the monorail over to Disney’s Contemporary Resort, you’ll find that the hotel’s gingerbread display is back in the Grand Canyon Concourse for its 14th year led by Pastry Chef Jeff Barnes.
Last year, Walt Disney Imagineers designed this overlay inspired by the Cinderella Castle Dream Lights. It was a change of pace from the previous displays, which had been inspired by Frozen and Cinderella in the Mary Blair style of the Contemporary. This is usually one of the first to go up, appearing during the first week of November.
Disney’s Contemporary Resort Gingerbread Display Menu (2024):
- Linzer Cookie
- Caramel Apple Cake with Gingerbread Streusel
- Chocolate Hazelnut Log
- Pistachio Cranberry and Cherry Cake
- Santa Peppermint Hot Chocolate Tart
- House-made Christmas Tree Butter Cookie
- Winter Berry Freeze (Alcoholic floater available)
- Frozen Hot Cocoa (Alcoholic floater available)
Disney’s Beach Club Resort continues its classic Holiday Carousel gingerbread display. The life-size creation has been at the resort for 24 years and it actually moves. Each holiday season, the horses are decorated to a different theme. No date was given for this last year, but it’s usually early; I saw this on November 10th last year.
Last year, the characters from “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” were brought to life by the talented Yacht and Beach Bakery. This yuletide celebration is masterfully created with chocolate, sugar, and fondant with hand-painted characters and handcrafted gingerbread shingles and snowflakes adorning the carousel.
Disney’s Beach Club Resort Gingerbread Display Menu (2024):
- Linzer Cookie
- Spiced Orange and Cranberry Bundt Cake
- Gingerbread Macarons
- Hot Cocoa Brownie
- Hannukah Sugar Cookie
- Stollen
- Gingerbread House
As we keep going around Crescent Lake, we arrive at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn where their display is shore to impress. This creation is a miniature version of some of your favorite spots found along the BoardWalk itself, including the BoardWalk Deli, which is home to none other than the BoardWalk Inn Bakery team. It debuted on November 12th last year.
This display is beautifully created with details that look just like the showplace of the shore, but just in a smaller and sweet form. This year, there’s also a limited-edition pin, cookie jar, and holiday ornament available for purchase to bring the gingerbread magic home with you!
Disney’s BoardWalk Inn Gingerbread Display Menu (2024):
- Holiday Mickey and Minnie Sugar Cookie
- Mickey Caramel Corn Cookie
- Gingerbread Loaf
- Gingerbread Shingle
Go on a tasty adventure to Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge where you’ll find one of the most adorable giraffes and zebras around. This has appeared in the Jambo House lobby starting around Thanksgiving each of the last couple of years (November 24, 2024 was last year’s official debut date).
This can’t-miss ginger-affe, fittingly named Ginger, and baby zebra, not-so-fittingly named Debra (unless it’s meant to be dough-bra?!), are made with a combination of gingerbread, sugar dough, and modeling chocolate. In fact, the giraffe stands near 7 feet tall.
The huge news that this list revealed is the return of a gingerbread display at Wilderness Lodge for the first time since 2019!
That’s right. The absolute best place at Walt Disney World during Christmas-time is going to have a display for the first time in 6 years. Even without a gingerbread house, Wilderness Lodge is well worth a visit in the evening to see the resort at its festive best.
In case you missed it, Humphrey the Bear’s gingerbread cabin was shown for one year only. It was a pretty big hit with guests, and made for a popular snack spot at Wilderness Lodge. We were surprised that it hadn’t returned since, but assumed the explanation was that it was simply too good and made Wilderness Lodge way too awesome at Christmas. Could’ve been a safety issue with minds being blown as guests were overwhelmed by the spirit of the season or something of that sort.
Even without a gingerbread display, Wilderness Lodge continued to have a snack stand in the lobby selling holiday dishes. Here’s last year’s menu:
- Dark Chocolate Bar
- Cheddar Gougère
- Molasses Crackle Cookie
- Cookie Box
For reference, that menu started on November 21st last year. Back in 2019, the gingerbread display debuted on or around November 14th. This is more or less consistent with normal precedent; Wilderness Lodge usually gets decked out around mid-month. We’ve done a couple of stays Veterans Day weekend, and have always missed the decorations. Our best guess is that it’ll be prioritized for Christmas 2025, but we still wouldn’t expect the gingerbread house to open this week or next.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the Walt Disney World gingerbread houses? Have a favorite? Looking forward to visiting any/all of these once they open? Planning on ordering anything from the food menus? Excited to see Wilderness Lodge make a return for Christmas 2025? Does that offset the loss of Grand Floridian for you? Do you agree or disagree with our assessments? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!