Gluten-free Food at Disneyland

Our older children have been to Disneyland, but we decided it was time to take our two girls (the youngest in the family) to Disneyland.  We saved and prepared and looked forward to it for nearly two years.  It was so much fun!  I LOVED the roller coasters.  We all enjoyed Soaring Over California and savored the smell of oranges that comes just as you are "flying" over the orange groves.  We were amazed by the World of Color show, with movie clips shown on the water shooting up from the lake.

Before we left for our trip, I researched gluten-free food at Disneyland online, and found out that I could get more information by stopping in at City Hall when we got to Main Street Disneyland.  I came out of City Hall  with an eight-page stapled stack of papers with all kinds of information about gluten-free food.  Awesome!

I will highlight the places we ate, though there are many other choices for gluten-free food that we didn't get to try, since we were only there for two days.

Our first meal was lunch at Redd Rockett's Pizza Port.  They offer gluten-free pizza.  It was quite good, and the size of our personal pizza was about the same as a small pizza.  We had to wait extra time for the preparation, which was understandable.  It is always fun to have gluten-free pizza at a restaurant, and we appreciate the extra effort it took for them to order in gluten-free crust.

(Photo source:  http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos)

Our next meal was dinner at Rancho Del Zocalo.  We had just finished riding Splash Mountain.  I happened to get the very front spot in the log.  Any of you who have been there know that the front spot is the wettest location.  I got SOAKED!!  It was a lot of fun, but the beautiful 73 degree weather (which is awesome weather for February compared to what I am used to) was beginning to change to somewhere around 55 degree weather.

We were cold and wet.  Rancho Del Zocalo was a great place to go for good food and warmth.  They had propane-type heaters on tall metal poles.  We huddled under the heaters and were so grateful to dry off a little bit.  We ordered a cheese enchilada with Carne Asada, and requested corn tortillas.  The steak was a little bit tough, but overall it was tasty.

(Photo source:   http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos)

We ate a continental breakfast at our motel each morning.  I brought sandwich bags with pre-measured cereal portions:  Cocoa Pebbles for my daughter, and a mix of Rice Chex and Cinnamon Chex for me.  I like to mix the Chex cereal to make it not quite so sweet.  I was glad I brought the cereal, because the continental breakfast consisted of donuts, bagels, and three cereals containing gluten.  Luckily, there was orange juice, apple juice, and fruit to go with our gluten-free cereal.

At California Adventure, we ate lunch at Taste Pilot's Grill.  I got a hamburger and my daughter had a grilled chicken sandwich with French fries that were cooked in separate oil.  We fell in love with the gluten-free hamburger buns at Disneyland.  They had great flavor and looked normal!  Yummy!

Our youngest daughter had been longing to go back to the "It's a Small World" ride, so we went back to Disneyland.  It is a great ride for all ages.  After that, we ate at the Jolly Holiday Bakery.  We ordered an Angus Roast Beef Sandwich.  It came with thick, greasy potato chips that were not gluten-free, so the waitress kindly substituted tomato soup for the chips.  We had to wait quite a while for our food since it was gluten-free, but we loved the soup--so it was worth it.  The sandwich was average because the roast beef was tough, but we savored another gluten-free hamburger bun.   We had a great time at Disneyland!! :)

(Photo Source:  www.disneyfoodblog.com)