Halloween Time at Disneyland Brings Holiday Fun and a Bounty of New Churros

Halloween’s shambling our way like a black-and-white zombie on a local UHF station, and you’ve still got a solid month and a half to check out Halloween Time at Disneyland Resort in California. This might be my favorite season at Disneyland; the night’s getting longer, the air’s getting cooler and crisper, I can wear my home made Mr. Toad satin jacket without getting too sweaty, and, yeah, there are giant pumpkin-shaped Mickey and Donald heads everywhere. It’s nice. It’s autumnal, or at least as much as Southern California gets, which is more than Orlando gets. (If you want True Fall at a Disney park, you gotta go to France.) I dig it. And it’s got some good Halloween-themed churros, which are absolutely crucial. 

Disneyland and churros have a long, rich history together, probably. I have no idea. I grew up going to Disney World, and don’t remember ever eating a single churro there as a kid. Disneyland, though, has a strong churros culture today, and it could be decades old, or it could be something that started in, like, 2013. Again, no idea. I’m sure there’s a four-hour-long YouTube video you can watch all about the history of churros at Disneyland if you really need to know. All I know is that churros have been big there for the decade or so I’ve been going to Disneyland, and that new, limited run churro flavors are a notable part of any self-respecting seasonal celebration there.

This year’s no different. During a recent churros tour of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure I tasted no less than seven different fried dough sticks, each one with a ghoulish and grisly Halloween theme, and each one available for a limited time only. Most are on sale through Nov. 14, while a couple of Haunted Mansion-themed churros will be around until early January. Until then it’s churro o’clock whenever you please in the Happiest Place on Earth.

Picking a favorite is impossible. Messing up fried dough is almost impossible. All of these churros put in the work and finish the drill and git-r-done, especially the peanut butter-chocolate churro, which is available exclusively at the Cozy Cone Motel 1 spot in Carsland near the Mater right. Coated with peanut butter sugar, drizzled with chocolate sauce and then covered with candy that’s basically Reese’s Pieces, this is a big ol’ gloppy, gloopy mess of a treat, but one that tastes amazing. Not far away, at the Senor Buzz Churro stand at Pixar Pier, I checked out the poison apple churro, which might’ve been my favorite, and which unfortunately didn’t put me to sleep until a passing stranger woke me with a kiss. This green cinnamon sugar churro has blood-red apple-flavored icing dripping off of it, evoking the cursed apple from Snow White; it’s extremely sweet, of course, and another mess to eat, but eye-opening in its bold cinnamon apple flavor—a combo that is about as autumnal as it gets.

These two might’ve been the standouts in terms of taste and presentation, but there are five other churros to sink your teeth into this holiday. Over at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, you can find a complementary pair of churros with a matrimonial theme; the Bride is in all white with sugar and vanilla, while the Groom mixes dark and milk chocolate in his sugary tux. These are both available into 2025, so no rush to celebrate this wedding. If you aren’t intimidated by Disney’s most fearsome villain, there’s a tasty Maleficent churro rolled in chocolate cookie crumbles found near Sleeping Beauty Castle and Town Square. I didn’t realize Maleficent was a cookie fiend; I figured she got by on a diet of fear and souls, but I guess it’s hard to make churros out of that stuff.