Holidays
Disney World's Giant Gingerbread House Was Made With Over 1,000 Pounds Of Honey
Plus “lots of Disney magic and pixie dust!”
If you happen to be at the Walt Disney Resort for the holidays, make sure to add a giant gingerbread house to your must-see list. The life-size gingerbread house has officially opened at Disney’s Grand Floridian Hotel and Spa this year and you’ll get a sugar high just looking at it.
The Victorian-style 7′ tall and 12′ wide house is themed after the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World Resort. It’s made of 1,960 egg whites, 600 lbs of confectioners sugar, 700 lbs of chocolate, 800 lbs of flour, 35 lbs of spices, plus over 1,000 lbs of honey and “lots of Disney magic and pixie dust,” according to WDW News Today.
While it sounds scrumptious, this display is for looking purposes only. However, the resort does offer a bakery on the side where guests can purchase some delectable treats like a gingerbread cookie man and Mickey's ears. Or a mini replica of the gingerbread house, which runs about $85.
There are also plenty Disney Easter eggs to look for, like Mickey, Minnie, and Donald Duck on the window slates, Princess Tiana and the Frog Prince Naveen on the upper side window, Belle and the Beast on the lower window, as well as Anna, Elsa, and Olaf and Chip and Dale. And if you look really close, you can see the chocolate Santas, snowmen, and nutcrackers on the porch.
A gingerbread house display will also be set up at Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Florida. Themed after the “It’s A Small Ride” at Magic Kingdom, the castle will include 111 lbs of gingerbread spice, 51 lbs of chocolate, 67 lbs of modeling chocolate, 88 lbs of rolled fondant, 511 eggs, and 11 gallons of milk.
Needless to say, Disney’s grocery bill is anything but cheap when constructing these edible homes each year. And a fun fact about the gingerbread house: once the exhibit has been decommissioned for the holidays, it's fed to bees!
“Ten years ago, when performing our annual gingerbread display cleaning, we noticed bees were very attracted to the sugar on the displays after deconstruction,” Barry Stockwell, a planned work specialist with Disney's event decorating support, explained in a Disney Parks blog post in January 2022. “We decided to bring the display pieces to our Disney tree farm and lay them out in our field to give the bees a chance to collect the sugar on the wooden structures.”
So yes, even the bees get a piece of the holiday magic at Disney!