The Food Offerings Available at Failed Disney Regional Ventures in the 1990s: DisneyQuest, Club Disney, and Mickey’s Kitchen 

I have frequently researched Disney’s attempts at developing regional attractions and ventures throughout history. That is, attractions and business concepts Disney has attempted outside of the parks. For example, Club Disney, Mickey’s Kitchen, and the Disney Fair to name a few. Many of these ventures opened during the 1990s, but, most of them that did ended up failing and closing down soon after they opened. 

I was thinking about one of these ventures, Mickey’s Kitchen, and how much the food there cost. This led me into research how much the food cost at a couple of Disney’s other regional ventures and what specifically was offered. I’ve created a master-sheet of all the food I could find being served at three ventures: DisneyQuest, Club Disney, and Mickey’s Kitchen. Many of the foods are very heavily Disney themed. This was done using numerous newspaper articles, travel guides, books, and footage of inside the facilities. I’ve included prices when available. For ease of reading, I have included all of the data below the descriptions of the facilities.

DisneyQuest (Chicago Location)

DisneyQuest is a tricky attraction to put into the “regional ventures” category as it was not solely a regional venture. It was a part of the Disney Regional Entertainment subsidiary, but the first location opened June 19th, 1998 in Walt Disney World. The easiest way to describe DisneyQuest is a giant arcade with a focus on AR and VR technologies. Disney described it in Eyes & Ears Volume 28, Number 21 as “the ultimate indoor adventure.” In June of 1999, Disney opened a location in downtown Chicago, which shut down only a couple years later in September 2001. The location in Walt Disney World lasted much longer and shut down in 2019.

The Chicago location was split into a couple different sections. The one we want to focus on was called “Food Quest,” which was home to the Cheesecake Factory Express. Guests could get lunch, snacks, desserts, etc. When researching the food offerings, I limited myself to only the Chicago location. I did not do this for Mickey’s Kitchen or Club Disney. I did it here due to the Walt Disney World location not entirely fitting the “regional venture” category. That location remained open a lot longer, with menu changes likely occurring as well.

I had a hard time finding specific listings of the menu in newspapers and travel guides. When sources were talking about food, it was vague. That was until I found a YouTube video by user RedSlashAce who uploaded home video footage of DisneyQuest Chicago. At the 11:40 mark, it shows portions of the menu at Food Quest. While some prices and food are blurry, there is a lot we can get from it.

Club Disney

Another concept under Disney Regional Entertainment, Club Disney was an indoor children’s play facility similar to Chuck E Cheese and Discovery Zone. The first location opened in Thousand Oaks, California in 1997, and four additional sites followed in California, Arizona, and Colorado. As was the case with DisneyQuest, these facilities only stayed open for two years before closing down in 1999. 

These facilities offered birthday party packages and what they dubbed “EdVentures,” an educational program schools going on field trips could book. Similar to DisneyQuest, the facilities were split up into a couple of different sections. One of these sections was the “Club Cafe.” This was the dining area inside Club Disney and is what we want to look at.

The research for this was not as hard as DisneyQuest or Mickey’s Kitchen. Club Disney is the venture that I have done the most amount of research in. (Side note: check out my symposium research project on Club Disney here.) There were more unique and Disney-themed items here than at DisneyQuest. In Club Disney’s in-house newsletter, Club Connection, it’s revealed that new concepts took around six months from idea to finished product. For this data, I did not limit it to one of the locations or differentiate between the locations. 

Mickey's Kitchen

Mickey’s Kitchen was Disney’s attempt at a fast-food restaurant. With this venture, Disney wanted to offer healthy foods so it’d be more in line with brand identity. These restaurants were found in malls and connected to Disney Stores. The interior was heavily themed and Disney clips played for guests, just liked the Disney Store. Both concepts aimed to offer a sort of entertainment experience along with the shopping/eating experience. 

The first Mickey’s Kitchen opened in the spring of 1990 inside Montclair Plaza in Montclair, California, right alongside the 50th Disney Store opening there. Around a year later, a second Mickey’s Kitchen opened inside Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. These stores only lasted two years before closing down in 1992.

The menu for Mickey’s Kitchen was heavily themed around Disney characters. This was the hardest to research specific food offerings. Many of the articles and reviews focused on a few select items. I was unable to find a full menu as I did with DisneyQuest. There are images online of the interior that show a menu, but it is too blurry to see. There are images of brochures and pamphlets floating around online that have some items listed, however they too are blurry. Similar to Club Disney, I did not differentiate between the two locations when organizing the data.

Conclusion

This research was pretty tedious. You’re researching ventures that only lasted a few years. There are quite a few newspaper articles about all of them. However, only some of those articles talk about the food (with the exception of Mickey’s Kitchen). When they do talk about the food, the nature of journalism leads them to focus on the flashy foods and the foods that will draw people in. You don’t get lots of specifics.

These three ventures are not the only ones I looked at. I attempted to look into The Disney Fair, a tent-show from 1996 that was intended to travel to different state fairs around the country. Information around this topic is scarce and I could only find a couple source alluding to food being offered. I also considered Disney’s America, which was Disney’s attempt to build an American history theme park in Virginia that never made it out of the planning phase due to local and national opposition. A part of the park that was proposed was “Streets of America” which would’ve offered different food from across the country. However, I was unable to find any specific items being considered.

The data for all three ventures are below. They are separated by beverage and food. They do list the source. The full bibliography is included below the data. If you do have questions or comments on the data, feel free to utilize the “Contact Me” page on this site!

Data:

Notes on the data: 

As we look at the data for all of the ventures. Some of the entries are for individual items, others are for areas or sections of food offered. This may lead to overlap between individual items belonging under those section entries. However, I kept them separate to get more detail on the individual but also be inclusive of the other items available

When it comes to fountain drinks because  DisneyQuest and Club Disney were a part of the Disney Regional Entertainment subsidiary, the fountain drinks served were Pepsi Products. This is a deviation from the Coca-Cola products served at the Disney parks. Mickey’s Kitchen did serve Coca-Cola products.

When it comes to the price listed, some of the sources had different prices for the same item. This could be due to a variation in the time the source was created, a different location, etc. I included all of the prices I could find, and I did include ranges when sources included a range.

The full source citation for the sources can be found in the bibliography below. For ease of reading the table and uniformity, when it comes to newspapers, I opted to use the paper name, instead of article title or author. The bibliography is organized by venture.