The Most Over-the-Top Food at Theme Parks Across America
The Most Over-the-Top Food at Theme Parks Across America
JeniFoto/Shutterstock
https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/the-most-over-the-top-theme-park-treats-across-america
Nothing screams summer more than a day spent at the theme park with a treat in hand.
Ooey, gooey, and occasionally chewy, theme park food is done playing it safe. Chicken fingers and oversized soft pretzels aren’t going anywhere, but something has unmistakably shifted as parks now chase viral moments as aggressively as they chase screams.
Whether you’re staring down a donut bigger than your head or tentatively poking at a plate of deep-fried alligator, the most outrageous theme park foods have become attractions in their own right, and they are ready for their close-up.
Here’s where to find the 10 best ones this summer.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD
1 OF 10
Lard Lad Donut
WHERE: Universal Studios Hollywood in California
Hard to miss in a theme park packed with eye-catching landmarks around every bend, a statue of Lard Lad towers over Springfield. The oversized mascot boy is gleefully lifting a giant donut as if it were a trophy. The exalted donut at hand is the hut’s Lard Lad Donut, the iconic 8-inch, 14-ounce doughnut about the size of a personal pizza, available at Universal Studios Hollywood (and Universal Studios Florida, too). The yeast-raised donut comes in a single classic style with strawberry-flavored pink frosting and sprinkles.
It’s remarkably large, with real heft in hand, and delivers exactly what it promises: simple, nostalgic sweetness that’s supersized for photos as much as for eating. Best enjoyed fresh (and ideally shared!), “the Big Pink Donut” is one of Springfield’s most recognizable (and most shared) icons.
PHOTO: @DISNEY, AMY SMITH, PHOTOGRAPHER
2 OF 10
Kitchen Sink Sundae
WHERE: Disney’s Beach Club Resort in Florida
It’s not a far stretch to imagine that the pastry chefs of Beaches & Cream (located in Disney’s Beach Club Resort, just steps from EPCOT) were eager to bring to life that adage of “everything and the kitchen sink.” Perhaps the goal was simple: take indulgence to its absolute limit.
The result is the Kitchen Sink Sundae, one of Disney World’s most photographed food phenomena. The presentation wows as a towering eight-scoop ice cream sundae is piled high with nearly every topping imaginable (think peanut butter, brownies, cookies, and more), finished with an entire can of whipped cream and served in a kitsch-perfect sink-shaped bowl.
More spectacle than dessert, this over-the-top creation turns heads as diners regularly stare at its sheer scale. “Can they finish it all?!” American maximalism served at its sweetest.
3 OF 10
The 25 Pound Apple Pie
WHERE: Dollywood in Tennessee
“Parton” the pun, but it will take you from “9 to 5” just to make a dent in the mammoth 25lb Apple Pie available only at Dolly Parton’s Dollywood. Even a slice verges on extreme, tipping the scale at up to five pounds and easily feeding a group of four or more. The full pie is available for purchase and comes baked in a real skillet you can take home.
The pie itself is a prime example of classic Southern comfort, with its apple-forward, cinnamon-rich filling and thick, buttery lattice crust. Just steps away, the park’s equally beloved Cinnamon Bread draws its own devoted following. Be prepared for long lines for the warm, pull-apart loaf, coated in butter and served with your choice of sweet icing or apple butter. However, the wait is worth it for both.
PHOTO: ZACHARY SMITH ON UNSPLASH
4 OF 10
Mac & Cheese Cones
WHERE: Universal Epic Universe in Florida
It’s the viral grab-and-go moment at Universal Epic Universe that doubles down on carbs, and it actually works. Found in the Isle of Berk (How to Train Your Dragon land), the Mac & Cheese Cones are warm bread cones packed with creamy mac & cheese. The concoction comes in three variations: classic with Goldfish crackers (an odd yet delightfully satisfying creation), PB&J stuffed with pulled pork and bacon jam, and a Nashville-style spicy chicken with hot honey and Calabrian peppers. No fork is required to eat these, implying the recommended way to eat them is Viking-style, though that level of immersion requires plenty more napkins.
PHOTO: HERSHEYPARK
5 OF 10
The King Size Shakes
WHERE: Hersheypark in Pennsylvania
It’s the “wow” moment that catches you off guard when you spot your first King Size Shake in the wild at Hersheypark. Part awe at the aesthetics, part wonder at how many layers of toppings can pile on high above the milkshake base, followed quickly by the determination to get one of your own. Hersheypark is the rare theme park celebrated both for its legacy of chocolate treats and its impressive lineup of world-renowned coasters, so it’s no surprise the King Size Shakes lean heavily into Hershey’s chocolate and Reese’s to delicious effect.
This year, Hersheypark’s iconic massive shakes are turning 10, and they’re marking a decade of deliciously over-the-top dessert innovation with a few new additions to the lineup. Meet the Birthday Cake shake, crowned with a swirly tie-dye slice of cake; the Chocolate Overload shake, piled high with a decadent chocolate cheesecake cupcake; and the Chocolate Peanut Butter shake, topped with a silky slice of peanut butter pie. Each one delivers that signature “are you serious” moment, practically demanding to be photographed.
PHOTO: DENNIS MACDONALD/SHUTTERSTOCK
6 OF 10
Cheese-on-a-Stick
WHERE: Cedar Point in Ohio
Eyes widen and mouths water at the mere mention of Cedar Point’s Cheese-on-a-Stick, and for good reason. If regular mozzarella sticks feel a little modest to you, meet their larger, louder cousin: a hulking block of cheese that is basically five mozzarella sticks stacked together in one corn dog–style battered “trench coat.” This is a corn dog sans the dog, and just cheese, and lots of it. Deep-fried and served piping hot on a sturdy stick, this is state fair nostalgia in a modern-era theme park. One is all the fuel you need to zip between the park’s 18 roller coasters.
7 OF 10
Gator Bites
WHERE: Knoebels Amusement Resort in Pennsylvania
Perhaps one of the only theme parks in the country known for its food as much as its top thrills, Knoebels was a foodie destination long before croissant-donut hybrids and pistachio-filled chocolate bars made headlines. It’s the only park on this list that offers free parking and free admission, a nod to a bygone era of affordable family fun. Fortunately, the food prices follow suit, with most meals under $10 and snacks rarely topping $5.
Set in Pennsylvania Dutch country, the park leans into comfort-food traditions, with sweet-and-savory flavors and simple ingredients evoking classic Americana. However, it’s their gator bites that garner the attention for their novelty. Yes, they’re chunks of real alligator tail meat, breaded and deep-fried until crisp. The result is a slightly firm bite with a bit of a snap to it that lands somewhere between chicken and fish. Unexpected, but surprisingly approachable.
PHOTO: MIKELEDRAY/SHUTTERSTOCK
8 OF 10
Turkey Leg Meal
WHERE: Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari in Indiana
Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari is a Midwest staple for family summer fun that’s part thrill park, part nostalgic throwback. The park covers four meticulously themed lands inspired by Christmas, Halloween, the Fourth of July, and Thanksgiving.
Over in the Thanksgiving section, the Turkey Leg plate leads the lineup and offers a downright theatrical moment when served. This is Thanksgiving supersized, and the best mix of theme park fare and holiday tradition. The smoked turkey leg is accompanied by your choice of classic sides you’d find on any respectable Thanksgiving table, including mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet corn, and more, along with a roll or cornbread. The result: a hearty bite of indulgence summoning the comforts of Thanksgiving, no matter the season.
PHOTO: SILVER DOLLAR CITY PARKS & RESORTS
9 OF 10
Tater Twist and Tater Dog
WHERE: Silver Dollar City in Missouri
On the hunt for the most unique “no one else is doing this” theme park snack, Silver Dollar City’s Tater Twist and Tater Dog would like your attention. Rooted in the park’s Ozarks-inspired culture and its love of just about everything fried, the Tater Twist begins as a whole potato, spiral-cut on-site onto a skewer, then deep-fried until crisp. The result is hot and salty, with a most satisfying potato chip crunch at the edges.
The Tater Dog elevates the potato spiral from a snack to more of a meal by inserting a classic, plump hot dog into the spiral-cut potato and frying them together. The potato crisps into a golden shell while the hot dog stays juicy inside, with crunch and snap in every bite.
10 OF 10
Mega Funnel Cake
WHERE: Kentucky Kingdom
The Mega Funnel Cake at Kentucky Kingdom arrives exactly as described: a larger-than-life version of your classic fairground funnel cake. Both a spectacle and a practical choice for feeding large groups, the oversized cake is just one of the many generous portions that define this park’s approach to indulgence.
Each mega funnel cake is fried fresh, made to order. The doughy base welcomes unlimited customization, often starting with a signature powdered-sugar dusting, followed by your choice of seasonal strawberries, whipped cream, and chocolate drizzles. Be sure to snag extra napkins, as sticky fingers and powdered sugar are sure to find their way onto everything within arm’s reach.
How AI is transforming strategy development
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-ai-is-transforming-strategy-development?
Alexander D’Amico is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Connecticut office, Bruce Delteil is a partner in the Hanoi office, Eric Hazan is a senior partner emeritus in the Paris office, Andrea Tricoli is an associate partner in the London office, and Antoine Montard is a client capabilities director in the Lisbon office.
At its core, strategy entails deriving insights from facts and data, developing real options based on those insights, making hard-to-reverse choices, and executing initiatives that convert those choices into value. Data analytics has assisted in this work for several decades, but never before has technology been able to not only augment and partially automate inputs into strategy but also combine them into complex analyses. In time, it may even recommend viable strategies.
Artificial intelligence and generative AI have the potential to transform how strategists work by strengthening and accelerating activities such as analysis and insight generation while mitigating challenges posed by human biases and the social side of strategy. Building on the recent explosion in data and earlier AI advances that produced dramatic improvements in forecasting accuracy, the latest tools are making deriving insights much easier and cheaper. The impact we are seeing in client organizations and in our own work as strategists leads us to view this moment as a new inflection point in strategy design—potentially on par with the creation of core strategic frameworks in the 1970s and ’80s.
While AI won’t change the need for leaders to demonstrate strategic courage by committing to big moves, we expect that the technology will, in time, enhance every phase of strategy development, from design through mobilization and execution. Today, the technology delivers the greatest benefits in the design phase by helping organizations assess their starting point in the context of industry and market dynamics. They can use it to size potential markets, analyze competitor moves, and estimate the value of different strategic initiatives across multiple scenarios. But that’s just the beginning: Strategy requires mobilizing the organization, ensuring the right allocation of resources, and monitoring execution. In all these tasks, AI can play a role.
Emerging roles for AI in strategy
Human judgment remains essential to crafting the strategic vision, which combines the organization’s ambition with a view of how to realize it. However, AI can accelerate and bring greater rigor to the work of strategy teams. Even in these early days, we see five roles for AI: researcher, interpreter, thought partner, simulator, and communicator. Each of these roles can come into play at various steps across the different phases of strategy development.
- Researcher. Strategists spend significant time gathering and enriching data from numerous sources. AI’s ability to summarize and create meaningful connections across all data sets can significantly enhance these efforts. For example, an AI-powered engine that identifies potential M&A targets can pinpoint under-the-radar assets that fit a company’s strategic thesis, enhancing what today is often a serendipitous process relying on executives’ and their intermediaries’ market knowledge. One such tool can scan public information on more than 40 million companies across various languages and create a short list of relevant targets in minutes. While AI is more thorough and faster than humans, strategists still need to pose the right questions to generate the distinctive insights they seek.
- Interpreter. To turn data analytics into useful insights, strategists need to interpret how the findings can advance their goals. For example, a search for growth opportunities often entails looking into adjacencies. Those expansion ideas can come from many places, such as reviews of competitors’ moves or a deep understanding of customers’ emerging needs. AI tools can facilitate this discovery process by converting data from a disparate set of inputs—such as annual reports, patents, customer reviews, and purchasing data—into “growth scans.” These scans summarize the most frequently pursued adjacencies and then interpret and score their fit with the company’s strategy. The resulting perspective can help strategists narrow down options, find precedents or benchmarks for actions under consideration, and uncover fresh ideas.
Another area where AI is already acting as an interpreter is trend monitoring. Strategists need to keep tabs on changes in major trends when developing their options and reviewing their assumptions. A gen-AI-powered engine can read massive amounts of information and disaggregate trends into their component patterns and then interpret whether those patterns suggest a trend is accelerating, maturing, or subsiding. For example, an organization seeking to understand the demand for sustainable building materials can monitor interest from architects, patent volumes, and competitors’ mentions long before those signals translate into sales volumes.
- Thought partner. AI can also serve as a brainstorming partner, speeding up idea generation and countering business leaders’ potential biases or blind spots. Gen AI in particular can help strategists avoid common pitfalls by assessing their plans against established frameworks. For example, a team can pressure test a strategy—both before and during its execution—by leveraging gen AI to play a challenger role to highlight potential hidden pitfalls or management blind spots.
- Simulator. Before committing to a strategic course, strategists consider the impact of multiple market scenarios based on macroeconomic conditions, potential competitor moves, and stakeholder reactions, among other factors. AI can make this scenario analysis much more rigorous through advanced modeling capabilities and tactical game and simulation applications. This capability can also be valuable during the strategy’s execution, with AI monitoring early signals from the market, simulating their impact, and alerting the team when it might be prudent to change course.
- Communicator. A clear narrative of the strategic path and objectives and their implications for the organization and its stakeholders is essential to mobilizing action. Gen AI’s ability to summarize concepts in different formats has been among the technology’s most popular applications since ChatGPT was launched. Strategists can use gen AI tools to make their narratives more compelling to different audiences with different levels of expertise (such as regional markets, regulators, or analysts) and in different formats (briefs, talking points, or, most recently, podcasts). AI can also monitor whether external communications are consistent across different channels.
To see how these five applications can work in practice, consider the case of a Southeast Asian regional bank that wanted to expand to a new segment or geography. The strategy team used its AI model to analyze the business context and promising trends in the industry and region. The tool generated interactive reports that allowed the strategists to fine-tune their follow-up research. Based on this work, the strategy team decided to focus on opportunities in the digital financial ecosystem (particularly peer-to-peer payments) and microcredit.
Next, the team asked AI to provide recommendations on the most promising adjacencies for growth investments. Based on an analysis of information from banks around the world, the tool created a graph of close and synergistic business segments. Management prioritized a few for deeper analysis—for example, a cross-border digital offering across the region or the microcredit segment in Vietnam—and built hypotheses on their potential growth trajectories.
To learn more about each segment, they asked AI, “Who are my competitors in each market, and what are their value propositions?” Some of the markets were unfamiliar to the leaders, so the strategy team posed questions such as, “We are considering entering the Vietnamese banking market. What are the risks that have emerged in the past? Are there examples of failed attempts (with sources)?”
The team also considered inorganic options such as partnerships and M&A. Based on an AI scan, they short-listed a few small and medium-sized businesses with the technology the company needed to support its digital ambition. Gen AI also helped them build initial due diligence profiles to support potential outreach.
Finally, as hypotheses solidified into concrete strategic options, AI helped the strategists simulate the resulting P&L and growth projections. Additionally, the tool utilized internal data, such as management reports on the bank’s earlier expansion into another country, to help management understand the strengths and weaknesses of their execution capabilities.
Numerous organizations have started building tools to make such scenarios a reality, with some developing proprietary AI agents to simulate reasoning or perform complex research tasks. However, even those earlier in their AI journey can start exploring some of the roles that AI can play. As technology advances, strategists who build the skills to develop unique applications for AI models will gain a critical insights edge over competitors.
Considerations for strategy leaders deploying AI
While the journey of the Southeast Asian bank is compelling, strategists should be mindful of several challenges in deploying AI. Generative AI presents well-documented risks, ranging from model bias (historical training data can lead AI to overemphasize certain types of customers, for example) to reduced explainability (failure to offer a logical foundation for the analysis) to hallucinations (constructing credible-sounding but false content). The good news is that each of these pitfalls is being addressed. For example, AI can help police itself: A “critic agent” can check the work done by other AI applications and flag when the content might be incorrect or directly instruct a reworking of the task in question.
Beyond these well-understood risks, gen AI presents five additional considerations for strategists. First, it elevates the importance of access to proprietary data. Gen AI is accelerating a long-term trend: the democratization of insights. It has never been easier to leverage off-the-shelf tools to rapidly generate insights that are the building blocks of any strategy. As the adoption of AI models spreads, so do the consequences of relying on commoditized insights. After all, companies that use generic inputs will produce generic outputs, which lead to generic strategies that, almost by definition, lead to generic performance or worse. As a result, the importance of curating proprietary data ecosystems (more on these below) that incorporate quantitative and qualitative inputs will only increase.
Second, the proliferation of data and insights elevates the importance of separating signal from noise. This has long been a challenge, but gen AI compounds it. We believe that as the technology matures, it will be able to effectively pull out the signals that matter, but it is not there yet.
Third, as the ease of insight generation grows, so does the value of executive-level synthesis. Business leaders—particularly those charged with making strategic decisions—cannot operate effectively if they are buried in data, even if that data is nothing but signal. As with gen AI’s growing ability to separate signal from noise, the technology is getting better at synthesis, but in the near term, strategy leaders need to own that task.
Fourth, AI reinforces the importance of the processes that organizations follow to develop their strategies. Our research shows that the quality of the process is far more important to strategies’ success than the quality of insights. High-quality processes include, but are not limited to, the development and examination of strategic alternatives, properly accounting for uncertainty, pushing to make bold commitments, and, most importantly, taking steps to remove bias from decisions. Fortunately, as gen AI speeds up the development of insights, it leaves more time for strategy teams to hone best-in-class processes.
Finally, to successfully leverage gen AI, the strategy function needs to invest in technology for creating and accessing ecosystems of proprietary data sources. The ecosystem approach removes the need for companies to internally generate or own the full gamut of proprietary data. Instead, they build networks of sources that they can seamlessly tap into using technology. In addition, strategists will need to identify (and often customize) gen AI tools that can effectively serve as researchers, simulators, interpreters, thought partners, and communicators.
Moving forward
So where do you begin? We recommend three near-term steps:
- Get smart. The strategist of tomorrow needs to understand how AI works. How does a word prediction engine manipulate complex concepts and information? How are insights generated from the information included in models and prompts? Those who gain this expertise will be able to contribute to creating the tools their work requires, such as running complex simulations on how markets and competitive landscapes will evolve. Individuals with such skills will be highly sought after, making their retention a management priority.
- Start building today. AI is here to stay, and finding the right way to apply it to strategy development is essential. Strategy teams should familiarize themselves with the possibilities AI offers, from helping in their research and insight generation to identifying potential risks. Teams that explore how the available tools can assist in these tasks will better understand what other tools they will need to build or invest in to meet their specific needs. From an organizational perspective, leaders need to help strategy teams gain access to expertise in data science, data engineering, and large language models. This can be done by embedding technology experts into strategy teams or by providing strategists access to them through centers of excellence.
- Develop your proprietary insights ecosystem. Even with state-of-the-art capabilities, AI models will be limited to interpreting existing data—they cannot generate new signals. For example, AI won’t replace the insights from ethnographic research or the direct input from customers. Indeed, such proprietary information will become even more critical to generating unique insights as external data grows more affordable and accessible to all market participants. To gain an edge, strategists will need to expand their exposure to different domains by connecting with innovators and stakeholders within and outside their organizations. Strategists’ core focus will increasingly become developing hypotheses, testing and learning from them, and maintaining the AI and data infrastructure that enables the conversion of insights into a competitive advantage.
- Artificial intelligence can’t—and, we believe, won’t—replace human logic and interpretation in a complex domain, such as strategy. However, the technology can provide faster, more objective answers that can significantly augment our decision-making prowess. Through the various roles AI can already play, from researcher to thought partner to simulator, we are starting to see how these tools may, in time, redefine strategists’ roles and help companies make strategic decisions. By making the strategy development process more efficient while allowing the space for creativity and breakthrough ideas that help leaders define the consequent bold moves, AI can deliver the competitive edge needed to beat the market.
Disney’s Biggest Cruise Ship Fails Spectacularly — Passengers Are Furious After Sudden Cancellation
https://www.fodors.com/news/news/disneys-biggest-cruise-ship-fails-spectacularly-passengers-are-furious-after-sudden-cancellation
They announced they would set sail soon, then canceled the voyage.
Passengers onboard a Disney cruise faced an unusual situation: their voyage was canceled a day after they boarded. The new Disney Adventure was set to sail from Singapore on May 7 on a four-night itinerary with 6,700 passengers on board. The family-friendly cruise remained docked at Marina Bay Cruise Center due to a mechanical issue, and the following day, passengers were informed that the cruise was canceled and that they would need to disembark soon.
Disney offered a full refund to guests (it costs $1,430 for two) along with a 50% discount on a future sailing, a complimentary hotel stay, reimbursement for flight tickets, and up to $500 in reimbursements for additional costs.
Disney told USA Today in a statement, “We completely understand this was an unfortunate situation for our guests and worked with them directly to support their travel needs, help make their trip home as smooth as possible and invite them back to a future sailing.”
A Reddit thread offered more details from those who were ready to set sail. One user said they embarked on the cruise, and the captain informed passengers that they were experiencing technical issues and would set sail soon. However, around 2 p.m. the following day, the captain announced that the voyage was being canceled. The person was traveling with twin kids, and the family was disappointed by the disruption.
The original poster shared updates as they waited to get hotel rooms arranged for them. The family was able to explore some parts of the Disney cruise, but the shops were closed so the kids couldn’t get souvenirs. They claimed to finally receive their hotel rooms after midnight. The traveler mentioned that Disney was not prepared for such an incident because they had to wait hours after the voyage was canceled.
Something else that annoyed the passenger was that the 50% discount must be used before July 31, 2026, with sailing before May 31, 2027. Other passengers also contributed to the Reddit thread, with one saying that this was their second cancellation and, “I am already using my 50% discount for this trip.”
The Disney Adventure is Disney’s largest ship and made its maiden voyage in March 2026 from Singapore. With seven themed areas, it is a kid-friendly cruise offering the best of Disney with live shows, character encounters, and movie screenings.
The next sailing on May 11 went as scheduled after the mechanical issue was resolved.
What Can You Do?
Cruise cancellations are much rarer than flight cancellations, but they can happen. Weather conditions, technical issues, or geopolitical problems can disrupt plans—cruise companies also overbook passengers, and passengers can occasionally be bumped.
Like any other travel, insurance is a must.
In 2024, a Carnival cruise caught on fire while at sea, and the company refused to offer compensation to passengers who were on board. It did give refunds to future passengers whose voyages were canceled after the ship went in for repairs. A spokesperson said, “We did not offer compensation to guests who were on Carnival Freedom when the fire occurred because the cruise was not interrupted, and no ports were missed due to the fire.”
Companies can refuse future credits, so travel expert Tammy Levent advises people to get third-party insurance with trip interruption coverage.
Carnival may have been stingy, but cruise companies can also be generous. Royal Caribbean, for example, canceled its Alaska cruise due to a technical issue, turned the ship into a hotel, and opened the bar for its guests. The company also offered 100% refunds along with 100% future cruise credit and reimbursements for tickets.
When booking a cruise, check the fine print and read the terms in case of cancellations. If the information isn’t easily accessible, ask the company for details. And if you can, do a bit of Googling to find out how the company reacts in situations like this. If they leave their passengers to fend for themselves, maybe you’re better off looking elsewhere.
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