For years now Disney’s Pop Century Resort’s food court Everything Pop Shopping & Dining has lived in the shadow of its highly praised next door neighbor Landscape of Flavors, at Disney’s Art of Animation Resort. However, Pop Century recently made the bold move to start offering brick oven pizza in an attempt to keep their food offerings fresh and interesting.
Does this move pay off? What is a more “artisan” pizza from Pop Century like? Well we headed over there to answer these hard-hitting questions for ourselves.
The brick oven pizza area of the food court looks like its received a handful of upgrades recently, most notably being that draft beer is now available. Two options might not seem like a lot, but at least the selection is two interesting beers, and not your standard Bud Light, Blue Moon, theme park offerings. Onto cheesier matters…
I’m not sure if the oven here is a true brick oven or not because it seems to be made out of something other than, uh, brick. Nonetheless, this is where the magic is made.
There are a handful of different pizzas to choose from, but for the sake of this review, we figured we’d stick with what will undoubtably be the most popular option, pepperoni.
After you place your order, you are given an order sheet and a pager. Go ahead and pay, wait about five minutes, and then it’s pizza time.
Artisanal Pizza: Traditional Pepperoni – $12.99
The pizza certainly has the signature thin crust, with a slight char that is common with brick oven pizza. The pizza is cooked well enough so that each bite holds together nicely, without being too crispy or chewy. The crust has a good amount of crisp to it, again holding a pretty good chew throughout. Flavor wise, the dough is fine. Nothing too special, but also nothing to complain about. Personally, I think the dough is lacking just a touch of sweetness to it, but I think most will be pleased.
The pizza is a little cheese heavy, making it slightly disproportionate to the amount of sauce underneath. Both the cheese and sauce are good. Again, nothing too special, but certainly enjoyable throughout. The pepperoni was the most underwhelming aspect of the pizza, as it had very little flavor. It mostly just made the pizza more oily, which is to be expected of a pepperoni pizza, I suppose.
Overall, this new oven brick style pizza from Pop Century is a decent addition to a food court that doesn’t already hold the greatest reputation for quality dishes. I suspect most will find it to be an improvement over the older style of thicker crust pizza that can be found at seemingly every Disney resort.
It’s no Blaze Pizza, and it’s certainly pricier and lacks the tons of customization options that Blaze offers, but if you find yourself hungry when you return to the resort after a long day in the parks, it should do just fine.
As an aside, if you’re still craving the older style of pizza, it is still available. Starting at 4pm daily, it can be ordered by the slice, and it is still available all day if you wish to order the entire pizza.
Can’t get enough pizza? Check out our recent review of the revamped Boardwalk Pizza Window at Disney’s Boardwalk Inn.
Will this be the same pizza we will get for room delivery?
No. For room delivery the older style pizza will continue to be offered.
It is technically what one would call a brick oven or masonry oven but that is considered a brick oven. Forza Forni makes a similar oven and it is considered a brick oven
Great to see a beer from a local brewery right down the road. They should advertise that.