For the opening weekend of Pixar Fest at the Disneyland Resort, I was able to review the new menu items at the Alien Pizza Planet overlay of the Redd Rocket’s Pizza Port in Tomorrowland! There were some real winners and losers, for sure! I must admit, this is rarely my choice for a dining location, because their pizza is expensive and they’re always loud and crowded, but I was excited for the pesto (and who can refuse free refills?) and I decided to give it a go. Without further ado, I present the Pixar Fest Pizza Planet Menu review.

 

Green Star Pesto Pasta: $10.49

 

I am a huge pesto fan, so I was really looking forward to this dish. Unfortunately, it should be called Pest-oh-no! Most of my reviews will have pros and cons methodically listed, but this dish was so abysmal that I can’t actually think of any pros to list for this review. Avoid this dish-aster at all costs!

First of all, I should clarify that this is not pesto. They have called it a “spinach and miso pesto” but I’m struggling to figure out what that is, because pesto is very clearly defined and rather consistent in the culinary world and it is not spinach or miso based. I expected pesto to be an indulgent and creamy blend of fresh basil and pine nuts. Setting that aside, it is clear to see why the sauce was flavorless. Miso is a very light flavor and needs to be expertly paired to balance well; for example, miso and a sweet thai curry! To pair it with a product like spinach and then call it a pesto makes me wonder who came up with this dish, because they clearly have no concept of flavor balancing. The noodles might as well have simply been wet, green noodles because I asked for extra pesto (I’m the type of pesto fan that will use a spoon or a finger to leave no pesto uneaten at the end of the dish) but I still couldn’t taste any flavor whatsoever.

Nothing worked together at all. The peas and bacon bits are pre-mixed, so you can get the pasta without them, but you can’t separate the peas from the meat. The pasta was cooked decently. I don’t recall it being too mushy or too al dente, so that’s probably the only element of this dish they got right.  The prevalent flavor of this dish is peas, so I hope you like peas. Even the bacon played second fiddle to the peas.  The bacon was also very overcooked and tasted salty and burned. The dish contains bacon, pesto, parmesan, noodles, and peas… and the strongest of those flavors is peas. This is problematic for pesto fans and also unlikely to be a dish any child will enjoy. What a bummer.

 

Cheeseburger Pizza: $8.49

I enjoyed this dish. If it was offered to me again, I would eat it. The dish is described as a sesame seed bun crust, topped with ketchup, yellow mustard, onions, pizza sauce, tomatoes, pickles, hamburger slider patties, American and Cheddar cheeses and house-made burger sauce. That’s a really long list of ingredients and I expected the dish to taste the way it looks: a hot mess of random stuff just thrown together. I was rather pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed eating it.

Pros:

• Each bite was delicious.
• The house-made burger sauce was delightful! It was a nice balance of creamy and tangy and they didn’t skimp on the amount put into the pizza.
• It definitely evoked exactly what it was meant to. It tasted like eating a Big Mac. Well done on going for a cheeseburger pizza and achieving a pizza that tastes like a cheeseburger.

Cons:

• It looks really sloppy. The presentation leaves a lot to be desired. I’d have preferred ground hamburger patties to large patties slapped on top of a pizza.
• Because the toppings are so chunky, each bite tastes completely different. Rather than blending together as one whole dish, I tasted all of the ingredients separately. Because each flavor was nice, I didn’t care as much as I otherwise would, but it was a bit strange.
• There are too many flavors going on; the onions, tomatoes, and pizza sauce get completely lost. I couldn’t taste any of those flavors.
• The crust has way too many sesame seeds. It tastes more like sesame than bread and it really could have used something more – maybe some of that delicious pizza sauce, or a crust stuffed with cheese and onion!
• The PRICE! I get that it is Disneyland and I am usually the last person to complain about the markup, but there has to be a line drawn in the sand somewhere and charging $8.49 for a single slice of pizza – not a jumbo slice, just an average sized slice – is exorbitant even by Disney standards. Let that sink in a moment… $8.49 for a single slice of pizza!
• It’s not big enough to be a meal on it’s own and if you double up and go for 2 slices, then you may as well get a better meal, because that $17 will buy a complete meal at several of their nicer dining locations, including several table service restaurants.

Is that really worth the $8.50 price? For me, it’s a no. I would love to enjoy another slice of this pizza, but I can’t stomach paying more than $5 for a single slice of pizza unless it’s one of those giant, floppy ones!

 

Little Green Men Edamame Noodle Salad: $10.49

This dish was the clear winner of the menu! I did not expect anything here to be good enough to encourage me to return to this location a second time, given how many new foods there are to try throughout the park alongside many tried and true favorites, but this salad is something I would definitely go back for again! This makes the second item here that lures me back!

The salad is a cold noodle salad. It starts with a soba noodle base. Soba noodles are similar in thickness and length to a ramen noodle, but are made of buckwheat and much softer in texture. Next, there’s a sort of slaw from shredded red cabbage and carrots. Then, they add the diced grilled chicken, the green beans, and the edamame beans. Add a few sprigs of cilantro leaf and sprinkle it with mint and you have a great cold salad! It is served with a ginger lime vinaigrette that is, like the aliens all over the Alien Pizza Planet, out of this world!

Pros:

• The dressing is wonderful! It’s a ginger lime dressing that adds a nice tangy flavor!
• The noodles, slaw, chicken, and beans are nice base flavors that don’t overpower the seasoning or fight with each other.
• The beans are cooked beautifully. They have retained some snap in the green beans and seemed quite fresh to me!

Cons:

• While better than the pizza, it is still a sloppy presentation. I know food is all about the flavor, but these are special dishes and it’s Disneyland, so I have also come to expect a certain level of attractiveness that was completely lacking across the board.
• The mint tends to jump out at you from time to time rather than blending in with the rest of the dish completely.
• The portion size is a bit skimpy for the price, but unlike the pizza, it’s acceptable for the dish.

Overall, I would say that if you only have a few days to experience Pixar Fest, you need to grab the Alien Parfait from this location, but save your full meals for a more worthwhile experience because even though the pizza was good, it’s a lousy deal, and even though the salad was delicious (especially compared to the other dishes), there are tons of dishes that are just as enjoyable or even better!

Georgia Leigh