Review: 2024 Cookie Stroll at Festival of the Holidays

Do you love a good cookie? Is that even a question? Well, the Festival of Holidays Cookie Stroll is a chance to get rewarded for eating cookies. What could be more perfect?

Cookie Stroll Basics

Before we get to the cookies themselves, let’s review the rules.

• All cookies from Festival locations are $3.25, with the exception of the Spaceship Earth Gingerbread Tile at a whopping $10. (More on that later.) The cookies at Sunshine Seasons and Connections Cafe are $4.29.
• You get a stamp in your Festival Passport for each cookie you buy
• When you’ve got 5 stamps, take it to Holiday Sweets & Treats to claim your prize

This year’s prize is a gingerbread cookie kit: a bag of cookie mix with mini M&M’s and sprinkles to decorate with after you bake.

There are two more really important things to know. First, you don’t have to do it all in one day. You can redeem your stamped Passport through the last day of the Festival on December 30, 2024. Second, you can repeat cookies – if one of them is your favorite then yes, you can just eat that one five times.

Want to eat the cookies later? Plan ahead and bring a few plastic storage bags, or if you have one we hear that these cookies stack really well in an empty popcorn bucket. If you’re looking for a souvenir keepsake, you can purchase a specially labeled Cookie Stroll container at various EPCOT merchandise locations.

Recommended Cookies

Hazelnut Linzer Cookie from Bavaria Holiday Kitchen

Don’t be fooled by the new word “hazelnut” in the name – this is our same favorite from other years. If you’ve been friends with us for a while you know that this cookie is always tops on our list, and this year is no different. Jam and powdered sugar still reign supreme! And we’ll be wearing them frequently between now and New Year’s because we get this cookie almost every time we go to the park.

SNICKERS®-Doodle Cookie from American Holiday Table

The cookie itself is sweet and with the Snickers pieces it is even sweeter. But it’s a lovely caramel-y sweet, and it’s our second favorite after the Linzer. It’s also ginormous and you will definitely make it through more cookies if you share this one.

Coffee Mocha Cookie from Mele Kalikimaka Holiday Kitchen

Hawaii. It’s a magical place. Coffee and chocolate and a super-smooth buttercream combine to make a cookie that is just sublime. Did we say the Linzer was our favorite and the Snickers was our second pick? We might need to rethink that because this cookie was divine.

Black and White Cookie from L’Chaim Holiday Kitchen

Black & White is a more-like-cake cookie, but its winning quality is that it’s sweet but not very sweet. If you like the sugar on the subtler side this is the cookie for you. It’s also the only plant-based cookie on the stroll.

Peppermint Pinwheel Cookie from Yukon Holiday Kitchen

This cookie was perfectly peppermint-y, but which we mean not too much and not too little. Just like Goldilocks, it was just right. And it had a nice crisp texture too.

Cinnamon-Spiced Chocolate Crinkle Cookie from Nochebuena Cocina

This is a huge chocolate cookie with a light frosting and the vaguest hint of cinnamon. It’s not our favorite but we think it’s improved a lot since last year when we downright dissed it. It’s a solid contender for the chocolate lover.

Peanut Butter Cookie from Sunshine Seasons

More like a flat cupcake top than a cookie, this is heavy and dense and just the thing for peanut butter fiends. But if you’re looking for the M&M’s to give you that iconic chocolate and peanut butter experience – don’t. They’re more like a garnish and you can barely taste them against the oomphy peanut butter cookie.

Holiday Sugar Cookie from Connections Cafe

In case you are not aware, Connections Cafe is run by Starbucks. So this tastes exactly as you would expect a Starbucks sugar cookie to taste.  If you are a sugar cookie connoisseur, it’s not going to knock your socks off. But if you enjoy a good sugar cookie, this is a reasonably good sugar cookie.

Cookies to Skip

Spaceship Earth Tile Gingerbread Triangle from Experimental Prototype Cookies of Tomorrow

Every year, in a festival full of cookie goodness, there’s one cookie that we just can’t recommend. Of course we wanted to love this cookie, with its Spaceship Earth connection and its cute booth name. But this cookie is more style than substance. It looks beautiful, but it’s a bit on the dry side and makes you think of construction cement while you’re chewing. At more than twice the cost of any other cookie on the stroll, this one earns a “hard pass” from us. Unless you’re absolutely determined to eat all nine Cookie Stroll cookies, go back and get another Linzer instead.

Have you been to the Festival of the Holidays this year? Which cookie was your favorite? Let us know in the comments!