Woohoo!  We just returned from a weekend trip to Disneyland.  Before leaving, I did a google search for vegan eats there and found a few tips.  I figured that once I got there that I would have a pretty easy time finding something that was vegetarian that could easily be veganized.  And, we would only be eating lunch there and if I had to make a meal of lots of snacks, that wouldn’t be so bad either.  Either way, I figured finding something to eat there would be pretty easy and I didn’t stress too much about it.

With Emma's buddy in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle.

When I travel, I’m a little more relaxed than I am at home.  Cooking for myself at home, I have complete control over all the ingredients and I know exactly what is in everything.  You don’t have that luxury when traveling and to save myself a little bit of stress, I tend to let more things slide than when I’m at home.  Example: if eating Mexican, I will verify that the rice and beans are vegetarian, but may not go so far as to ask if the rice has butter in it.  Generally, I can taste when there are even minuscule amounts of dairy in something– one of the things that happens when you don’t eat dairy for a long time is that you lose a taste for it and it is the only thing you can taste if it is in a dish.  If it doesn’t taste buttery, I’ll tend to believe that it probably doesn’t have butter in it.

While there is plenty of meat to be had at Disneyland (like gigantic turkey legs– ewwwww!!!), vegetarian and vegan fare is easily found at every dining spot.  We ate at some burger place for lunch one day and I got the veggie burger.  I was expecting it to be a Gardenburger and was okay if it did have a little cheese in it– again, I’m much more relaxed when traveling– but, to my surprise, the patty seemed to be vegan!  It had lots of veggies in it and I suspect it was either the vegan Gardenburger patty or Dr. Praegers.  I got the feeling that they wanted to offer one dairy free, egg free patty since there are lots and lots of people allergic to those foods.  If you are more strict than I am or if you do have any food allergies, you can always check with the order-taker beforehand.

We also got a fruit salad to go with our meal and the fruit was so delicious!  It came with melon, pineapple, blueberries, strawberries and grapes.  Everything was perfectly ripe– even the blueberries were firm and juicy like they were just picked that morning.  I was really happy to see that all of the dining places offered yummy fruit salads and there was even a stand outside the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland that sold nothing but fresh fruit and healthy snacks.  And by fresh fruit, I mean strawberries, grapes, pineapple, and mango, not the standard apples and bananas most places offer.  They also freeze dried apple Crisps.

For lunch on Sunday, we hit the Mexican place in Frontierland, Rancho del Zocalo.  It’s a cafeteria-style place where you line up either at the salad station, the burrito/taco station or the grill.  Matt and I split the veggie tacos– 2 soft tacos of sauteed veggies, beans and rice.  We got ours without the cheese and sour cream, of course.  It was good.  This place had the “tropical” fruit salad, which was so refreshing!  It came with melon, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, papaya and mango.  Yum!

Sorry for not having any pictures of our food.  I don’t know what I was thinking! 

Surprisingly, the most difficult place to find vegan food was the airport– not SFO, which had several dining options that offered vegan food (in fact, some of the menus even indicated which items were vegetarian or vegan)– but in LAX!  I was surprised by that.  Surely there must be lots of vegans in LA.  I’ve always thought of LA as being vegan-friendly, anyway.  Maybe it was just the terminal we were in, but I had the hardest time finding something vegan other than Mexican (we had just had it for lunch and I couldn’t eat it again).  I settled for a salad without the cheese, which amounted to mixed greens with a vinaigrette dressing.  Ooh!  Exciting!  But at least I didn’t starve.