Cookies Take the Cake on Disney Cruise

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (The Birmingham News) – Kathy Sagan wrote to tell about her recent experience aboard the Disney Magic which sails from Port Canaveral. "I recently took a Disney cruise on the Magic with my twin 7-year-olds," she reported. "We had a terrific time. They loved the kids' club, the shows, the characters, the computer lab, the Pirates' night – everything," she wrote before ending with her reason for writing. "But proba-bly most of all," she noted, "they loved the chocolate chip cookies that they serve every day.” During a typical cruise, the ship's pastry chefs (18 in all) use 620 pounds of chocolate and serve 720 cakes in 85 flavors. Guests eat the most cookies – oatmeal, sugar and chocolate chip – on the day that the ship docks at Disney's private island in the Bahamas. It's there that guests have an entire day for sun, surf, feeding stingrays, para-sailing – and food, including hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken. The chocolate chip cookies are "definitely the most popular cookie," said Herbert Lindner, an Australian who works as the ship's pastry chef. Cookie-baking starts daily at 2 a.m., with enough oven space to allow as many as 300 cookies to bake at one time.