REVIEW: Red Dragon Spice Traders at the 2024 Lunar New Year Festival in Disneyland

Think you handle the HEAT?! 🔥🔥🔥 If you crave all things spicy, there’s one Disney snack booth that has your name written all over it.

Red Dragon Spice Traders

If you head to Disney California Adventure in Disneyland Resort between January 23rd and February 18th, 2024, you’ll get to celebrate the Lunar New Year there with festive food booths, fun character appearances, merchandise, and more. One Festival booth — Red Dragon Spice Traders — claims to be bringing in some spicy treats that’ll truly honor the Year of the Dragon. But will these set your mouth on fire or just leave you disappointed? Let’s find out!

Eats

First, we have the NEW Spicy Fried Rice with tofu and crispy peas. This is priced at $8. We’ve had MANY a fried rice over the years — it’s a staple at places like Yak and Yeti Local Food Cafes in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. So how would this one deliver in terms of flavor?

Spicy Fried Rice

The spicy fried rice is a GREAT veggie option and brought some good heat! We thought it was a little weird to find both regular and dehydrated peas in it, though. The dehydrated ones looked like they could have been in the freezer a bit too long (but they taste fine though.) The tofu had a good texture to it against the rice. This dish was very enjoyable and had lots of flavor.

Next, we have the returning Red Spice Fried Chicken Bites. These are Fried chicken chicharrones in a spicy red chile sauce. They’re priced at $8.75. In 2023, the chicken delivered that kick we were hoping for, leaving our lips with that deliciously tingly burning sensation spicy food leaves behind as you eat more of it. So, how did it taste this year?

Red Spice Fried Chicken Bites

This dish was a WINNER in our book again this year! It’s got a good kick to it, without the spice getting out of control. It did make our noses run a bit though, so watch out for that! It was nice and crispy with great flavor and was a decent-sized portion.

Now, onto the drinks!

Drinks

First, we have a new drink option, the Peach Basil Collins. This is made with Gin, ginger liqueur, white peach purée, lemon juice, and house-made Thai basil syrup. It is then topped with Topo Chico and garnished with a purple pansy. This drink does NOT come cheap though — it’ll set you back $17. Is it worth it?

Peach Basil Collins

We were a little underwhelmed by this one and didn’t feel like it had enough peach flavor to it. It had more of a heavy ginger flavor, however, we also had just eaten lots of spices in the dishes so it could have been hidden by that. It was good to try, but it wasn’t our favorite and we’re not certain we would go back to order it again.

The other drink available at this booth is the returning Guava Whiskey Cocktail. This is made with Whiskey, ginger liqueur, guava nectar, coconut cream, and lime juice. It is then garnished with a lime wheel. This drink is only slightly cheaper at $16. In 2023, we really enjoyed this drink. After we stirred it well (be sure to do that so you don’t just get a swig of whiskey!), we found it was fruity, well-balanced, and not overly sweet.

Guava Ginger Whiskey 2023

If you want to add a little pizazz to your drink order, you can also pick up the new Mickey-shaped Macaron Straw Clip here (there’s a limit of 2 per person, per transaction, $7.75 each)…

©Disney

…or the returning Lotus Flower Glow Cube (there’s a limit of 10 per person, per transaction, $6 each).

Lotus Flower Glowing Cube from 2023

Overall

Overall, if you’re looking for a spot that really turns up the HEAT when it comes to savory dishes, and offers a few alcoholic beverages for good measure too, stop by Red Dragon Spice Traders!

Red Dragon Spice Traders Booth

We’ll be sharing more reviews for the booths at the Lunar New Year Festival, so stick around for more delicious details!

Click here to see our page with full menu details for the Festival and links to all of our booth reviews.

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Which items from this booth would you want to try? Tell us in the comments!

Disclosure: In nearly all circumstances, Disney Food Blog writers and photographers pay full price for their own travel, hotel, food, beverage, and event tickets. We do this because it’s important to us as journalists to ensure not only that we give you unbiased opinions, but also that you can trust us to do so since we’re paying our own way. On rare occasions, when we are invited by a company to attend a preview as media, and when we choose to accept that invitation, we will always make you, our readers, aware of that situation. Today, we were invited by Disney to attend their media preview of the Lunar New Year Festival. Note that when we attend events as media we are 1) Not required to review that event/food on any of our channels, and 2) Not required to review that event/food favorably. You can always count on DFB to give you a 100% unbiased and honest review of any event that we attend, food that we eat, or beverage that we drink. You can see more in our Disclosure Policy. Thank you for reading. — AJ