By Charly SHELTON

Disneyland is not known for going all-out for Lunar New Year. In the past, it would have a little photo op in a tucked-away corner of Main Street USA, maybe some merchandise, and a special menu item over at Lucky Fortune Cookery at Disney California Adventure. Really not a huge showing. But all that changed this year when it went much bigger with offerings and wound up with one of the best Lunar New Year celebrations likely to be found anywhere. Disneyland brought me down to see all it had to offer for the celebration and I was duly impressed.
Mulan and Mushu the dragon lead the celebration as the iconic Asian characters from the Disney stock. And with it being the Year of the Dog, Goofy and Pluto take starring roles as well, featured on merchandise, on signage, in promotional materials and more. The entire back corner of Disney California Adventure is taken over for the celebration surrounding Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta, utilizing the seating area as well as the neighboring Paradise Garden Grill. In all, the festival runs from the Little Mermaid attraction all the way down the waterfront almost to Silly Symphony Swings.
There is plenty to do, see and taste, from specialty foods to face painting to arts and crafts, and more. Don’t miss the street show, “Mulan’s Lunar New Year Procession,” which features Mulan, Mushu, Goofy and a troupe of dancers and acrobats that will amaze any onlookers, whether they stake out a seat for the show or inevitably get sucked in while walking by. Also really cool is the complimentary Chinese Brush Painting and Calligraphy by Cerritos Chinese School. Guests give their name to one of the writers at the head of the line who ask what your personality conveys, and then use this to write the name in Chinese characters, which are then passed off to calligraphers who paint the characters beautifully on lucky red paper as a nice keepsake of the new year. Guests can write their new year’s wish on Mickey-shaped ornaments and hang them on a wishing wall before heading over for a personal meet-and-greet with Mulan and Mushu or any of the Fab 5 in traditional Chinese dress, before returning to make a classic Chinese paper lantern for the Year of the Pluto … I mean Dog.
Later in the day, the GuGu Drum Group visiting from Shanghai performs on the Paradise Park stage, Dat Nguyen and Luna Lee perform traditional and original music in the Paradise Garden Bandstand and, at night, “Hurry Home,” a quick little six-minute prelude to World of Color, opens the show. “Hurry Home” follows the story of a Chinese paper lantern who needs to find his way home to be with his family for the New Year celebration, encountering Mulan and Mushu along the way. The whole show is basically just nice visuals about Lunar New Year that are loosely tied together with a lantern but, because of the Magic of Disney, I still cried when the little lantern is reunited with its family. It’s a sweet mini-tie-in to the larger celebration around the park.
You can’t talk about Lunar New Year without mentioning the food and Disney has worked the festival food down to a science. Using three street carts from the Food and Wine Festival and the Festival of Holidays, the offerings are broken down by country: pork soup dumplings, three cup chicken and egg tarts from China, kimchi-veggie fried rice, steamed veggie dumplings and sweet red bean and raspberry jelly from Korea, and sticky rice-pork cake, sugar cane shrimp and purple sweet potato macaron from Vietnam. The food from these festival carts is usually impressive, but this go-round was exceptionally tasty. Everything that I sampled from every booth was incredible, with the exception being the red bean and raspberry jelly that only rated a “pretty good.” My honest favorite was the sugar cane shrimp, which is a fried shrimp covered in sesame seeds, skewered on a piece of sugar cane and served with sweet and sour sauce. The fried shrimp was hearty, the sauce was nice and light and not overly sweet (which in itself is rare for a sweet and sour sauce), and having sugar cane to chew on after the shrimp was gone made it unique among the other culinary entrants to the celebration.
Farther over at the Paradise Garden Grill, more hearty and meal-sized offerings include Kalbi beef short ribs, Bánh mì with grilled pork, beef pho and even a whole fried Tilapia fish that serves two.
In summary, I guess I will leave you with this: come for the Mulan Procession show, stay for lunch. The Lunar New Year celebration is a home-run for Disney’s first attempt at the concept and I look forward to seeing where it can go from here.
The festival takes place daily at Disney California Adventure at the Disneyland Resort, now through Feb. 18.