Sorry about the delay on this one - I wasn't sure I wanted to post it as I wasn't the happiest with what we received and didn't want to be a downer but I know it can be super helpful to others looking to order so here it goes! Also - sorry for the length??? I didn't realize I had so much to say and then I couldn't cut anything out hahahaha
I called December 12th for an 8inch birthday cake (the smallest size they had) for my niece to be delivered to Coral Reef one week later on December 20th. I called the Epcot bakery and left a message and Claudia got back to me within 2 hours which I thought was amazing. I didn't ask for much I just wanted it to be princess themed and say "Happy Birthday Princess Mia". Claudia suggested a screen print of the princesses and adding an age so we ended up with "Happy
4th Birthday Princess Mia" which I liked. The base price was $40 I believe and adding the screen print bumped the price to $70 which I felt was fair at the time. Claudia sent a confirmation email and I was officially excited because I knew my niece and my whole family would really love the surprise.
However, life happens when you're busy making other plans. The day we arrived at WDW it was raining and the next day we were supposed to go to MK then Epcot for dinner but there were thunderstorms and tornado warnings so my family decided that we would forgo the parks that day. I was panicking because what would happen to the cake?! Thankfully I could email Claudia since no one in my family knew and I could NOT have gotten away with calling when we were cooped up in the room together all day. She was beyond helpful with moving the date for the delivery of the cake via email. I was a tiny bit nervous that it wouldn't be there but decided to trust that it would turn out fine and we rescheduled for 2 days later.
Now, thankfully having read through this thread pretty thoroughly I knew to be the one to check in. SURPRISE: printed nice and big on the ticket was the exact cake order and then stamped in red was either celebrate or celebration (I can't remember which). I managed to check-in alone, get the ticket and hide it from my family lol. Unfortunately, our waiter was not clued into the fact that it was a surprise (even though I made it clear when I checked in that it was a surprise from everyone) and kind of blew it a little by asking about it after we'd finished our meal. Totally not his fault that he didn't know but I had to deal with my sister laughing at me for being so "extra" a few minutes earlier than expected
My niece LOVED the cake. She thought it was "so beautiful" and she was so excited when she saw it coming to HER but she didn't want to eat it LOL. She had a few bites but that was literally it. She said it was good but wasn't into eating any more of it lol. And while it took me some time to really appreciate it I do agree it was beautiful. It was sparkly and cute and thankfully the 4-year-old liked it. However, I still do not at all think it was worth $70. The screen print of the princesses was blurry & that's not because I took a blurry photo - the screen print was just really blurry and that was extremely disappointing. I've also just seen so many GORGEOUS designs on this thread that I guess I was a bit underwhelmed when we just essentially got nothing design-wise aside from the screen print and edible glitter. I do chalk that up to myself since I really didn't give any other directions besides "princess themed". However, I thought giving them free rein on the design would still yield a design at the minimum and I feel like we just got an almost plain cake with a screen print. I've seen Pop food court cakes more themed than this one on this thread and I want to be sorry for saying that but I can't.
The cake itself was super delicious though!! It was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and one of the tastiest cakes we've had at WDW...but we could've gotten 6+ specialty cupcakes for the same price as this cake at any bakery in-park and they would've been just as delicious. It was also way too big for us which I knew going in but it was their smallest cake and I wanted to make my niece's birthday special. Once we ate our slices though and saw we had so much leftover we were like "what are we going to do with all this?"
That's when my niece said she wanted to give a piece to a little girl sitting nearby and we thought that was a wonderful idea. We're always telling her that "sharing is caring" so we couldn't really be like "well no you can't just share your birthday cake with a perfect stranger" without feeling like super big jerks. We asked if we could give some away to other diners but the waiter said they couldn't help with that (which I understood but my sister was like "but why not??") but if we wanted to leave it to staff we could leave it in the back. My sister didn't think it was very nice for them to want to keep it for themselves and not share with other diners and so talked them into giving us extra plates. We cut some very large slices to give away to other families/parties and she took my niece around to explain this was her birthday cake and she wanted to share. Two families were happy to accept birthday cake but that was it. They asked like 4 other parties who were like "no thnx" and we were all ????????? I mean...I'm always here for a free dessert but to each their own hahaha. So we ended up having quite a bit left which is what we were trying to avoid by cutting such large slices in the first place so we ended up literally having cake for days.
Overall, I would definitely order another cake from WDW but probably not from Epcot. We also didn't really enjoy Coral Reef and won't be returning so there's that. Both cake ordering experiences were great and WDW cake staff are so accommodating and helpful that I would absolutely order again. However, I think if I do order another cake I would give more details about what I'd like to see and discuss designs more in-depth. I don't think this particular cake was worth what I paid design-wise but it was delicious and my niece loved it and thought it was beautiful and that's really all I wanted so I guess I can still put it in the win column.