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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2002 |
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Disneyland in California has Sleeping Beauty Castle. The Magic Kingdom in Florida and Tokyo Disneyland both have Cinderella Castle. Hong Kong Disneyland has the Castle of Magical Dreams. Shanghai Disneyland has Enchanted Storybook Castle. |
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Yester California Adventure has a castle too—the original Corn Dog Castle! |
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Photo by Tony “WiseBearAZ” Moore, 2004 On Route 66 |
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You can’t miss the “castle” when you arrive at the Route 66 portion of the park’s Paradise Pier. A huge billboard towers over a little trailer with a red and yellow awning. |
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Photo by Tony “WiseBearAZ” Moore, 2004 Big billboard, tiny trailer |
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Photo by Allen Huffman, 2003 Three other locations, all in the great state of California |
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Photo by Allen Huffman, 2007 Step up to the window and place your order. |
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Get ready for a big, all-beef hot dog—a traditional frankfurter or spicy sausage—dipped into a golden cornmeal batter, deep fried to a crunchy brown, and served hot. If you prefer cheese, order a generous bar of cheddar prepared the same way. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2007 Freshly fried corn dogs, ready at the pickup window |
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This is not an ordinary hot dog on a stick. This is the royalty of corn dogs. Sure, it isn’t a low-fat meal, but now and then it’s worth it to stray a bit. If you want to feel slightly more virtuous, ask for apple slices instead of chips as your side dish. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2007 Striped awning |
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Squirt some ketchup and mustard on your corn dog. Or make neat red and yellow stripes on it, just like the awning. Head to a nearby bench or to tables a little further away. Bite through the golden batter into the juicy meat. Yum! |
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Corn Dog Castle opened along with the rest of Disney’s California Adventure in February 2001. It turned out that Disney’s California Adventure had too many eateries when it opened, but Corn Dog Castle was a success anyway. Guests enjoyed the generously-sized, high-quality corn dogs. Whether Corn Dog castle was also an aesthetic success is open for debate. Officially, Corn Dog Castle was “a tribute to California roadside billboards of the 1950s,” but the artwork looked like something from an earlier decade than the 1950s. The tacky appearance was intentional. The concept was the irony of a simple trailer calling itself a castle and having a billboard larger than its actual front. But did that make it a charming, evocative tribute to the past? Or did that just make it an eyesore that didn’t belong in a Disney theme park? |
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Photo by Tony “WiseBearAZ” Moore, 2001 Corn Dog Castle menu board in 2001 |
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Photo by Allen Huffman, 2004 Corn Dog Castle menu board in 2004 |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2007 Corn Dog Castle menu board in 2007 |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2013 Corn Dog Castle menu board in 2013 |
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Photo by Allen Huffman, 2017 Corn Dog Castle menu board in 2017 |
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The menu at Corn Dog Castle stayed remarkably consistent over the years. The Royal Cheesecake Brownies disappeared from the menu. Sliced apples joined the “bag o’ chips” as a side dish option. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2009 Corn Dog Castle behind a construction wall in 2009 |
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Around the beginning of June 2009, Corn Dog Castle closed. A construction wall for The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure went up in front of it. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2009 “Where can I get a corn dog now?” |
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For around 15 months, corn dog fans had a new choice. The park’s Bountiful Valley Farmer’s Market added corn dogs to its menu. That option ended September 7, 2010, when Bountiful Valley Farm closed for demolition. Supposedly, Corn Dog Castle would return about two years after closing. It made sense that the Disney Company would want to reuse the structure. Although it looked like a trailer, it was really a permanent restaurant facility with all the necessary infrastructure—food storage, power, water, sewer connections, and so on. However, it seemed likely that it would look quite different when it reopened. The celebration of tackiness in that corner of Paradise Pier would be replaced by early 20th century charm. According to displays at the Blue Sky Cellar at the time, the former McDonald’s Burger Invasion would become the Paradise Garden Grill and the former Pizza Oom Mow Mow would become Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta. There was no artwork showing how Corn Dog Castle would be reborn. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2013 The new Corn Dog Castle |
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Corn Dog Castle reopened in May 2011. Surprise! It still resembled a trailer below a billboard, just with new artwork on the billboard. Even the name was unchanged. |
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Photo by Allen Huffman, 2017 The King is now a pilot. |
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Now the King is flying an airplane, presumably to tie in with Goofy’s Sky School next door. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2013 Corn Dog Castle corn dog, fried to a crunchy brown |
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There’s no longer any pretense that Corn Dog Castle is on Route 66. However, there’s a genuine connection between corn dogs and the real Route 66—but it involves Illinois, not California. A vintage-style poster appeared at bus stops in Chicago in 2007. |
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© 2007 Illinois Bureau of Tourism 2007 “Offbeat Illinois” poster |
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Here’s how a May 1, 2007, press release from the Illinois Bureau of Tourism describes the poster: Springfield’s Cozy Dog Drive-In, the famous Route 66 landmark and the birthplace of the corn dog on a stick. Inventor Ed Waldmire Jr. created the tasty treat when he coated his hot dog with batter and pierced it with a cocktail fork. He called his new creation a “crusty cur,” but fortunately his wife had a more appetizing idea, dubbing them “cozy dogs.” The Cozy Dog was “born” during World War II, an era reflected in the poster’s art, which featured a nurse feeding an infant corn dog with a bottle of mustard. Other states also claim to be the birthplace of the batter-dipped, deep-fried hot dog. Brothers Carl and Neil Fletcher began selling “Corny Dogs” in 1942 at the State Fair of Texas. Jack Karnis of Oregon sold “Pronto Pups” at the Minnesota State Fair in the 1940s. There are claims that the corn dog was first served in the 1930s at the Louisiana State Fair. Other claims go back even further. A real corn dog is on a stick, right? Ed Waldmire Jr. of Illinois gets credit for that innovation. Thus any claims that the corn dog was invented in another state can be dismissed. |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2009 Cozy Dog Drive-In, still operating on Route 66 in Springfield, Illinois |
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Photo by Werner Weiss, 2009 Cozy Dog logo, evoking the 1950s, but actually the original logo from the 1940s |
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The next time you’re in Springfield, Illinois, stop at the Cozy Dog Drive-In. It’s not the original building (which is now the site of a Walgreens next door), but Cozy Dog Drive-In takes its historic roots seriously. The counter-service restaurant is full of Route 66 memorabilia and displays about its own history. They use small Oscar Mayer franks, so don’t expect the same taste (or the same price) as Corn Dog Castle. |
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© 2009-2014 Werner Weiss — Disclaimers, Copyright, and Trademarks Updated May 7, 2021 |
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