Big Top Souvenirs Reopening August 21 With New Treats

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Six months under wraps, and it comes back with caramel apples. Big Top Souvenirs in Storybook Circus reopens Friday, August 21, 2026 — with a new treats menu to go with the refurbished tent.

Quick Summary

• Big Top Souvenirs reopens Friday, August 21, 2026
• It closed February 20 for a tent canopy replacement
• The same work was done at neighboring Pete’s Silly Sideshow
• A new sweet and savory treats lineup arrives with it
• Storybook Circus returns to full capacity

What the Refurbishment Was For

The closure began on February 20, and the work focused on replacing the tent canopy — the same job carried out at neighboring Pete’s Silly Sideshow earlier this year.

Pete’s Silly Sideshow reopened in late June. With Big Top back on August 21, both Storybook Circus locations are operating again and the area returns to full capacity.

Why a Canopy Takes Six Months

Six months for a tent roof sounds excessive until you consider what these actually are.

Storybook Circus’s tents aren’t fabric stretched over poles. They’re permanent buildings — climate-controlled retail and character meet spaces with full utilities — engineered to look like circus tents from the outside. The canopy is architectural cladding on a real structure, and it has to meet Florida hurricane code.

Central Florida weather is brutal on exterior fabric. Constant UV exposure, daily summer thunderstorms, and high humidity degrade tensioned material faster than almost any other climate in the US. Storybook Circus opened in 2012, so this is roughly a decade-and-a-half service life.

Doing Pete’s first and Big Top second was the right sequencing. Closing both simultaneously would have taken the entire land offline.

The New Treats Lineup

Big Top Souvenirs returns with new sweet and savory items.

Caramel Apples

• Mickey Churro Caramel Apple — Granny Smith apple with marshmallow ears dipped in Werther’s Original caramel, white chocolatey coating, and churro cinnamon sugar
• Dumbo Caramel Apple — Granny Smith apple with sugar cookie ears dipped in Werther’s Original caramel and chocolatey coating, with a red fondant collar and yellow chocolatey hat

Cupcakes

• Minnie Pink Lemonade Cupcake — Pink lemonade-flavored cupcake and buttercream frosting with white chocolatey ears, assorted sprinkles, and a chocolatey bow
• Mickey Vanilla Celebration Cupcake — Vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting, dark chocolatey ears, colorful chocolatey stars, and a sprinkle surprise inside

Cookies and Pops

• Mickey Snowcone Marshmallow Pop — Marshmallow coated in fruit-flavored chocolatey coating with colorful sanding sugars
• Dumbo Sandwich Cookie — Two Dumbo-shaped sugar cookies with vanilla buttercream and colorful sprinkles
• Mickey Circus Cookie — Mickey-shaped sugar cookie with pink or white chocolatey coating and colorful sprinkles

Snacks

• Circus Chips — Corn chips coated in brown sugar and cinnamon
• Big Top Dippers — Animal crackers and apple slices served with vanilla buttercream, Werther’s Original caramel, and colorful sprinkles for dipping

The Two Worth Actually Buying

Being honest: most of this menu is standard Disney confection design — a sugar base, a chocolatey coating, ears, sprinkles. Attractive, sweet, and largely interchangeable. Two items break that pattern.

The Dumbo Caramel Apple is the best-designed piece here. Sugar cookie ears, a red fondant collar, and a yellow chocolatey hat is a genuinely complete character rendering rather than ears stuck on a sphere. It’s also the only item on the menu that’s specific to Storybook Circus rather than generic Mickey and Minnie merchandising — Dumbo is the land’s actual anchor, with Dumbo the Flying Elephant a few steps away.

Big Top Dippers is the smartest item commercially. Animal crackers and apple slices with three dips is a shareable, moderately portioned snack in a park where the alternative is a single 700-calorie cupcake. It’s also the item most likely to work for a family with young children who won’t finish a caramel apple each.

Circus Chips is the interesting oddity — corn chips in brown sugar and cinnamon is the only genuinely unusual flavour idea in the lineup, and the only savory-adjacent item.

Disney hasn’t published prices, which is worth noting given caramel apples at Walt Disney World typically run $8–$12 and specialty cupcakes $7–$9.

Where Storybook Circus Sits

For anyone unfamiliar, Storybook Circus is the Dumbo-themed corner of Fantasyland, added during the 2012 Fantasyland expansion.

It’s home to Dumbo the Flying Elephant, The Barnstormer, Casey Jr. Splash ‘N’ Soak Station, and the Walt Disney World Railroad’s Fantasyland station.

It’s also Magic Kingdom’s best area for young children, and the two shops matter more here than a retail location usually would. Pete’s Silly Sideshow is a character meet location, and Big Top Souvenirs is the merchandise and treats stop — which means the land has spent six months down one of its two indoor, air-conditioned spaces during a Florida summer.

Getting it back before the fall crowds arrive is good timing.

The Bottom Line

Big Top Souvenirs reopens at Magic Kingdom on Friday, August 21, 2026, after a six-month refurbishment to replace the tent canopy — the same work completed at Pete’s Silly Sideshow in late June.

It returns with new caramel apples, cupcakes, cookies, marshmallow pops, Circus Chips, and Big Top Dippers.

Storybook Circus is back to full capacity from August 21.

---

---

Looking To Book Your Dream Disney Vacation?