Disney, no matter where you visit, is a feast for all of your senses. There’s a myriad of things to look at. All around you, sounds and music are coming from every direction. And, like it or not, your nose is being assaulted by pleasant, and not-so-pleasant smells. From the smell of popcorn as you enter Magic Kingdom, to that peculiar bromide smell from the water rides. Your schnoz is taking in everything.
A popular request at Disney resorts to staff is “what air freshener do you use?” and “How can I bottle this scent up and take it home with me?” Luckily for us, a number of hard-sniffing individuals have done the work for us and created a variety of candles, air fresheners, etc. in a variety of signature Disney scents!
Today, we’ll discuss a few that we at Disney Rover have personally tried.
Wishes Candle Company
We’ve known about Wishes Candle Company for several years now. Along with Disney-inspired candles, one of their main draws is their hidden pin candles. Along with a lovely smelling candle, somewhere buried in the wax is a Disney pin (wrapped up, of course). There’s no way of knowing which pin you will receive, or where in the candle it’s buried.
We personally tried the above two candles. The Spirit of Aloha is inspired by Disney’s Polynesian Resort with scents of white tea, ginger, and bamboo. While a very nice and pleasant scent, we feel it’s nearly perfect to the Polynesian Resort lobby but it’s missing something that we can’t put our finger on. Maybe something floral, considering the garden you pass as you enter? It’s very good, and our favorite of the Polynesian-inspired candles.
French Quarter is inspired by Disney’s Port Orleans French Quarter Resort. The main scent is magnolia, and this smells amazing! Personally, we feel this smells just like the Port Orleans Riverside lobby, especially over by the check-in area. Even if you aren’t looking for a Disney-inspired candle, if you love magnolia, this is a great candle!
Wishes Candle Company sells candles, wax tarts, room sprays and oils. Their candles are 100% soy, so no paraffin wax, with cotton wicks. The candles also come with a top layer of biodegradable glitter/sparkles. They are a small company, so everything is hand-made, and located in Rhode Island.
If you do place an order, you can try to tell them that Disney Rover sent ya, but they’ll probably just look at you funny.
Magic Candle Company
We have tried a lot of candles and air fresheners from Magic Candle Company! In our experience, the scents have ranged to “eh, not quite” to “oh, this is nice”. One such example is the Contemporary, inspired by Disney’s Contemporary Resort. This scent includes green clover, aloe, jasmine, and lily of the valley, just to name a few. It’s nice, but we’re not totally in love with it. One downer is that Contemporary and Floridian have the same scents, so it doesn’t feel completely unique, unlike a few other resort-inspired candles.
On the other hand, we are fans of Vero Beach with it’s orange, jasmine, and sandalwood scents! We opened this candle and placed this in a bathroom and the scent traveled to nearby rooms in the house! We didn’t even light it! It’s a very nice, beachy scent.
To bring the magic on the road, we also tried many of their scents as air fresheners. We’ve discussed Contemporary, so we’ll skip that one. Polynesian, inspired by the Polynesian Resort, includes scents of palms, citrus, hibiscus, and teakwood. While very good, like the Wishes scent, we felt it was just missing a little something. Bamboo, perhaps? We’re not sure. We still like it, regardless!
Pirate Life is inspired by one of the scenes inside Pirates of Caribbean, and it’s not bromine related! Inspired by the ship battle scene, this includes notes of ocean air, rain, and salty sea breezes. Though we’re not huge fans, we don’t exactly hate this one either. Unlike…
Haunted. We really, really wanted to like this one, as big fans of Haunted Mansion. With notes of vanilla and cedar, we thought this would be great. Unfortunately, there must be an addition of musk because we could not stop sneezing! Your experience may vary, and this may become a favorite of yours. but for us, we had to take it down after the first day.
Other scents we’ve tried…
Flying Over Orange Groves – inspired by a scene in Soarin’, we love the air freshener version of this scent and it’s notes of oranges! Unfortunately, we also tried this as a foaming hand soap, and it smelled more like grapefruit.
Castaway Cruise is another favorite, with floral and sea salt notes. This one whisks us away to Disney’s private island in the Bahamas and reminds us of that cruise vacation we were on, or the one we’re saving up for.
Mouse Waffles was both a blessing and a curse. The scent itself was fantastic! It smells just like waffles! However, the scent as an air freshener is also very strong. After leaving it in the car overnight, we were hit by the waffle scent after opening the car door. May cause waffle cravings. May also be overwhelming if left in a car overnight.
Poison Apple is a scent we have not personally tried, but have given as a gift. With it’s notes of apple (obviously), cinnamon and sugar, we were told it smells very much like apple pie and caramel apples. It was a big hit as a gift, and great around fall.
Sea Salt + H2O is inspired by the toiletries found at Disney resorts. The scent includes notes of water lotus, rose, and sea moss. We’re quite pleased with this scent and happy they didn’t choose the Sea Marine Disney toiletries which smell more earthy (okay, they stink).
We wants the bromine!
Okay okay. We were getting to it. You want the bromine? We’ll give you the bromine.
Splash is Magic Candle Company’s bromine-scented scent inspired by Disney water flume rides, particularly Splash Mountain. This scent includes notes of damp air and bromine water. That’s it! You know the smell. You love the smell. If you forgot about the smell, this will take you back.
But wait, there’s one more!
We’re including this one as a bit of a wild card. A little bird told us this particular room spray has been used inside resort rooms to freshen up the air and add to that ‘clean room’ smell. We have a bottle and yes, it does give a room that clean room smell! If you don’t want a particular resort scent, and you don’t want your room to smell of Lysol, give this a try, available through Amazon: Ecolab ZephAir Mountain Mist Air Freshener.
Sorry, not sorry.
We apologize for not including any of the other signature scents you’re nostrils are subjected to on a Disney vacation. Although we did try, we simply could not find anything related to turkey legs, B.O., stinky diapers, or our end-of-the-night favorite: sweaty crowded resort bus. We’ll keep looking.
Disney Rover 