Turkey "Emu" Legs

Emu burgers anyone?

I first heard of these huge Turkey Legs being sold at Walt Disney World during our first trip in 2000 however I never did get a chance to try them (I must have been busy eating all the great food from the International Food and Wine Festival at Epcot!). Years later I found out they were selling them at Frontierland, Disneyland at an Outdoor Vending Cart. Curious about all the rave reviews I wanted to make a special attempt to try one on my next trip. I must have mentioned something about them the other night because Kruddler overheard and said they weren't actually turkey but were made from Emu. Emu???... yuck!!!

Honestly I didn't really know what an Emu was so I had to look it up on the internet. It turns out to be a very large bird native to Australia (similar to an ostrich). I did some more internet searching looking for some official confirmation on the makeup of Disney's Turkey Legs and amazingly over 90% of the Disney fan websites mentioned they were made from Emu. I keep digging and came across this MouseFunFacts link which stated they are indeed real Turkey legs. Apparently Disney gets them raised specifically for their large size and then injects them with a special brine to make them taste so good. The final confirmation came when I watched the Food Network channel show, Unwrapped, which recently had a Disney World Resort Special on the secrets behind the food of WDW. Yes its all real turkey meat.

So how did this rumor get started? Well like most legends, no one really knows but it doesn't take much imagination to think these huge legs came from a naturally large bird. I mean who has seen a 50 lb turkey in real life? In addition, both emu and the ostrich are sometimeseaten for their meat so I could understand how this piece of misinformation could have survived for so long. As for me, I'm happy I did some research as I look forward to trying my first turkey leg during my next trip to Disneyland. As for the legend of the Emu Legs, we can safely relegate it to the trash bin of urban legends like McDonald's "worm burgers" which innocently Rob and I believed when we were kids. We even made our parents buy us Filet-O-Fish sandwiches instead of hamburgers during those couple of months.