This calorie-full soupy mess has been provided by "Hollywood Scoops" at Disney's Hollywood Studios, a small ice cream kiosk at the end of Sunset Boulevard and close to the entrance of the Tower of Terror.

The menu board says this is an Apple Crisp à la Mode. Rather than completely eviscerating the location for delivering what should be called a tepid bowl of melted sugar-rich dairy goop, let's turn this into a teachable article.

In the world of high-volume fast-food (and even most high-dollar restaurants, truth be told), heat-lamps and keep-warm areas are quite commonplace. It's all about production-line food building, and it mostly works... as long as you don't keep stuff under there for too long.

That same kind of high-volume pre-production can't be applied to ice cream sundae building because... well... ice cream melts. You can't build out three or four sundaes and just let them sit... and hope that someone comes along to purchase them. And that... is exactly what was going on here.

For those of you that are familiar with Hollywood Scoops, the photos our Apple Crisp à la Mode were taken at the closest table to the back and left of the kiosk. The table is no more than 30 steps and 20 seconds from the sundae pickup window. While it does get hot in Florida, there's no way three freshly scooped dollops of ice cream could turn into a puddle in that amount of time.

Consistency and uniform temperature of this $6.19 dessert bowl aside, there wasn't much flavor to save the day either. Calling this ice cream "vanilla" is kind of like calling milk "vanilla". Not having anything to do with the actual dark spice, it's all white... so it must be vanilla. The caramel sauce was sweet, and the most flavorful part of this dish. Unfortunately, the caramel was well mixed with the "cinnamon apples" at the bottom of the bowl and had congealed into a goopy clunk that had no choice but to sink deep below the ice cream broth.

The apples themselves were either canned or over-baked, (perhaps both), and had a consistency that was closer to an oyster than baked apples. Finally, the "streusel" was nothing more than a couple tablespoons of some kind of praline crumble that vaguely tasted similar to a pastry shell.

All in all, Col. William Prescott was probably talking about ice cream sundaes when he uttered the words "don't scoop until you see the whites of their eyes" (history was never my forte). Unless you can see the people making your sundae... don't expect it to be great.

Which is why I would wholeheartedly recommend Epcot's L'artisan des Glaces or the Magic Kingdom's Plaza Ice Cream Parlor over Hollywood Scoops... if for no other reason than because the cast members don't start scooping your ice cream, until after you have placed your order. A huge part of a successful sundae is being able to discern the differences in the savory and sweet, cold and warm, and smooth & crunchy components. When you pre-plate these things (even just by a few minutes) before they are to be consumed... the whole thing just turns into a single, thick, brothy bowl of dairy.