Sonic Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float: This Summery Treat's A Winner

The Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is Sonic Drive-In's limited-time sweet treat for summer 2024. Slushes are a staple of Sonic's drink and dessert menus — options that are available year-round range from straightforward offerings, like its Cherry Slush, to a collaboration with sports drink brand Powerade based on its Mountain Berry Blast flavor.

While most of the permanent items on the Sonic slush menu simply consist of crushed ice and flavored syrup, the fast food chain's newest offering is an ice cream float-adjacent dessert decked out with multiple additions to its orangey slush base. Whereas a regular slush can theoretically serve the role of a sugary drink accompanying a lunch or dinner meal, this new float is an indulgence best saved for the end of a meal. Here's everything Sonic-goers need to know about the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float, as well as my personal review of the item after trying it.

The base of Sonic's Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is the same finely crushed ice used in every item on the slush menu. That's flavored with an Orange Cloudsicle Syrup. What makes Orange Cloudsicle distinct from a plain orange flavor is that it's apparently intended to resemble something akin to the Good Humor ice cream brand's classic Orange Creamsicle bar, which combines orange with vanilla ice cream. Wendy's, notably, debuted something called the Orange Dreamsicle Frosty in March 2024, so Sonic is participating in what is becoming a growing fast food trend.

Accompanying that Orange Cloudsicle slush are two additional items. First, within and throughout the slush are what the chain calls "orange vanilla flavor bubbles," resembling the sort of boba-adjacent add-in typically found at a bubble tea spot. On top of the bubble-filled slush is soft serve ice cream, which itself is garnished with more flavor bubbles. The Orange Creamsicle-esque flavor then is not just contained within the slush but is a product of each of its ingredients working in harmony.

Technically, the price of each menu item at any given Sonic location can vary — Sonic locations are franchised, allowing franchisees to set prices as they see fit. That said, the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float seems to be available, at least at the vast majority of Sonic locations, for a standard price of $3.99 before tax.

It's worth noting that part of the profits Sonic makes from each Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float help fund the company's Limeades for Learning initiative. Limeades for Learning is an ongoing project through which Sonic applies some proceeds from every drink, slush, or shake sale toward donations to public schools. While the total amount contributed toward Limeades for Learning generated from each $3.99 Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float sale may not be all that much individually, the project has resulted in over $27 million donated toward public schools.

According to the official press release announcing the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float, the item's street date was intended to be May 6, 2024. While that date may have held true for some markets and likely marked the day on which the item became available at all Sonics, some locations started offering it — at least through online ordering — more than a week early, purportedly starting on April 28.

The Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float promotion is scheduled for approximately two months, concluding on June 30. Also joining the Sonic menu on May 6 is the Cheesy Bacon Sonic Stack Cheeseburger, which consists of standard burger ingredients and bacon sandwiched between slices of Texas toast. Whereas the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float will leave the Sonic menu on June 30, however, the Cheesy Bacon Sonic Stack Cheeseburger is a permanent addition to the fast food chain's lineup.

The most blatant difference between the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float and the rest of the slush menu at Sonic is that the former is explicitly a float — meaning, in this case, that it contains soft serve ice cream, which is not among the sizable list of slush add-ons. Whereas a typical soda-based ice cream float often mixes into a liquid-y treat consumable with a straw, the combination of Sonic's thick slush and thicker soft serve veers closer to a sundae and pretty much requires a spoon.

Also of note are its so-called orange vanilla flavor bubbles. In the past, Sonic has offered limited-time add-ins called Bursting Bubbles. For what it's worth, the orange vanilla flavor bubbles do burst, and therefore seem to be a new flavor variant on what was an exciting drink offering in summers past. Once again, however, these new orange vanilla flavor bubbles are not available to add to any slush, but are unique to this particular menu item.

Finally, whereas regular items on the slush menu are highly customizable — between five possible sizes and add-ons like additional flavors, Nerds candy, and even real fruit — the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float comes in just a Medium size and lacks customization options, save for a choice between easy, regular, or extra portions of its flavor bubbles and syrup.

Since every Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is served in a Medium-sized cup, there's little variation in nutritional information between any two given executions of the item. While lightening or intensifying the quantity of flavor bubbles and/or syrup might nominally alter its sugar content, its standardized size and serving of soft serve ice cream will ensure that its baseline nutritional information should hold pretty close to true across the board.

Each Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float contains a total of 420 calories, 92 grams of carbohydrates, 87 grams of sugar, 6 grams of fat, 4 grams of saturated fat, 17 grams of trans fat, 30 grams of cholesterol, and 250 grams of sodium. Its total nutrient content includes 4 grams of protein, 97 milligrams of calcium, 337 grams of vitamin A, and 0.22 grams of iron. While the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float might not be an altogether healthy choice, those numbers shouldn't come as too big of a surprise for an extravagant fast food dessert item.

One of the most impressive qualities of Sonic's Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is that its orange slush, soft serve ice cream, and flavor bubble components harmonize particularly well with one another. Whereas any one of those three elements easily could have clashed with the other two, each ingredient contributes to the float's unique Orange Creamsicle bar-esque flavor as well as a satisfying collection of textures.

The best way to eat the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is with a spoon. At least in my experience, many of the flavor bubbles — which can vary in size — were too large to fit through a standard straw, so a spoon is required for bites that contain all three main components. That said, it's worth trying the orange slush base with a straw in order to taste what is a standout flavor on its own. The Orange Cloudsicle syrup that flavors the slush manages to pretty closely approximate the taste of a real orange, accompanied by just a touch of vanilla. It's with the help of Sonic's silky soft serve that the item delivers on the full promise of its flavor. The bursting bubbles, meanwhile, mostly just taste orangey, and act as something of a bonus in what would already be a worthwhile dessert without them. Overall, the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float is a distinctly summery treat that shines even on Sonic's already crowded dessert menu.

In order to assess the Orange Cloudsicle Slush Float for this review, I ordered the item online from the Sonic website and picked it up through one of their drive-up stalls. I consumed the float entirely at home. For the sake of comprehensively understanding exactly what goes into making the item work, I tried each ingredient individually both before and after tasting the float as a whole. My final review was based entirely on my personal opinion of the item after trying and critiquing it.