AFTERNOON TEA AT GARDEN VIEW TEA ROOM

Nestled in the back corner of the lobby in Disney's Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, is a quaint little place where the serve tea. Currently, they are serving two different sittings of tea: The Afternoon Tea and The Princess Breakfast Tea.

This review is for the former, the Afternoon Tea. The price of the Princess Tea is steep. It is also for what I consider to be a younger crowd, while the afternoon tea is generally composed of a more mature crowd. During our sitting there were two children under 5, one of them was mine and turned 5 months the day we went and the other was a little girl dressed in an adorable tea time dress and behaved quite appropriately.  All other attendants (while we were there) ages 11 and up. (The 11 year old was also mine!)

Garden View Tea Menu

The tea starts with of course a waiter and a menu, please excuse the picture quality it may not be the best due to a 5 month old in my lap!

Garden View Tea Menu

Garden View Tea Menu

Garden View Tea Menu

Garden View Tea Menu

The above was the menu as of Feb 26, 2015. They did say that they chance things seasonally.

Here's how it works: You pick a tea, a tea and champagne combination, or a children's tea. With each persons order you receive a full pot of tea. About 4 cups are in each pot. With that tea choice comes a three course tasting meal as I call it. You can check the menu above for the tea options. The children's tea is the only one where the food is a little bit different.

The food begins with course number one:

 This is the finger sandwich with fruit and cheese plate. On this day there was three finger sandwiches a cucumber, a curry, and an egg salad. The filling in these sandwiches is very limited, that is my only complaint. The curry was both mine and my mothers favorite. My 11 year old did not like any of the finger sandwiches.

There was also three kinds of cheese on the plate: a white hard cheese, a green pesto mixed with a medium white cheese, and a goat cheese topped with pickled beets. My favorite was the goat cheese with pickled beats followed by the hard white cheese. My apologies for not knowing the type but it was good. The green one that I expected to love was actually very plain.

There were raspberries, grapes, and blueberries. This is one of those items that I assume they change seasonally. While talking with the waitress I found out that they try to get most of their fruit fresh from local growers. It may not be organic but it's a start!

On the the second course!

 I may have enjoyed the first course but, I loved the second!!! Pictured above is a buttery raisin scone and a strawberry jam tart... both were amazing!! They are also served with three different "sauces" if you will. They were an apricot jam, a heavy cream based concoction, and a key lime frosting type substance. My mother loved the heavy cream and my daughter loved the key lime. I personally liked all three but thought the scone and tart were perfect without any added flavors. This is coming from a girl who loves condiments!

The third and final course was desert. This course there was actually a choice of which desert you wanted. Remember Disney is very good at accommodating allergies and so my lactose intolerant daughter choose a desert that was not on the menu and prepared special for her.

These were our desserts. My daughters was a strawberry platter and mine was the traditional dessert. While my mother liked her dessert my daughter loved hers! I did not care for mine and requested a repeat of the second course instead. Which they brought me and I loved again :-)

In total it took us about two hours to have our tea. Keep in mind we had an allergy so the chef came out to speak with us personally. We are also slow eaters and heavy talkers, so you may be able to get out of there faster than we did.

Overall it was a very relaxing enjoyable experience. I would definitely recommend it especially for those of you that like your down time and for those of you who like tea!