INSIDE LOOK: A magical afternooon at Disney’s Tea Experience at Grand Floridian Resort
Sip, sip, hooray!!! There’s a new afternoon tea experience at Walt Disney World Resort, and we’re spilling the tea!
The Garden View Lounge – Tea Experience at the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa recently welcomed guests back to the newly renovated space, with a whimsical new twist that transports you to the Victorian era, when afternoon tea reigned supreme.
And it wouldn’t be a proper Disney tea party if there weren’t a nod to the ultimate tea princess herself, Alice in Wonderland.
Related: Our favorite non-theme park things to do with the kids at Walt Disney World
It’s an experience you will most definitely want to add to your Disney bucket list. Disney invited us to experience the tea for ourselves so we could share all the details with you. So let's dive in!
THE DISNEY TEA EXPERIENCE
Let’s move on to the Tea Experience. The Garden View Lounge is where it has always been. For those of you who have never been, it’s in the back of the lobby.
The lounge has a new, refreshed look that is bright, airy, and a perfect setting for tea. We’ll get to the food in a moment, which was absolutely showstopping, but one of my favorite parts about the tea experience was selecting the tea.
Once we took our seats and got comfortable, our server presented us with a box of Twingings Tea loose-leaf teas in cloches. While we could have easily selected a tea off the menu, we let our sense of smell guide us.
Each cloche was presented to us, and like a fine perfume, we made our selections based on our favorite smell, and for me, it was the Orangery of Lady Grey, which is exclusive to Walt Disney World Resort.
There are eight Twinings loose-leaf tea selections:
- Orangery of Lady Grey
- Nutty Chocolate Flavored Assam
- Exotic Mango & Ginger
- Redbush Caramel Velvet
- London Strand Breakfast
- Spicy Chai
- Lemongrass & Peppermint
- Blackcurrant & Lavender
Our tea was poured from a beautiful teapot as we were presented with our first course, an Orange-Cranberry scone with a selection of buttery spreads.
(Keep scrolling for our interview with 10th-generation Twinings Tea family member, Stephan Twining!)
THE DELECTABLE BITES
And next is the almost too good to eat experience when the three tiers of everything your Disney tea party dreams are made of arrive at your table.
From sweet to savory, each selection is a nod to Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland”, from the Curried Chicken Salad Playing Card Tart, Caterpillar Cucumber Roll, to the Matcha Mad Hatter sponge cake, it’s all almost too beautiful to eat…but you will anyway because it’s too good not to!
There’s even a tableside “Painting the Rose”, as your server drizzles a berry sauce on the Earl Grey-flavored tea cake.
THE CHILDREN’S AFTERNOON TEA
There is also an adorable Children’s Afternoon Tea, with sweet and savory bites designed for the palates of little ones!
Their tray includes a Queen of Hearts Cheese Toastie, a Fanciful Turkey Wrap, and a Sunflower Seed Butter and Jelly Bun. They aren’t left out when it comes to the adorable desserts! Their platter will be filled a Cheshire Cat Raspberry Macaron, the Chocolate Brownie Branch, and the vanilla White Rabbit Cupcake.
THE ENHANCEMENTS
There are options to enhance your experience by adding a Seasonal Cheese Selection, which we did. We also opted for the glass of Taittinger champagne because you only get 364 days a year to celebrate your UNbirthday!
While we were hosted by Disney for the Tea Experience, we did pay for the enhancements like the champagne and cheese, and it was worth every penny.
A few other enhancements include Royal Osetra Caviar, signature tea-based cocktails, and non-alcoholic specialty teas.
BOOK YOUR DISNEY TEA EXPERIENCE
The Tea Experience starts at $79 for adults and $49 for children ages 3-9. You can book your Disney Tea Experience here. It is booking up fast, but we have found that if you have a larger table, of 4 or more, there are more reservations available in the next 60 days.
It is a hefty price tag at first glance, but given what other afternoon tea experiences cost and the experience you get here at Disney, we feel it is good value since it’s not an everyday thing, and it’s a unique experience you won’t get anywhere else.
STEEPED IN HISTORY: TWININGS TEA
Disney has had a long relationship with Twinings Tea that began with the addition of the Twinings Tea Caddy at EPCOT.
During our Tea Experience, we had the chance to meet Stephen Twining, a 10th-generation member of the Twining Tea family. His family’s flagship store in London has been at the same location for 300+ years, and if you happen to make it over there, you can visit and even book a tea masterclass!
Since it’s not often that you get to meet a family so steeped in the history of tea, we had to ask for his top tips and, of course, a little family history!
TBPM: Stephen, let’s go back to the beginning when Twinings Tea got its start. People can still visit the original store in London!
Stephan Twining: At the back of what is now the store is where Thomas Twining started the business in 1706. He bought an existing London coffee house, which was a place where men met and did business.
In the city of London, in the square mile we call the Financial District, there were over 2,000 coffee houses, so he's just outside that area and wants a point of difference, so he introduces fine quality tea.
The tea rapidly took over, but the main customers for tea in London, because it was very expensive through taxation, were the wealthy aristocratic ladies who wanted tea to serve at home. He quickly realized that there was a future in tea.
He bought two neighboring properties, which are now that beautiful little shop in London, and it became concentrated on tea, and we've been doing tea ever since.
TBPM: It’s incredible that your family has been able to keep the business within the family for 10 generations!
ST: I’m a very lucky man who's never done a day's work in his life because I'm just doing what I love, and hopefully, in every generation, we find that. People are passionate about it, and it might be the history that inspires them, it might be the tea plant and everything you do with it; there are so many different aspects to this company and what we do. I knew at the age of eight that this was what I was going to do.
I'm very happy to tell you that the 11th generation has just joined us nearly two years ago now and is training to be a master tea taster. Being a marketing graduate, we thought it would be marketing that would inspire him. No, it was tea tasting – that’s what he fell in love with.
TBPM: People can still visit the store in London, right?
ST: Anyone can drop into the shop at any time, and we'll always have a few teas that you can try. If you're planning in advance, we now have an area downstairs where we conduct master classes, but those you need to book in advance. It's up to 10 people, and that's a great experience. It's two hours of tasting history and processing what the different types of teas are, what makes them special, where do they come from, and so on.
CLICK: Here's a link to the Twinings flagship store in London
TBPM: Let’s talk about the family connection to Walt Disney World.
ST: In 1982, my father was honored to open the Tea Caddy [at the UK Pavilion in EPCOT] because we were Disney's tea of choice, which is just fantastic. And we've had that relationship ever since. I think we worked out very quickly that Disney is passionate about the experience they want their guests to have.
We are passionate about the experience we want our customers to have with tea. So we have that absolutely in common. The other things we have in common are the attention to detail. They are masters of attention to detail, and an awful lot of attention to detail goes into brewing our teas, preparing our teas, getting that blend of tea just right.
So there are so many things I can mention that are in common. We've developed this great relationship; they're always looking to the future, we're always looking to the future, and it's just the most natural fit to work with them.
TBPM: Why would you encourage guests of the Tea Experience to select their tea based on smell rather than what they would normally drink?
ST: Talking to the guests today, that has led them to choose a tea they wouldn't otherwise normally have gone for. Just from the description, they go, “No, I wouldn't like that”. Smell it, and it just brings it to life.
TBPM: Let's talk tea prep. What's your best advice?
ST: If you're going to brew it in a teapot, teapots love to be beautifully clean. Over time, they'll build up a stain. Bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), a couple of tablespoons of that, boiling water, it'll do all the hard work, cleans it without leaving a taint or odor.
If you put it in your dishwasher, it won't get rid of the stain, and some of the detergent gets into it…it's not good.
Then we get down to the quality of water. It is the quality of the water as well as the quality of tea that absolutely determines what a great cup you're going to get.
Fresh boiled water has more dissolved oxygen; it's the dissolved oxygen bringing out the flavor. So if
you've reboiled your water. Each time it comes to boiling point, you dispel some of that dissolved
oxygen, you get a flatter, duller, more boring cup of tea.
For the herbal teas and the black teas, just as the water hits boiling, on goes the water, and then you have to be patient and let it do what it's meant to do.
But the larger the leaf, the longer it takes. So one of the large leaf teas here is going to take about four and a half to five minutes. The exception to this rule is green tea. If you add water at the boiling point, it's going to go bitter, so let it cool to about 180 Fahrenheit, add it on, and then let it steep and brew. Stir, because the heavy flavor will settle at the bottom of the teapot. Pour and enjoy.
TBPM: What’s your advice on selecting the perfect cup of tea?
ST: When it comes to the tea, as I say, choose what you like, drink it how you like.