Afternoon tea at Disney World: the Grand Floridian's Garden View tea room against The Cake Bake Shop's Roses of Gold

Which afternoon tea at Disney World should you book?

The two are close in style and apart on price, booking and tea. Prices are from Disney's own menus, read on 15 September 2026.

Our view: the Garden View Lounge is $16 cheaper for an adult and the more themed room; the Cake Bake Shop feeds you more and never runs out of tea. For a child of ten to twelve, only the Cake Bake Shop's children's price applies.

When is the Garden View tea room open, and how hard is it to book?

The Garden View Lounge serves tea from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. On our Easter-weekend visit it was open Wednesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. MagicTable's listing, written before the reopening, says daily, so check the booking calendar for your dates. Reservations are effectively required: on opening day a cast member told Disney Food Blog there was no walk-up waitlist.

The room first opened on 28 June 1988, according to WDWMagic's records, closed in 2020 and stayed shut for six years. Disney announced the return on 21 January 2026, opened bookings on 19 February and reopened it on 19 March, with new Alice in Wonderland touches. WDWMagic reported the first reservations were gone in under an hour.

Disney's rules are strict. You pay in full, tax and gratuity included, when you book; the reservation cannot be changed; and cancelling within a day forfeits the full price.

What do you get at the Garden View Lounge tea?

A tea, a scone and a three-tier tower, all fixed; there are no substitutions beyond dietary versions. Disney's menu lists these:

• Scone — Orange-cranberry, with whipped butter, orange marmalade and Devonshire cream
• Savouries — Curried chicken salad tart; salmon rillette on a miso brown-butter crisp; egg salad on beet bread; cucumber roll with butterfly-pea cream cheese
• Sweets — Matcha Mad Hatter; Tea Party Tart with coffee custard; Flamingo Croquet choux with passion fruit; Painting the Rose, an Earl Grey teacake painted at the table

There are plant-based, gluten-friendly and children's towers too. The tea is chosen with a cast member acting as tea guide, Disney Parks Blog says, and ours brought the tins round to smell. Extras cost more: a cheese plate at $21, Royal Ossetra caviar at $150, champagne from $16 a glass and two tea cocktails at $18.50 and $19.50.

The savoury and sweet descriptions come from an opening-day review.⁴

What was the Garden View Lounge tea actually like?

We went on Easter weekend 2026, and the short answer is that it is a relaxed, pretty, special-occasion afternoon, not a meal.

The best things on the tower were the curried chicken tart, whose curry is gentle, and the Tea Party Tart, with its chocolate and coffee filling under a fondant Alice dress. The cucumber roll is the classic done well. The egg salad sandwich was bland to both of us.

Painting the Rose is sweet and white-chocolate heavy, and the matcha hat is for matcha lovers only.

The Nutty Chocolate Assam was the surprise: with milk and a little sugar it drinks like a hot chocolate that is not sweet. The scones are very delicate and crumble at a touch; the orange marmalade beat both creams. The $21 cheese plate was worth it to us.

The children's menu doubles as an activity book, with colouring and a maze.

Can you buy the teas afterwards?

Yes, two of them at least. A cast member sent us to Sandy Cove Gifts and Sundries in the Grand Floridian, which stocked the loose-leaf Orangery of Lady Grey and the Nutty Chocolate Assam we drank, and a card at the end of the tea lists the blends you had.

Disney Parks Blog describes the Orangery of Lady Grey as exclusive to Walt Disney World.

What is the Cake Bake Shop's Roses of Gold afternoon tea?

The older and dearer of the two, launched in November 2024 and still $95 for an adult and $65 for a child today, WDWMagic's launch report and Disney's current menu agree. The teas are from Dammann Frères, the French house founded in 1825, including a blend exclusive to the restaurant, and you may try as many as you like, Disney's page says.

The menu starts with a lemon-blueberry scone with clotted cream and the shop's raspberry jam, then tomato soup with a Parmesan cracker, four finger sandwiches and six sweets, from a macaron to a chocolate truffle. Children get ham, turkey and peanut-butter sandwiches instead.

Booking is old-fashioned: by phone on (407) 574-3040 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern, or by email, and never on the same day. The upgrade Disney promotes is a glass of the house Rosé Bubbles in a keepsake flute.