Last week I decided to treat myself to a little "me time" at Epcot. This included booking two activities to fill up my day, one being the Behind the Seeds Tour over at The Land and the other being the Rose & Crown Tea Experience.
The Tea Experience is available only on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in the morning before World Showcase opens and is $35 per person. However, if you're an Annual Passholder with your 20% off it comes to $28 before tax. A real bargain in my opinion for everything you get. Even the full price for non passholders is a bargain by Disney Standards.
Before booking, I was told they would be able to accommodate any dietary restrictions but would advise me to let Disney know beforehand. I then e-mailed Special.Diets@disneyworld.com to give them a heads up and then after a few back and forth e-mails it was just a matter of waiting for the day to arrive.
Upon arriving at Rose & Crown it is advised to check in by at least 9:30 as the experience does start at 9:45. From there you will sit outside of the Pub as each party is called one by one to be taken to their table. Before being seated I was greeted by the Chef as he gave me the rundown on to what my options would be for the day to make sure I was comfortable with everything.
The set-up on the table is adorable. You are given a display of 4 of the 5 Teas you will be trying as well as sugar cubes, milk and a display of 3 different miniature hourglasses (these come into play later). You are then greeted by your hosts and introduced to the wait staff.
Your host for the day then tells you the backstory of your first two teas you will be trying which on this visit was an English Breakfast tea with notes of Honey & Vanilla and a Chai Tea. You then use your hourglass to time how long you should steep each tea for. (As someone who is not a fan of English Breakfast the Vanilla saved the day for me, the smell was heavenly and really made this enjoyable).
After your first two teas, you are then delivered an Iced Lady Grey Tea to go along with your sandwiches.
2 of the 4 Sandwiches, unfortunately, contained Dairy as their main component was Cheese so instead of those I was given double of the others. My two sandwiches were an Egg Salad with microgreens on White Bread and a Curry Chicken Salad on Rye. The Egg Salad was super creamy and yummy and reminded me of being a kid again while the Curry Chicken was truly what dreams are made of. I've spoken before about my love for middle eastern flavors and that Curry paired with the Rye Bread was great. I honestly didn't feel as I missed out on anything especially since one of the sandwiches I wasn't given was a pickle and cheese and I don't like pickle so I'd take a hundred of the Curry Chicken over that any day. The Iced Lady Grey, however, was not my favorite but I tend to not enjoy my tea iced in general so it didn't have the odds in its favor the begin with.
We were then given a fresh pot of hot water to begin brewing our last two teas. These were a Pomegranate, Raspberry & Strawberry Green Tea and a Lime & Ginger White Hibiscus Herbal Tea which was part of Twinings new Immune Support line of Teas. This was really where you hit my sweet spot, literally and figuratively as I love sweet fruity teas. These were both fantastic and the smell of the fruits from the Green Tea made the whole dining room smell delicious. The only downside was the food this round. Everyone is served two huge Scones (one plain and one with raisins) with jam and clotted cream while I was given...Fruit. Now I ate some grapes and sucked on some oranges but this was a little bit of a let down if I'm being honest. Although the portion of fruit was HUMUNGOUS, I will give them that, I did feel like I was missing out a little bit. I know over at the Grand Floridian they give you Erin McKenna's Tea Cakes and they would have been great but at the very least I would have taken some Enjoy Life Cookies. I feel when you're drinking tea it's accustomed to having a pastry of some sort and the acidity of the fruit really wasn't working for me. They also have some dairy-free ginger cookies over in the Tea shop in the UK Pavilion which I discovered later so those would have been a nice option as well.
Despite the fruit though, I thoroughly enjoyed the morning and would 100% do it again. As a parting gift, everyone is also given a packet of 3 Twinings Teas. These aren't necessarily the ones you tried and everyone's is different so it's the luck of the draw, however, 2 out of my 3 were ones I tried and luckily enough two of my favorites. I was also given a Lemon and Ginger which is what I drink every morning so I was happy about that as well.