Garden View Tea room "Special" & timing

[Raya]

We've had tea at the GF's Tea room during October trips. While the reservation is hard to get the experience was wonderful. I'm now planning a December trip. When I made my tea room reservation there was no notice of any changes or special events. However, when I see the reservation in my MyDisneyExperience it has "-special" after it.

What does that mean?

Also, how long does tea take? I remember it taking about 90 minutes but it was years ago so I could be wrong. Anyone had tea recently and remember the timing?

3rd question, what time should we have tea with a 4pm MVMCP with 4:30 LTT that day? We'd want time between tea and dinner to get hungry again. Would tea be better at 2pm or 12:00? 12:00 seems awful early for tea though....

 

[loves to dive]

How long it takes depends totally on you. Generally we are there for at least 90 min. but we take time over each course. We use it for a meal, we buy the one that comes with 3 courses (sorry can't remember the name) and are stuffed full after. It all depends on what you order as to whether you are going to be hungry by 4. If I had the 2:00 I wouldn't be. If I had the 12, I might.

 

[Mal6586]

I'll be honest, we had a 2:35pm Afternoon Tea before MVMCP last December, did the lowest tier selection, the Bedfordshire, and we were STUFFED. There is no way we would have been able to turn around and eat again at 4:30pm. My advice would be to ditch Tony's and shoot for a similar time. We went straight from GF to MK and got there right about 4pm. So 90 minutes is still pretty accurate. We were so stuffed from tea that we didn't even eat supper that night. We snacked on the cookies and beverages from the party and never needed another full meal that night.