To Dine or Not To Dine - That's MY Question

[Tom _Ryan]

We sailed aboard the Magic on 1/10/09, and had a wonderful trip. This was our first trip on the DCL, but we've sailed on other cruise lines (none match up to Disney imho).

No matter what cruise line you go on, dinner always seems to take too long, sometimes up to two hours. My question is, has anyone ever skipped doing the dinners for their entire cruise, and ate solely at Topsiders for their evening meals? If so, what did you think? Did you like it better? Did you feel like you missed out on anything?

 

[murcor]

Good question! Eager to hear the replies
You just cant eat and leave? never been on a cruise befroe

 

[mmouse37]

Nope...I would never give up the dining room to eat at Topsiders....unless I was running late from an excursion or something.

Part of the reason I enjoy cruising is the relaxed dining atmosphere. At home we always seem to rush through dinner and I really like the pacing and the chance to actually communicate with other people at the table. I look forward to dinner each night of the cruise. So many things in life are so fast paced that dinner on the ships is a nice contrast. I think of it as a social event, not just a meal.


MJ

 

[mmouse37]

Good question! Eager to hear the replies
You just cant eat and leave? never been on a cruise befroe

The meal service is paced to take about an hour and a half. Of course you can skip dessert and leave early if you want but it would be tough to cut it down to much shorter.

 

[aznaphrodite]

Personally, the excellent food at the dinners is one of the main reasons we're using DCL again. Food is a huge part of our vacation experience.

 

[LUVMICKEY]

I could never see us eliminating any formal dinners and going to topsiders instead. Those dinners are one of the biggest highlights of our cruise. We won't even make dinner reservations at Palo's because we don't want to miss dinner. We have always enjoyed talking with the people at the table and have always had a more than wonderful wait staff. We like to go to Palo's brunch so we don't miss out on that totally. We do go to Topsiders, but for either breakfast or lunch. But we are all different and enjoy different things, so it really is all about what you personally want to do.

 

[Muushka]

We are cruisers who do not enjoy the dining experience. For a host of reasons. The big one is that it takes so long to eat. We always do 2nd dining (we have no kiddos) and finishing dinner at 10:30 is not my idea of having a good time.

So, when we cruise, we usually plan on skipping at least 2 dinners at the MDR. Usually formal night. One time will be at Palo and the other will be at the casual dining on the top deck. We found the food was as good, fast, and more comfy because it was just the 2 of us. After a few days of making small talk, it gets a little old.

On the other cruise line we use, Celebrity, they let you order room service from the DR menus. That is nice, eating on your balcony! On Celebrity we usually skip 3!

 

[Mrsjvb]

would never dream of doing Topsiders exclusively. In fact we would prefer to do sit down for all three meals. ( I don't do buffets for a variety of reasons) the pacing is actually what makes it bearable to us.. we don't feel as if we are being rushed and can savor every bite. especially dessert....

for us. at least half of the reason we cruise IS the dining experiences in the restaurants.

 

[Muushka]

would never dream of doing Topsiders exclusively. In fact we would prefer to do sit down for all three meals. ( I don't do buffets for a variety of reasons) the pacing is actually what makes it bearable to us.. we don't feel as if we are being rushed and can savor every bite. especially dessert....

for us. at least half of the reason we cruise IS the dining experiences in the restaurants.

On the 7 night (the one we just completed) they have a sit down dinner in the buffet area. Menu, waiters, the whole 9 yards, except the time!

 

[tvguy]

I think you have hit on one of the areas where the cruise industry is changing. And it is changing because people like you want change.

Us old time cruisers (my first cruise was in 1980) EXPECT dinner to take a couple of hours. We consider that to be as much a part of the cruise as formal nights, top flight entertainment, the lifeboat drill and the midnight buffet.
As a matter of fact, one of the reasons we request late seating because late seating dining has an even MORE leasurely pace. We were rarely out of the dining room on the Magic before 10:45, and sometimes 11 pm. It gave us a chance to really get to know our servers, who took pride in showing our kids magic tricks...and my son.....whose hobby is magic, showed off his magic tricks to them.
I think what Disney has done with Topsiders on the Magic is give folks who want a less formal, faster dining experience, without depriving more traditional cruisers of the experience they are expecting.
We did an NCL Freestyle cruise, and dinner in the main dining rooms seemed like a fire drill. They expected you to order ALL your courses right away, and often the next course came before your had finished the one you had. We were rarely in the dining room more than 30 or 40 minutes. I felt like I was at Denny's!!!!
I think Disney does a good job trying to serve the needs and wants of the majority of their passengers. Disney was the 7th of my 8 cruises, and to generalize, I found Disney the most kid friendly cruise (no surprise there). Things are geared to those tend to go to bed earlier, one reason I suspect the late seating shows are BEFORE dinner, instead of after like on other cruise lines. The trade off is, Disney had far fewer scheduled events after 11 pm. On the Amsterdam, there always a show (comedian, singer) with a Midnight show......and often then was a 1 am adults only comedy show.

 

[Tom _Ryan]

Don't get me wrong everyone, I certainly prefer a leisurely meal to a wham-bam, eat-and-outta-here dinner, but this last cruise I had my DD2 with, and she wouldn't sit for more than ten minutes. So most nights, someone in our party usually had to take her back to the SR, and missed much of the meal. I was just curious if there are people out there that anticipate this and skip all the sit down dinners entirely.

 

[kcashner]

Some thoughts--book Flounders during dinner? Of course, next time she'll be older and you can just take her to the Club.

Ask your server to bring her entree and appetizer at the same time. Many servers will bring out the kid meals first and get them going. Also, some servers are much faster than others. You can ask at "dining changes" for one of the faster servers. Trust me, they know who they are.

I'd never consider skipping the dinners!

 

[lbgraves]

Nope...I would never give up the dining room to eat at Topsiders....unless I was running late from an excursion or something.

Part of the reason I enjoy cruising is the relaxed dining atmosphere. At home we always seem to rush through dinner and I really like the pacing and the chance to actually communicate with other people at the table. I look forward to dinner each night of the cruise. So many things in life are so fast paced that dinner on the ships is a nice contrast. I think of it as a social event, not just a meal.


MJ

That is exactly how I feel about it. It never seems like 2 hours to us because were enjoy visiting with our friends we cruise wtih.

 

[Olga]

We sailed aboard the Magic on 1/10/09, and had a wonderful trip. This was our first trip on the DCL, but we've sailed on other cruise lines (none match up to Disney imho).

No matter what cruise line you go on, dinner always seems to take too long, sometimes up to two hours. My question is, has anyone ever skipped doing the dinners for their entire cruise, and ate solely at Topsiders for their evening meals? If so, what did you think? Did you like it better? Did you feel like you missed out on anything?

I understand what you mean. We were lucky enough to have a suite and have dinner delivered to us.
You might find this trip report helpful, she did not eat in the diningroom everyday and describes the meals there and in other places on the ship.
Here is the link:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2073203

 

[jhoshowski]

I personally love the cruise ship dining experience. Multiple courses (I am a foodie), good conversation, and wonderful service. I hate the idea of ever missing a dinner in the dining room!

 

[Mickeyhugger]

The dining room meal is one of the reasons we cruise

Rob

 

[Sophie_2003]

We had a rule to at least try all 3 restaurants. By the end of the week, DD was tired and less patient so we did one hotdog night and one room service night. We regretted missing the dining room experience, and without kids we would always make it to dinner!

 

[sharen24]

We didn't really enjoy the main dining rooms on Disney as much as we have on other cruise lines. I think the difference was that we had late dining and we were too tired to enjoy anything that late in the day. We were able to eat at Palo twice and Topsiders once, so that made it a little easier. We will only reserve main dining on all future cruises. I also found that I missed having dining companions. We were at a table for 4 so we didn't have any tablemates. It got kind of lonely!

 

[shasess]

Here's another trip report where the OP didn't eat in any of the main dining rooms..... http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=28629555#post28629555&highlight=

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

This is a VERY personal thing and no one answer will fit everyone.
Personally we can't even figure out which we'd prefer (dining room or topsiders) LOL There are pros and cons to both... and like I said- a personal very individual decision.
Our first cruise we all ate in the dining room (kids and all) and had late dining. Lots of pros for eating in the dining room- the cons though was that as a family of 5 we were alone at a table (no other tablemates) and they messed up linking so we weren't with or near the DIS group as planned on the first night and then put off to one side/corner the rest of the cruise. AND all the funnest things (in my kids opinions atleast) were right during late dining- I assume because the MAJORITY of kids have eaten either with the clubs (early) or during main dining times. This progressed into a problem later in the cruise with the kids wanting to rush thru dinner as fast as possible with us and as each finished eating one of us would have to run them off to the club or lab so they could enjoy some of the fun activities. Another con is getting out so late and missing out (or being late to) the nighttime adult activities. And definitely don't have room to partake of the midnight snacks or even midnight dessert night. We missed that both cruises. LOL

Our 2nd cruise linking was messed up again (although it worked out in the end eating with other DIS'ers- which was great) and we didn't plan on our children being forced to eat with us (they ate with us a cpl of themed nights or "our family matching clothes" nights LOL) and it worked out better for them this time. Although at the time I felt a little uncomfortable on formal nights since everyone was all dressed up and we really didn't have the extremely formal clothing...

Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier to just eat at Topsiders- wouldn't have to rush back for dinner if we have something else we'd like to do, wouldn't have to shower/fix hair/makeup/get dressed up/etc. every evening (in time for the show before dinner) -and just go eat when we're ready without much interruption -but then the food we'd miss! (etc) and we'd still have to get ready for the show anyway. I dunno. Sometimes I wonder if we'd just do better with main dining. We're waitlisted for that on the next cruise- maybe we'll like it better if we get it. LOL