Anyone with kids who LOVE late dining??

[5Texans]

I'm doing a "girl's trip" with my 3 daughters 11, 9 and 7 on the Fantasy in the spring and we are currently assigned to late dining which has me thinking- Maybe I want late dining. They can definitely stay up that late and it would be fun to take advantage of the pool and things while everyone else gets ready for dinner. I'm worried they'll be starving at normal dinner time and "done" by 8:15. Anyone's kids really like late dining?

 

[CinderEmma94]

I love late dining. I have a 6 year old and 3 year old. I’ve only been on one DCL cruise so far, solo with my 3 year old. It was perfect. We usually eat dinner around 7:30 at home (Eastern) anyway, and there’s plenty of food onboard if we needed a snack before the show before dinner (she never needed it - the way we timed lunch always worked out so she wasn’t hungry until dinner). It was so nice not having to rush to get ready. I’ve decided we’re late dinner on a cruise people and will let others fight it out to get early dinner

 

[auntlynne]

For some, that early dining time is too early. It’s not Central time; so subtract an hour if that’s what you are used to - are your kids really Early Bird diners? First seating seems to come very close to lunch time for many.

 

[tvguy]

My kids were 11 and 15 on their first cruise on HAL and 12 and 16 on Disney and loved late dining. As I have posted before my son (the 16 year old) loved showing servers his magic tricks after dinner.....and the servers loved showing him their magic tricks. We always had a crowd of servers and other guests around our table after dinner was done.
Of course, we are west coasters on an Eastern Caribbean cruise, so for our bodies late seating was actually like eating about 2 hours earlier than we did at home during the school year with after school sports.

 

[5Texans]

For some, that early dining time is too early. It’s not Central time; so subtract an hour if that’s what you are used to - are your kids really Early Bird diners? First seating seems to come very close to lunch time for many.

Good point about the time change. We usually eat around 7 so it's actually not too far off. My kids are pretty flexible so it seems like it's worth trying it out.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

We had early dining our first go around and I hated it. I felt like it was way too close to lunch, and we were rushed moving from afternoon activities to get to dinner. Went with late for our 2nd cruise and it was so much better. Kids were 9 & 11 last time. They would usually get ice cream in the afternoons and had no problem making it until late dinner time.

 

[MomOTwins]

I think my kids could do it IF they would just sleep in in the morning for flippin once. We are sailing today on the Wish and are stuck with late dining aw waitlist never came through. We stayed up late last night due to travel and despite that they are wide awake at 6:30. I know they are going to crash tonight. Going to see if they will switch us onboard.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

My kids are *sooooo hungry* by 5:30 at home, so main dining is late for us.

Our wait-list came through, so we'll be ok after all, but I was planning a heavy midday snack/ second lunch to make it through.

If your kids already eat around 7 at home, you're starting from a much better place.

 

[DisFanNNJ]

We liked early dinner when the kids younger and couldn’t wait to get to clubs. They would early before dinner ended with the cast members.

Once they started sitting through dinner we tried late dining and prefer it now for all the reasons people already mentioned. There’s something available if they get hungry early but we’re usually busy and it’s not an issue.

As long the kids aren’t falling asleep at 8, and our never were, we like late better.

 

[jrapps]

My kids (9 & 14) love the late dining or perhaps it's more accurate to say they hate the early dining. We just never seem to be hungry enough by 5:30 and we normally have dinner closer to 7:00 at home anyway.

When they were younger they really liked that the kids club staff would pick them up from the dining room and bring them straight to Oceanears in the middle of dinner. It was great the kids finished early got to go play and the adults got to enjoy the rest of the dinner. Not sure if they do that anymore my kids have grown out of that need plus with covid I don't remember seeing it recently

 

[greensombrero]

We’ve got 4 kids now 7-14 and we do late dining when sailing from Florida. The time change for us helps plus our kids can always get snacks if they need them, food is never a problem on a cruise. We like seeing the show first. There are some nights when the kids are tired and maybe isn’t ideal but overall we’ve liked it.

 

[DCLCruiseFan09]

Our normal Plan when we do Late dining is to get a snack around 5 to tide us over and then head to the (Mostly) empty pools and water slides while everyone else eats.

The only time I've wished I was on early dining was when we were on the magic in Europe this summer (8:30 was second seating. Didn't get out till 10:30 most nights which drove us insane)

 

[mmouse37]

We always did late dining when our kids were young.

MJ

 

[allaboutthemouse]

We just did Fantasy in August with kids, youngest 8 and 11…were waitlisted for early and it came through, but we ultimately decided to change it back to late! And they all did fine. We are from East Coast and usually eat @ 5:30, so i was concerned, but we were so busy and usually just got a snack somewhere around 5:00 before the show and it worked out great. It was actually a joke we had when we got home because we were so used to eating dinner at 8 that it took awhile to get back to the 5:30 time lol, nobody was hungry for dinner until 8.
I was afraid with early the younger kids would be tired by showtime and fall asleep during the show, have had that happen before when the older ones were young. I really wanted them to enjoy the shows, glad we did it that way.

 

[tj48103]

I'm doing a "girl's trip" with my 3 daughters 11, 9 and 7 on the Fantasy in the spring and we are currently assigned to late dining which has me thinking- Maybe I want late dining. They can definitely stay up that late and it would be fun to take advantage of the pool and things while everyone else gets ready for dinner. I'm worried they'll be starving at normal dinner time and "done" by 8:15. Anyone's kids really like late dining?

My kids are that age and they love late dinning. We tried going back to early last sailing and we were almost always late to dinner. It's late dining for us from now on!

 

[tvguy]

We had early dining our first go around and I hated it. I felt like it was way too close to lunch, and we were rushed moving from afternoon activities to get to dinner. Went with late for our 2nd cruise and it was so much better. Kids were 9 & 11 last time. They would usually get ice cream in the afternoons and had no problem making it until late dinner time.

Late dining works better if you are trying to get in your 5 meals a day on the cruise.

 

[nancipants]

I think my kids could do it IF they would just sleep in in the morning for flippin once. We are sailing today on the Wish and are stuck with late dining aw waitlist never came through. We stayed up late last night due to travel and despite that they are wide awake at 6:30. I know they are going to crash tonight. Going to see if they will switch us onboard.

Good luck. I'm with you on wishing my kid would sleep late. He's only 2 so I'm praying his internal clock will eventually get the message!

I've done both early and late dining. I don't like eating late, but I also don't like having to get ready for dinner so early. I'm hoping when my kid is older, we can switch to late dining and take advantage of the pool and slides in the early evening.

 

[bcwife76]

We've always done late dining and my kids love it. We tend to eat dinner later at home (not usually 8pm+ like on the cruise but never before 7pm at least). There were a couple of dinners when my youngest would fall asleep at the table haha but that was usually after a busy day of excursions and/or running around in the kids club. My youngest will now be 12 on our next cruise and she comes in with her sister at midnight!

 

[tvguy]

My kids are *sooooo hungry* by 5:30 at home, so main dining is late for us.

Our wait-list came through, so we'll be ok after all, but I was planning a heavy midday snack/ second lunch to make it through.

If your kids already eat around 7 at home, you're starting from a much better place.

Tip of the hat for you even being able to have your kids home from school and after school events by 5:30 pm let alone having dinner ready. My kids were in private school which got out at 3 pm.......where as the public schools got out at 2:15 pm. It always was a rush to get them to soccer and Little League because most of the coaches wanted the kids there by 3:30 pm. Our Suburban was the mobile dressing room, and a quick snack left wrappers and crumbs all over the interior! Soccer ran until 7 pm. Little League towards the end of the season ran sometimes until 8 or 8:30 pm. Then it was home to eat (often stopping for fast food on the way home), homework, showers and then bed time.
Public school holidays were more frequent than private school, so the other challenge was coaches wanting to do practice at 10 or 11 am on a public school holiday which were often regular school days for my kids.

 

[TheOneWithTheTriplets]

Tip of the hat for you even being able to have your kids home from school and after school events by 5:30 pm let alone having dinner ready. My kids were in private school which got out at 3 pm.......where as the public schools got out at 2:15 pm. It always was a rush to get them to soccer and Little League because most of the coaches wanted the kids there by 3:30 pm. Our Suburban was the mobile dressing room, and a quick snack left wrappers and crumbs all over the interior! Soccer ran until 7 pm. Little League towards the end of the season ran sometimes until 8 or 8:30 pm. Then it was home to eat (often stopping for fast food on the way home), homework, showers and then bed time.
Public school holidays were more frequent than private school, so the other challenge was coaches wanting to do practice at 10 or 11 am on a public school holiday which were often regular school days for my kids.

A lot of our stuff actually starts later, so we do a homework/dinner rush before heading to the activity. I'm sure they'd adjust if we had to reverse it, but early dinner it is with our current activity schedule.