On one cruise we were seated with quite a few tables put together for a large group. The first night there was just one couple at the opposite end. The woman screamed (yes really screamed) at the waiter that she had specifically requested that only her family sit together, and how dare Disney set another family with a child (oh my goodness a child on a
Disney cruise) at HER table. I was pulled aside to speak to a head waiter who apologized for the situation, and quietly had us moved to a table with a nice window view with a different server and a different family.
At the new table, the family was nice, but the kids were clearly never impressed with anything
DCL. They had taken advantage of a cheap GTY for their first cruise and had an inside room on a lower deck, which was not pleasing to the kids. Also, as they lived on a mountain in San Diego, anything that was brought up about port adventures was not good enough for them -- they could go swimming or scuba diving or jet skiing any day they wanted at home so why do it on the cruise -- so that got a bit old. That gave us two strikes for a Disney matchup on the same cruise.
Running into our original waiter at one point, I reminded him that we had originally been at one of his tables but had been moved. He said he certainly remembered us from the first night, and wished that they had actually moved him with us and let someone else have the lady's table. I actually got a chuckle out of that even thought it was not a typical Disney thing to hear.
As an entertaining side note, it turns out that the grumpy woman from the first table was on the same deck as us, fortunately quite a ways down. We started seeing hotel management visiting her room several times a day doing inspections, and we noticed that even though we were not at our stateroom too much. Apparently she was making a big stink about the condition of her room so after being cleaned the hotel management was checking it themselves based on all her complaining about the stateroom, trying to make her happy. Maybe there was a pattern with her.
Certainly as the numbers go up DCL will need to adjust -- more combined seating and/or more staggered start times to accommodate. We will likely try to get isolated seating going forward regardless.