Best time for this dinner ADR during free dining? Early or late?

[frannn]

Please help us make a decision. It will be DH, DD3 (almost 4), and me. Most of our ADR's are done for 9/8-9/18, except for two, which we have to choose a time for. On Thurs, 9/14, we are either going to do Ohana's about 5:40, or Cindy's dinner at the Grand Floridian at 8 (we will do whichever ever one we skip on a different day). We have MNSSHP & Boma scheduled for the following evening. The logic behind these times is that if our ADR is before 6, we can still go back to a park for fireworks, etc after dinner. If we do an 8 pm ADR, we can just stay in the parks through to dinner time, then end our evening right after dinner. DD3 is pretty flexible. We keep finding reasons to justify both times.... Any thoughts?
TIA!

 

[princess22]

I would go with the 540 at Ohanas. Night is my favorite time in the parks, and I think it would be great to go back to the parks after dinner and enjoy the fireworks, etc!

 

[__disneygirl]

I say go for the earlier dinner and stay at the park until closing. That's always more fun IMO. But then again, I loooooove 1900 Park Fare dinner, it's amazing. Could you get an earlier ADR for there?

 

[frannn]

Anybody else?

 

[KimberlyC]

Early! I have a 2 yr old (a little younger than you DC but...) an 8 pm dinner would just too late for him and I suspect most young kids unless they are used to eating at that time. My DS is used to eating at 5 pm but sometimes as late as 6 pm. So I try to keep all our ADRs between 5:30 and 6:30 depending on the events of the day so he's not too off schedule. WDW is tiring. My DS usually goes to bed at 8 pm. We let him stay up until 9 at WDW, but then he crashes even with a long nap. We found if we do early mornings (and we do to avoid crowds) we cannot also do late evenings - its either/or...but unfortunately not both. I find that the happiest place on earth is happier if we don't push it and try to fit too much in or change his schedule too much.

Have a good trip!

 

[Fran98765]

I agree with the previous poster, with little ones, try to keep meal times as close to normal as possible. My son who adores WDW and has been 3x in his 3 year old life, and who is a flexible, happy child, goes crazy if we delay meals too much. If you are wanting a very late dinner like 8pm, be prepared to feed your child a decent sized snack at their normal meal time. We learned this the hard way, my son's had 2 fits in all of WDW (each on a different trip, so we were stupid twice), and both times involved character breakfast meals where we had late breakfast times. We will not do that again.

I also noticed something else in your schedule that seemed odd. You are going to Boma on the evening of MNSSHP? Even if you don't go to a park (any park with hoppers, MK with no hoppers) on the day of your party, you can get into MK with your party ticket at 4pm, are you sure you want to waste precious park time at Boma? Boma is wonderful and we plan on going back on our next trip, but you might want to reconsider that plan.

 

[frannn]

I had all our ADRs scheduled before I found out they were having a MNSSHP that night. We've already been to MNSSHP twice before, and we have APs (only visit once a year though), so there's no rush to get to MK at 4. I was able to make our ADR earlier (5 pm), plus we are staying at AS (close to AK). The plan is that we'll do a bit of AK, then go to Boma for dinner, then back to the resort to change, then to MK by around 7. Although you just gave me an idea. I'm going to see if we can get Park Faire for that night, and make Boma Thurs....