Deciding on a Dining Time with Kids

[Peaseblossom36]

Looking for some advice one dining times. Our waitlist came through so we now have early dining but the more I think about it I'm wondering if late dining would be better, my child didn't eat much at early dining on our last cruise (a bit over a year ago) so I'm wondering if she could make it to late. We live in the Midwest so are Central time, so an hour behind Florida/Bahamas. This time we are going to be in the parks for 5 days before our cruise so will have some time to adjust, at home we eat around 6 so the 5:45 would feel early but I'm not sure if 8:15 would feel too late?

I know the time difference isn't huge but would love to hear from other parents how doing late dining has gone.

 

[unrequited23]

We've done both early and late dining and live in the EST. We normally have dinner between 5:30 and 6. Late dinner was great if you had excursions planned, wanted to stay until 3;30 on Castaway or were going to skip the show. You could take a nap, swim in a less crowded pool while the early dinner folks were getting ready and not have to rush to get a whole family changed for dinner. Our youngest never said he was hungry, but would eat nearly an entire bucket of popcorn himself during the early show. (we went with the grandparents and they 'had' to get popcorn for the show.) On Castaway day, he did fall asleep at the table before entrees were served. Our youngest was in 3rd grade when we had late dining with a bed time of 9:15pm.

 

[CamColt]

We have always done late dining, by choice as my kids grew up (been cruising since 2000). It's worked out fine. We eat very early at home but on vacation schedules totally change. The kids (and us parents) snack all day on the pool deck QS food, ice cream, or even room service, so no one was ever starving for dinner. While you do still have to rush a little if you plan to go to the show, that's not as early and we don't always go, so we still get some quiet late afternoon time up on the pool deck.

 

[JM_97]

In general, the earlier dining time skews a younger family crowd.

Every family is different, but the shows have never been a priority for us and so it was nice having a relatively empty pool deck.

 

[tvguy]

Our last cruise, in September on Princess, we were part of a group that had dinner together two of the seven nights. The group decided 5 pm on an East Coast time cruise. We are West coasters. That was almost lunch time for our bodies. We had assigned seating the other nights, at 730 pm, and THAT was still early since every other cruise we had late seating was 830 pm
Other than my first cruise 46 years ago, we have always had late seating, no matter what time zone, just works better for us in a vacation setting.
My first cruise, there was just one seating for dinner and NO alternate dining options or room service. Dinner was at 6 pm and dinner was an 11 course production that went until 9:30 pm. The one performance of the show was at 10 pm. And the night club on that ship didn't even OPEN until 2 am!