Dining time on the west coast

[Sleepyluke]

While I know most people want early dining historically, we are considering late dining as our choice. We will have a 9 and 13 year old. From central time. We often don't eat until 7-8 during the week due to whatever practice or life, and have only done Caribbean cruises so we bump up in time. How have you done doing the Alaska/Mexican cruises when your body thinks it is 10:15 to even start dinner (or later if East coast folks)? We are great snackers and will definitely not starve, but even for night owls do you enjoy your dinner and still have the ability to walk the ship a little? Or is this a request early at all costs

 

[Marley21]

While I know most people want early dining historically, we are considering late dining as our choice. We will have a 9 and 13 year old. From central time. We often don't eat until 7-8 during the week due to whatever practice or life, and have only done Caribbean cruises so we bump up in time. How have you done doing the Alaska/Mexican cruises when your body thinks it is 10:15 to even start dinner (or later if East coast folks)? We are great snackers and will definitely not starve, but even for night owls do you enjoy your dinner and still have the ability to walk the ship a little? Or is this a request early at all costs

We are from the Midwest and did the Alaska cruise last summer with our twin 13 year olds. In hindsight, we wished we would've done the late dining over early dining, as we were off the ship all day in the Alaska ports, and we found ourselves rushing to get to dinner each night when we got back from our excursions. After our cruise, we realized we didn't get a chance to spend too much time on the top decks, because we were always off the ship or rushing to get to dinner and the shows. With late dining, we thought we could at least experience the top decks a little more if we had a gap between excurions and dinner. As for the kids' handling late dining, our teenagers were usually going to bed around 11 anyway (well past their Midwestern bedtime), so the late dining would not have been difficult -- and they could've snacked on the deck food if they were hungry before dinner.

We are heading out again on the Wonder next month from San Diego, and we just had our TA take us off of the waitlist for early dining for the above reasons.

 

[tvguy]

Always done late seating until our last cruise. We are west coasters. We did a Princess cruise in September and their late seating is an hour earlier, 7:30 pm so we did that 5 nights. We did a land tour the week before and the last two days of the cruise we ate with that group at 5 pm. That was like lunch time for us.

 

[Sprinkles&Sprints]

We are east coast-based and usually eat dinner around 6 PM (but my kiddo is ok to usually flex up until 7:30 PM if we’re out).

We cruised to Alaska last summer and got stuck with the late dining and it was pretty brutal - there was more than one occasion when my daughter fell asleep at the table (and she’s not that much younger than your youngest).

The late dining was also exacerbated by long, busy day - by the time we were done with the excursions + shows, she was already fading.

We’re cruising on the Destiny this summer and are ok with later dining then. And for west coast/older kiddos I could see it being a non-issue. But if I ever decided to go back to Alaska and only got the later option, I would not go.