Dining times

[carolinejax]

Hello, we are cruising on the Fantasy in just a few weeks for our Spring Break. We have 3 children, 10, 12 and almost 4. I have a question about dining times. We are scheduled for main (early seating) now. But I have heard its like 5:30. Is the time always 5:30 for main or can you do 6:00? And is the late seating always 8:30? I don't know if my youngest could make it that late til 8:30 dinner but we don't want to shorten our day and have to start getting ready for dinner by 4 every day. (We are a family of 5 in one cabin LOL)

Thanks so much for any information you can provide

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Hello, we are cruising on the Fantasy in just a few weeks for our Spring Break. We have 3 children, 10, 12 and almost 4. I have a question about dining times. We are scheduled for main (early seating) now. But I have heard its like 5:30. Is the time always 5:30 for main or can you do 6:00? And is the late seating always 8:30? I don't know if my youngest could make it that late til 8:30 dinner but we don't want to shorten our day and have to start getting ready for dinner by 4 every day. (We are a family of 5 in one cabin LOL)

Thanks so much for any information you can provide

The dining times are set. If you feel that neither fits with your needs, you can always dine in Cabanas. Or do room service. Remember, seating time may be 5:30, but you won't be getting your food for at least 20 minutes after that. I believe I read where the early seating actually has 3 different seating times (like 15 minutes apart) so that not everyone is arriving at the dining room at the same time.

 

[Ladyfish77]

Currently Cabanas is not open for dinner. I would expect it won't be open until the ships are closer to full. You could eat at the quick serve places around the pool area that have things like pizza, burgers, salads, sandwiches, etc. I prefered the early dinner seating because I was usually so full that I think I would still have been too full at bedtime. Early dining gives you more time to digest!

 

[unrequited23]

Times were staggered 1/31-2/5. We had main seating and were assigned to arrive at 5:55.

 

[Calantha]

We also had a 5:55 arrival… we originally had late dining and it was at 8:30

 

[Kwami]

Late dining for us was 8:05pm on the 2/7 and 2/11 Dream cruises. That was just about perfect!

 

[Husker Mike]

If you are coming from other time zones, main seating is actually closer to mid-afternoon on your internal clocks and late is probably pretty close to normal.

 

[AquaDame]

If you are coming from other time zones, main seating is actually closer to mid-afternoon on your internal clocks and late is probably pretty close to normal.

Yeah but its not like I'm staying up till 2am... (11pm "my time" which is normal). It still makes sense to take the early dining if I don't want to go to bed on a full stomach.

 

[tvguy]

Yeah but its not like I'm staying up till 2am... (11pm "my time" which is normal). It still makes sense to take the early dining if I don't want to go to bed on a full stomach.

LOL. 2 am was pretty much our bedtime on DCL because it was only 11 pm for our bodies. It was our kids second cruise, the first on DCL, and they really missed not having a Midnight Buffet. On HAL, we pretty much hit the buffet at 1230 am, ate, walked the decks for an hour, and went to bed about 2 am.
Late seating was really eating early for our active kids. At home it was always a mad rush to pick the kids up when school got out at 3 pm, Little League or Soccer at 3:30 pm. Change clothes and eat a snack in the Suburban in between. Hope to be home by 7 or 7:30 pm (10 or 10:30 pm ship time on the east coast) to START fixing dinner, unless we joined the line of soccer and little league parents in the fast food drive through!
Probably posted this a hundred times on the DIS, but my hat is off to any working parent with active kids that can have them home, dinner fixed and served at 5 pm during the week.

 

[AquaDame]

Heck I don't even understand how parents get them to practice at 3pm... I was on my own for that when I was playing sports, my parents worked till 5pm.

There is so little to do on the ships past 10pm... we're usually back in the stateroom by then regardless of how sleepy we feel.