Dinner companions??????

[BELLE16127]

I was just wondering if anyone here knew how Disney set you up with who you would be eating dinner with? We were just on the 7 night Eastern and after having the people we had at our table I was wondering if there is a formula for this seating arrangement.

 

[DMS_cruisers04]

I thought the assumption was that they tried to seat like families/cruisers together. But most of the logistics comes down to just the numbers. However many it takes to fill a table.

 

[plutojudy]

I think it comes down to numbers.
On our five cruises we were:
Us (35th anniversary celebration), Family with 8year old and a mom with two teenagers.
Four couples (one of them mom and son).
Us, with couple with teenage daughter, a couple married longer than us, and a dad with son.
Us, family with two teens, and a couple.
Our last was just us at a table for four, the other couple never came to dinner.
We both agree, it is much more fun to be seated with a group. We enjoyed hearing about everyone's day, and plans for the next day.

 

[BELLE16127]

I am not sure at all at one point I had heard that they kind of kept people together with the same age kids if they had them and similar ages of guests and so on. If this is the case, they were WAY OFF with us our DS is 17 and we were seated with a couple and their daughter who was in SECOND GRADE. At the table across from us there was an older couple and seated with them was a very young couple....we only saw the young couple the first night of the cruise and we wondered the rest of the trip if they asked to be moved or just gave up on the dinners because of their companions. We could at least talk to the other people at our table, it was different because of the BIG difference in the ages but the poor couple I talked about above they NEVER spoke to the other couple at the table all through dinner.
If anyone else has a take on this I would like to hear your opinions. That would be the one thing that they could change that I could see and it was never an issue in the past 2 cruises we took since the first was DH and I and the second it was just our family of 4 at the table.

 

[clori]

on my honeymoon cruise dh and I were seated with a single mother and teenage son, a mother, two little kids and their grandfather. It seemed like an interesting mix but we all had fun.

 

[TheWog]

I was under the impression as well that it was family demographics. Our son was 6 on the cruise and we sat with a family of 5 who's daughters were 7 and 5 if I remember correctly with a 2 year old boy. They were a family of 5 and our 3 made a perfect 8 for our table.

What happened with your tablemates Belle? Was it a bad experience???

 

[brack]

Our four cruises seemed pretty random with our tablemates except for one. On that cruise we had another couple who are friends going with us and DCL seated us (at our request) with two people who were our tablemates on an earlier cruise. It was great.

My DW and I love the randomness of the table seating. This is why we have never gone to Palo's for dinner. We did not want to miss out on the time around the table

 

[castlegazer]

On other lines I have found it to be pretty random - no clue what DCL does.

I have been the brunt of being shafted by table mates. We were on a Celebrity Cruise out of San Juan right after 9/11 - so a vast majority of cruisers were from San Juan and spoke only Spanish. Our table mates showed up the first night, stayed for about 10 minutes, spoke Spanish to each other and never said one word to us (we don't speak conversational Spanish anyways) and then we never saw them again.

Man did that stink.

 

[BELLE16127]

I guess then that the dinner seating would be the one thing I would like Disney to take a look at....I love everything about that cruise and I DID NOT hate may dinner companions I just think that they should really try and match them up a bit more than they do. Like If there are no children, then pair them up with another couple. We had that on our first cruise it was just myself DH and two other couples. This last trip just seemed strange to me. I think they could have put us with people with at least older kids traveling not a 7-8 year old since our DS is 17.

 

[TMTIP]

I have been trying to figure this out also. On our last cruise (May 2004) we were seated with a couple with an infant and a 6 year old boy. My two girls were 8 & 10. The interesting thing is is that this family was in the stateroom right next to ours. I don't know if this was coincidence or if Disney has started seating poeple by stateroom or deck. Anyone else found this to be true?

 

[ericamanda01]

I don't know how they do it but DH and I were very lucky on our last cruise. We sat down and low and behold the woman sitting with us had on a green micky head pin. It turned out to be dzneprincess, whom I had briefly seem on the boards! We had such a great time that we all changed our Palos time so that we could sit together and spend the CC day together! So you never know who you'll meet!

 

[KathyTX]

Seems pretty random to me...

On our first DCL cruise, our family of three was seated alone at a table for 4.

On the second DCL cruise, we were assigned to a large table where DS8 (at the time) was the only child. This would have made dinners horribly boring and unpleasant for him, so we asked to be moved.

We were reassigned to a table with a family who had a DD8 and two DS18(?)- it was perfect, as the two teens were wonderful about enduring the hero worship from the kiddo and joking around with him. Best of all, the family turned out to be DISers (tecdavit), and we really enjoyed our time together!

 

[dclwdwlover]

We, also were seated with like couples/families. So, we have always been under the impression that they tried to seat you that way, if at all possible.

1st cruise - late seating: DH & I alone (late 30's) & we were seated at a table with 3 other couples ranging from late 20's to mid 40's. It was terrific. Even though we were honeymooning, we had a wonderful time getting to know everyone from all over.

2nd cruise - main seating: DH & I & 3 kids (9,10,14) & we were seated with another (wonderful) couple our age with two children ages 8 & 12.

3rd cruise - main seating: DH & I & 2 kids (13 & 18). We were seated alone. A couple next to us with no children were seated at a table with a couple with 2 very young (& loud) children & they asked to be moved after the first night.

I look forward to seeing who they are going to seat us with this cruise - late seating.

 

[castlegazer]

Do you think it matters how far in advance you boook the cruise? I have never booked this far in advance before - logic would tell me they would have a lot of opportunity to place us with similar families.

 

[crisi]

We ended up being seated with a family with similar demographics.

We are from Minnesota, they were from Wisconsin
We had two kids 4 and 5. They had a 4 and 6 year old.
We were in similar cabin categories (they were in a 5, we were in a 6)

Some of this may have to do with early dining and Disney trying to put "like" families in the same dining room. The whole "people with young kids usually start in AP, people without kids or older kids usually start in Tritons/Lumieres" thing. If they manage to pull that off (and they don't always) your chances of ending up with a similar family go up.

Next cruise we will be traveling with my parents. So we will be a party of six. I'm expecting a table by ourselves - although we are certain to be social with any table mates they give us to round us out.

 

[BELLE16127]

I don't think that WHEN you book is an issue we booked in April 2004 and our companions were suppose to cruise durring one of the HURRICANES and rebooked. So that theory isn't how they do it. I am glad to see the responces though maybe we will figure it out eventually.

 

[aprilgail2]

Originally posted by castlegazer
On other lines I have found it to be pretty random - no clue what DCL does.

I have been the brunt of being shafted by table mates. We were on a Celebrity Cruise out of San Juan right after 9/11 - so a vast majority of cruisers were from San Juan and spoke only Spanish. Our table mates showed up the first night, stayed for about 10 minutes, spoke Spanish to each other and never said one word to us (we don't speak conversational Spanish anyways) and then we never saw them again.

Man did that stink.

On our Carnival cruise we were seated at a table with 6 people who only spoke spanish...after the frist night we never went to dinner again, we ate at buffets and burgers by the pool. That was my first and LAST experience sharing a table..I requested a private table the last 2 Disney cruises and got it and i did the same for our upcoming cruise. I will check as soon as we board that they granted that request and if not I will make it again....I would eat other places most nights if I had to share a table.