Dinner Sittings

[DaveUK]

We are about to take our first DCL cruise (August 21).
We have three children - 6, 8, and 10.
We have been assigned second sitting (8.30 pm) - which we feel might be a bit late for the 6 year old (and possibly the 8 also).

Any thoughts ? I undertsand its quite difficult to get to change to early sitting ?

Do many children of these ages (6 and 8) eat in second sitting - or is that normally adults and older chlidren (teens etc).

Any other comments welcomed - as its our first time.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

Dave, there is lots and lots of food on the ship so you can decide yourself what to do.

The early /late only relates to the evening meal, breakfast and lunch is open seating either in a couple of the main resturants or, up on deck, Topsiders on the Magic, I think 'beach blanket' on the Wonder. (only exception is the breakfast character meal)


Topsiders is an excellent buffet,

There is also Plutos dog house, fries nuggests, burgers, and a pizza place so you can, the kids can eat when they want.

If the kids are in the club they can be taken to eat if you so wish. They will look after them.

You are correct to say however that late is more adults and early is more kids and also the rotation is based on kids ageds so there was a lot of young kids on our first rotation starting in Ainimators palate.

Now, I personally prefer early sitting as I like to have the kids with me, I understand you can ask to be waitlisted, and also if you arrive early on the ship, go to the relevent area ASAP, plead you case and they will try to change your booking. I further understand they understand the kid issue.

But other posters say they prefer late sitting as the kids can eat on deck or in the club, you then go to the first show, when the kids are not asleep, and you can have a meal adults only later.

I find also that our kids adjust well as they have to cope with the time diffrence, and often get up later and stay up later on the ship, the kids club runs to 12 midnight, so you can leave them there whilst having a meal.

Hope that helps, contact your Travel agent or e.mail DCL if you want to be waitlisted.

 

[webray]

I would guess that would be a little late, since you probably won't get dinner until between 9:30 and 10pm each evening.

When you check in at the ship..you will get a navigator listing all the places you can go...one being to change your dinner seating time. Head there and get it taken care of.

 

[Masonpips]

I do not understand why people think 8:30 seating means dinner between 9:30-10:30? We had our appetizers by 8:50 at the very latest and dinner as soon as those were finished - 9:00-ish. We left the dining room between 9:30-10:00 depending on if we had coffee w/our desserts, wanted to chat a bit longer, etc.

We are from the Central Time Zone so most of the time that was 10:00 (for dinner being served) to our bodies and it was FINE. You adjust very quickly on the ship to the ship's time.

Our first cruise was early seating and it was fine. We ended up taking the kids to the clubs around 6:30 (end of transition time) each night and finishing our meal in quiet.

With the late seating on the last cruise, the kids made their own choices - they either ate at Topsiders/Plutos/Room service and didn't even go to dinner with us (my son's favorite choice) or still ate earlier, but hung out with us for dinner and left mid-way for the clubs (my DD's choice) or sat with us for the whole dinner and ate (our friend's children choice). We all preferred the late seating for the lack of rushing around at 6:00 to get to dinner.

There is TONS of food onboard and we didn't have any hard/fast rules about "we must eat together" so letting the kids decide what they wanted to do worked out the best for us.

And, we had LAP rotation last time and there were plenty of children in that seating (late) - I would say a nice mix between older kids and younger ones, and not too many really small ones - they do tend to be at the APL seating based on our first cruise.

I think the servers are more laid-back at the late seating; there's not the rush to re-do the room/seatings for the next group of folks.

 

[ksjayhawks]

We had late seating on our cruise with an 11 year old. Our tablemates had a 7 year old. There were lots of children in the dining room with us.

We liked it as we went to the early show, then looked at Shutters for pictures, caught some of the characters, than ate. OUr son would go back to the kids club and we went to the adult shows. Our tablemates did the same.

You can always grab pizza, hamburgers, etc, on deck 9 to tide the kids over.

 

[trishy]

If I were you and trying to figure out whether to change to early dinner to please the children, I would go to Barb's site and look at the children's navigators. If you think your children will be highly involved in the club/lab then review the activities with them to see if any popular ones would be taking place during your later seating. There are some shows that your children may not want to see if there is a special activity going on that evening - the exception being Disney Dreams (force them to go if you have to - very worth it). The navigators will give you a heads-up about what to expect for the kids. We always have early sitting because that's when we eat. However, also take this into consideration - we're from California = 3 hours difference. If we were to travel to Florida just to do the cruise, I think we would opt for later dinner (8:30 would be like eating at 5:30 to us); however we usually have a week or so beforehand at WDW which gives us plenty of time to adjust to the three hour difference.

You have a couple of options if you decide to change - (1) waitlist for early sitting through your TA or DCL; (2) as soon as you board the ship, go to the designated place listed in your Navigator to make dining related changes and explain (nicely, courteously, respectfully, of course) how important it is for your family to have early sitting. Be aware that they most likely will not be able to give you a definite answer right away, but they will call your room when they are able to accomodate you. They try very hard to please you. The earlier your request is made, the better chance you have in getting it.

I don't think we're able to put a direct link to Barb's site for some reason, but it's www_castawayclub_com (put in the '.' instead of the '_')

 

[kcashner]

We prefer late seating. That said....you didn't say where you're from. West Coast people frequently find that late seating is fine for their young children.

If you prefer early, call you TA now and request to be on the waiting list. Then, when you board, go to "dining changes" and see where you are assigned. Again, request a change to early.

 

[OJulie67]

If your kids are anything like our DD was...You won't be seeing them at dinner! Our 5 year old ate in the clubs for lunch and dinner EVERYDAY! We figured it was her vacation too, and we gave her the choice to eat with us, or eat with her new friends. She always chose to eat with the clubs...and they eat early! They usually ate dinner at 6:00pm.
We were originally scheduled to eat at late seating, but when we got our dinner tickets they had changed us to early seating. We had called DCL to request early dinner, but they said it was full. A call to your travel agent or a request to DCL may be all it takes to change your seating. Even if they tell you it's full, you may still get it when you board!