Early/Late Dining Seating... Pros/Cons? Which do you prefer and why? Please help me decide!

[texaskristi]

Early/Late Dining Seating - Which do you prefer & why?

 

[Cheburashka]

Early/Late Dining Seating - Which do you prefer & why?

We've always had late dining and prefer it that way. More time between meals, which makes dinner more enjoyable. No rushing back from port experiences to get ready for dinner. Being able to spend the late afternoon/early evening on the pool deck if I wish. More comfortable (for late risers) MDR breakfast time on debarkation day (around 8am) instead of a 5:45 or 6am MDR breakfast on debarkation day.

I've also heard there are fewer kids at late seating but that one is something I can't verify as I've never had early seating. There are still kids at late seating (occasionally very noisy ones), so imo that shouldn't be the reason to choose late seating.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Early/Late Dining Seating - Which do you prefer & why?

We prefer early seating.

Couple of reasons:
We tend to only eat 2 meals (breakfast & dinner), with a small snack in the early afternoon. Late dinner just wouldn't work. And my stomach doesn't do well eating a lot just before bedtime.

 

[Kwami]

We always do the later seating. If you have first seating, then Palo brunch of the Remy dessert experience just don't work. It's too much food! Plus, it's nice to not be rushed after coming back to the ship from wherever we've been that day. I guess there's still a bit of a rush on the good show nights, but it's not every night. The downside, I guess, is that you're still full later.

Later breakfast on the final morning is also really nice. Not if you're transferring to WDW, though. That bus leaves too early to have second seating breakfast on the final day.

 

[figmentfinesse]

I didn’t realize about the second seating having the later breakfast, I am trying to get to WDW asap. Is Cabanas open on debarkation day?

 

[Cheburashka]

I didn’t realize about the second seating having the later breakfast, I am trying to get to WDW asap. Is Cabanas open on debarkation day?

Yes, you don't have to eat in the MDR.

 

[cedricandsophie]

Second seating. It’s very leisurely. Late lunch and maybe a small snack. My family goes to the 6 30 show while I get ready, go for a drink and join them after. We either go to a family show or they do characters and my husband and I hit the piano bar. We all meet up for dinner. And maybe we go somewhere to listen to music or a movie. Lovely and relaxed.

 

[MomOTwins]

We always do early. We’d have to, because my youngest would either fall asleep at the table or cry if we ate that late—he can’t stay awake past 9 even on vacation. But even without kids, I would do early. It’s not great for my digestion to eat too close to bedtime, which for us is no later than 11pm—and when you are finishing dinner at 10pm that is too close for me. We like to wake pre-dawn to see the sunrise so never going to be night owls, and frankly, there is not too much happening on the ship after 11pm.

Only thing I don’t love about early dining is if you have an afternoon excursion, getting back and dressed in time for dinner can be tight.

 

[Keyser]

We've tried both, and they have their own pluses.

For late, it was usually more relaxed (servers weren't as worried about getting everyone done fast so they could get to the next group). The late one at one time had the thing where the Youth Activities people would take your children partway through (we used that on one cruise and it was great - daughter ate at a better pace for her and my wife and I had an easier meal with the other daughter) - don't know if they still do this (and our kids are now older). And, if you've had a long day (and don't mind skipping the show), it's easier to make this time; early sometimes felt like a rush to be there on time.

For early, we kind of prefer the later show times (feels more like an "event" when it's the main after-dinner attraction, rather than dinner itself being the last "big" thing of the day). Eating-time-wise, it was sometimes better than late (whereas with late we would sometimes find ourselves wanting a snack then eating even more at dinner relatively late at night, and waking up not even hungry for breakfast). Plus, this time never interfered with bigger evening shows (one time, late dinner kept us from seeing fireworks - I still don't know why they didn't hold the fireworks late enough so all of us could go! That only happened once to us, though.)

 

[Marc D]

I didn’t realize about the second seating having the later breakfast, I am trying to get to WDW asap. Is Cabanas open on debarkation day?

You can eat in Cabanas, or arrange with the head waiter an earlier MDR breakfast. A lot of guests do not go to the MDR and you are not pre-assigned a table, so there’s usually no problem for them.

 

[KashasMom]

Early is SO noisy! We've always had late seating but went with a toddler last cruise so did early. The big downside for us with the late seating is eating and feeling like you're going right to bed. With young children, I'd go with early.

 

[Cheburashka]

A lot of guests do not go to the MDR and you are not pre-assigned a table, so there’s usually no problem for them.

You do have your regular table assignment at debarkation breakfast.

 

[mousefan73]

Early would be shortening our day...We love late, even with kids. But our kids were raised like their parents. late to bed, late to rise. We are not an early riser family. Plus we would never be ready in time for an early dinner. I'm still at the pool at that time! Eating that late never bothers us either as we are then walking about and exploring and usually hit the bed at midnight.

 

[twopackages]

We have done both and prefer late.
We too don't like to feel rushed in the afternoon to get ready for dinner. We can hang around the pool later and catch a movie if we choose.
We always go for a walk after dinner to help with the digestion.
If you have young ones, you might want early so that don't fall asleep in their dinner.
You know your family better than all of us to what would work for their schedules.

 

[twopackages]

We have done both and prefer late.
We too don't like to feel rushed in the afternoon to get ready for dinner. We can hang around the pool later and catch a movie if we choose.
We always go for a walk after dinner to help with the digestion.
If you have young ones, you might want early so that don't fall asleep in their dinner.
You know your family better than all of us to what would work for their schedules.

 

[Kwami]

You do have your regular table assignment at debarkation breakfast.

Yeah, but the servers have previously offered to set up an extra table for us when we couldn't make the later breakfast because of a DCL bus to WDW. You just have to let them know.

 

[iannovich]

We had always had early seating because we like to eat first and then watch the shows. But on this last cruise we had Late seating and to my surprise, we preferred it. Less of a rush before dinner. Less of a rush during dinner. And for the first time (in forever) I wasn't fighting sleep during the shows.

I think it was more about watching the show on an empty stomach than the actual earlier show time. In the past my blissfully full stomach has made me start to nod out during the shows, no matter how good they are. We now have late seating scheduled for all 4 of our future bookings.

 

[tvguy]

Always late*. No rush on port days to get back to the ship, showered and dressed for dinner. But we like a leisurely pampered dinner and not being rushed out so they can set up for the next seating. On DCL we had 830 pm last seating and never were out of the dining room before 10:30 pm.
Now as West Coasters on a Caribbean cruise who never really switch our body time late seating was actually eating earlier than we would at home. And our excursions were all 11 am and later, so no rush to get up in the morning.
*Late seating except for our first cruise since it only had one seating, 6 pm, and dinner on that ship was a 3 1/2 hour 12 course production. But that was 41 years ago, before cruising became mainstream and made changes to appeal to a mass audience.

 

[tvguy]

We prefer early seating.

Couple of reasons:
We tend to only eat 2 meals (breakfast & dinner), with a small snack in the early afternoon. Late dinner just wouldn't work. And my stomach doesn't do well eating a lot just before bedtime.

I can see that. But our bedtime on the cruise was usually about 1 am, and with no nightly midnight buffet, that was plenty of time between dinner and bed. Our Disney cruise was a wonderful time with our kids who were 12 and 16 at the time. Nothing better than standing in front of the windshield on the sports deck at 12:30 am on a Caribbean cruise, warm breeze, pitch black watching the lights of the islands we were passing .
It was our kids second cruise, the year before we went on a HAL cruise, and the only disappointment for them was no midnight buffet. They loved hitting the carving station for a snack before bed.

 

[JMommyof3]

We do late for a number of reasons. At home, we are late dinner eaters so we are used to it. More importantly, we are on the west coast so early dinner would be like 3pm for us. Even when our youngest was 4, eating late was not an issue and they enjoyed going to the kids club for youth activities. There is so much food around that even if you have late dinner, you can always grab a slice of pizza or chicken fingers at 3/4pm to hold you over.