Early or Late Dining for Med Cruises

[RJAYL]

OK

Here is the informal poll, are you booking early or late seating for dinner on MED cruise & Why?

 

[NancyIL]

OK

Here is the informal pole, are you booking early or late seating for dinner on MED cruise & Why?

I briefly had the Mediterranean cruise booked, and I requested late seating. Some of the ports are a good hour or more away from the major cities you will be visiting, like Rome and Florence. I wouldn't want to rush back to the ship for an early dinner.

 

[figment52]

late - gives me more time in port and closer to my normal feeding times.

 

[jrabbit]

We normally do the late seating but we chose early this time.

Why, because we will be getting into port early most days. With late seating dinner was rarely over by 10:15, usually 10:30 even when we asked our servers to "pick up the pace" (especially on Pirates Nite). Then getting to bed/sleep before 12:30 was pretty difficult.

We're going to be in Italy, for a change I'm not going to be a "cheapskate" and want to eat all of my meals in the main dinnig room. I'm looking at eating at least one meal (probably 2) per day on shore while in port.

The final reason is that on these stops the "all aboard" time is early enough to make early dinner: Palmero (4:30), Olbia (5:00) and Villefranche (5:30 - ok, this one's pushing it). Naples, Rome and Florence will be days (evenings) that we will eat on shore. Not sure about Marseilles - we will be spending several days in Paris before the cruise.

 

[bellelinus]

I went with the late -- even if the all aboard time is early enough to make dinner, I wanted the option of taking a shower or relaxing once on board before dinner. And of course when the all aboard is later, I would have the option of eating dinner on the ship.

 

[Stitch1404]

I requested early and on my confirmation it says 6:00. We plan to be off the ship each day as early as possible. Early was good for us because this way we can get to bed early the night before and also we will probably be back on the ship in time to get ready for dinner since we'll be getting off around 8 or so. Also, this is when we eat at home. I figure that since it is an 11 night cruise if we miss dinner one night because we want to stay in a port we will just do the buffet or room service. It won't be like we don't have another chance to try each restaurant.

 

[kyla]

Early seating because:
young kids in our group
most ports we leave prior to 6pm
other ports, no big deal if miss dinner and plan on sampling the cuisine

 

[NYGiantsRule!]

We chose late seating. No rush to get back to ship and clean up before dinner. Also don't have to get up as early on disembarkation day.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

I have automatically booked ealry each time as my kids like ot eat at that time, I prefer them to have some proper food and if dinner was late they would spoil it with fries burgers etc.
However there are soem late departues and there is a good case ofr late dinner, to give you time to refresh after a long day sigthseeing.

I think the Europe ones wil lbe long and like a day at WDW, now if you have 7/8 of them in a row you would like a break and time to unwind for dinner.

I am sticking with early but when the trips come out will look at the return times.

 

[smores]

we cruised the med last summer on a different cruise line--we had 2 kids ages 8 and 1 and we did early dinner--they would have never made it to late as kids convert very quickly to the time change! we are doing the trans atlantic this time with the kids and again chose early! but if we had no kids with us--would probably consider late

 

[tvguy]

I think the time changes are going to be interesting for a lot of folks, especially those with kids.

Early seating will be like eating dinner at noon for east coast bodies, and 9 am for west coasters, and late seating. Late seating will be like eating at 2:30 for east coast bodies, and 11:30 am for west coast bodies.

That 8:30 am exursion will be 2:30 am for east coast bodies, and 11:30 pm for west coast bodies... I need a nap!!!

 

[woody73]

I would choose late seating to more closely match the dinner time of the places I'm visiting.

We were in Rome and Naples last month. The locals generally have dinner between 8:00 and 10:30.

Woody

 

[OurDogCisco]

We picked early seating even though I prefer late. We have children and I don't think they can wait until 8:00 pm or later to eat dinner especially if we are in port at 8 am or so. I figured most of the ports we can make it back in time to eat at the early dining time. And, for those that we miss or choose to miss we'll just eat room service or buffet food. I think we'll be okay....

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

I picked late seating. I'd like to be able to relax after returning from the ports, and we can recoup our sleep on the days at sea. If we're tired we can take a little nap before dinner. I'm an early riser, so it won't matter if we get to disembark early - that's my usual routine, anyway.

 

[nzdisneymom]

We chose early because 6 of the nights the all-aboard time is before dinner, and for the times that it is a later departure, we figure we can always go eat at Topsiders or room service if we're back too late. That keeps us from having to wait for later dinner if we're starving ( ) and we can still enjoy the dining rooms, but if we're reboarding after our seating time, well, we can still get something to eat anyway. Shoot, my boys and DH would likely eat on their own anyway and I'd end up going to dinner by myself. Personally I loved going to the dining rooms on our last cruise and we had a lovely family that were our dinner mates. But DH didn't like having to dress every night and the boys were eating chicken, mac/cheese, pizza anyway, so they could get that from other locations.