Early vs. Late Dining Seating?

[cbryteach]

On late seating we had about an hour between the show and dinner.
As far as Pirate Night goes, we left dinner and went right up to Deck 9 and had a great view of the show.

 

[drparoo]

When the kids were younger and we did the East coast cruises, we always did the early dinner and that worked out well because none of our excursions were very long so we were back on the ship anyway and they could eat, see the show and go to bed.

For our first European cruise, we stayed with the early dinner but realized that those excursions were much, much longer and getting back in time to eat was more of a challenge.

For our cruise in the Baltic this summer, we went with the late for the first time and it worked out well for those full day excursions.

Now my kids are all in their tweens/teens and they all want the later dinner next December. My 16 year old said that most of the Stack kids had the later dinner and they used to tease the ones who had to leave activities for the early seating. Kids, you know. I will say that the later dinner had fewer very young kids and that has it's advantages.

But either way, we would have had a good time. You adjust.

 

[Luvstocruise]

The thing to note is, depending on which cruise you are on, you may only have two days where you would be rushing for 6:00 PM Supper (in our case Key West - 7:30 PM on board and Cozumel - on board at 6:30. The other days (Grand Cayman and CC), if we stayed off till 1/2 hour before Early Supper, we would have missed the ship! So I guess, it may only affect 1 possible excursion for some people. I don't live and die by excursions, as eating closer to 6:00 PM for our two families is more important. In planning out this cruise for my family and advising the family we are travelling with, I thought with the 3 kids especially, we are all used to eating early Supper- 8 or 8:30 PM is just way too late!

FWIW
Luvstocruise

 

[MouseMadness]

Is there any difference in the activites offered in the kids' clubs during the dining times? For example, do they seem to offer more character experiences with the kids during what would be the late dining times (since there will be more kids in there that had early dinner)?

Does that make any sense?

I would love to have late seating, but would hate for my kids to miss out on the better activities because they are in dining room with us during that time. I know we can feed them early, etc. but I would rather us all dine together.

TIA!

 

[Lissame]

On our first cruise we had late seating and hated it. Eating dinner until 10 at night just isn't enjoyable for me, and my husband (who deals with seasickness issues anyway) was always pretty nauseated by the time we finished with dinner and then was miserable trying to go to bed with a full stomach.

Everyone is different though, but it's another thing to think about.

 

[mom2brooke76]

I like late dining because we are NOT morning people! LOL. I learned the hard way on my first cruise that early dining equals early sit down breakfast. Yes, we could have done the buffet, but we wanted the sit down. So, now I always do late dining and enjoy my later breakfast