Help - Early Or Late

[jtorch]

My husband and I will be traveling on 5/4/02 Disney Magic - 7 night. We have a 7 year old daughter and a 14 month old son. I am so confused about whether or not I should choose early or late seating. Please help. Give me some pros and cons and opinions on what you think will work best. I'm stressing over this!! Thanks.. Janine

 

[Steve H.]

I don't know about your 14 month old, but we're going in March with our 18 month old and we had to have the early seating (which thankfully just cleared wait list), because we knew there would be no way he'd be awake long enough to last through the 8:30 dining. We really didn't want to end up spending our trip eating rom service and doing the buffets.

 

[bbushey]

We just returned off the Magic and the late dinner seating. We have 6 and 8 year old kids. I almost did not book the cruise because of the late seating. It turned out to work great!! I would never book the early seating after our experience. It was nice going to the 6:30 show with wide awake kids. We let them snack but they were always hungry by 8:30. Our daughter did fall asleep one night after supper at the table but every other night they were begging us to let them stay up and go to the kids clubs after dinner! Of course, all kids are different but I would have never predicted that our kids would have handled the late seating as well as they did. We loved it!

 

[bkline]

Personally, I like early. My DS (7) normally eats in the 6:00 time frame, so it kept things on a more normal schedule. We would get a snack (fruit, ice cream or a slice of pizza) around 4:00, then dinner at 6:00. Dinner usually gave him a new burst of energy for playing in the lab or seeing the show. I think it just depends on what time your children normally eat dinner. Try to stay close to that time frame.

 

[Catherine Richards]

Thank you for asking this question. We are scheduled for the Wonder Cruise on February 21 (after several days at the Swan) and are still wait listed for main (early) dining. I have been very worried about this because we have a dd who is 6 and a ds who is 3. One benefit of late dining is you have the late 8:00am breakfast on debarkation day as opposed to 6:45am, although a Continental buffet from 6:30-8:00 at Topsiders is an option too.

Do most kids want to dine at the formal dinners? Do some people leave their kids in the kids club while they dine alone? We plan to do this one night at Palo but had hoped to eat with the kids the other nights. However, if we are stuck with late dining, I don't think they'll do well.

 

[mom2grace]

We just had late seating with DD 8 months. We loved it. However, we are pretty flexible parents. Sometimes she ate dinner, other times she slept. Some nights we took her car seat and stroller to the dining room so she would be comfortable. The staff is great! They steamed real veggies (carrots) and gave us "adult" mashed potatoes for her. If your kids aren't into chicken nuggets, etc. order off the adult menu for them!

If she were old enough for the clubs, I would have fed her early and taken her to the club while DH and I had dinner alone. We did use the nursery 3 times.

Susan Bryan and Grace

 

[Lyneigh P]

We had the late seating in Dec 2001. My kids are DS 9 and DD4. We were worried about having the late seating when we first booked the cruise, but were very happy after the first night. We enjoyed going to the early shows when our kids were wide awake. We live in California, so the time difference worked out great in our favor. The kids would have never been hungry at the early seating. We always got up late, and ate all of our meals later than everyone else on board. We usually ate breakfast at 10:30 or 11:00 am and ate lunch at about 2:30 or 3:00 pm. We also always had a snack at about 5:00 pm before the show. By the time we went to the 8:30 pm seating we were always hungry and really enjoyed our meals.

I would try to get the seating that is best fitted to your kids normal eating schedule.

 

[jazmyin]

I would have to say that my vote would be to have a late seating although I have not tried it yet. Last cruise we had early and I felt very rushed. First day we got on the ship about 1:30 had lunch at 2pm and were not hungry for dinner. DS 41/2 wanted to go to the kids club and was not happy sitting at dinner esp. not being hungry. CCday stayed on beach until last min and then showered my ds and off to watch him and others in their show. I was still full of sand but wanted to watch the kids. Rushed back to the room and went to dinner with damp hair. SO....this time will be doing 6nights at poly then 4 on ship (5/03) and hope to relax alittle more. By the way except for the first night, ds stayed with kids for dinner (his choice) and had a great time.

 

[MickeyMagic]

I had early seating for my first 2 cruises on the Magic. Our last cruise in January, we were assigned late seating. At first, I put our names on the waitlist for first seating, but as I read these posts about the benefits of late seating, I decided to give it a try.

We loved late seating! I always felt rushed when we had first seating at 6:00 p.m. With late seating, we went to the shows before dinner, but we had until 6:30 p.m. to get ready (that extra 1/2 made a big difference!). Also, there was time to go change after the show and before dinner, but we always got ready before the show and then had pictures taken before dinner.

I was never famished by the time our 8:30 seating arrived. My DD9 never complained about late seating -- either being overly hungry or tired.

Booked our $99 cruise for October and requested late seating again.