Late dining with kids?

[dewla]

Does anyone have experience with the late dining with kids? I cannot imagine eating at 6pm. But will the kids miss out on fun things at the kid's place if we eat at 8:30? Will there be other kids at the late dining? I guess we could feed them before the show before dinner. Or should we switch (if possible) to early dining? They are 7 and 10. We had late dining on the Voyager, ate with us several nights and ate with the counselors at "Johnny ROckets" several nights without us and loved it. Do they ever do dinner with the camp counselors? Hmmm....comments please. I know they don't love sitting through long meals, but are there any nights we should make sure they eat in the dining room with us??

 

[floridaminnie]

My DD usually eats in the club and then I pick her up for late dinner so she eats with us again. I then take her back to the club after our dinner. When we had early seating the first cruise, she did NOT want to eat with us b/c she wanted to eat with the kids. She was three, but we enjoy the later seating also. We don't feel so rushed.

 

[Robert and Kelley]

We have had both dinner seatings. The early seating we seemed rushed sometimes to get there. We are doing the late seating on our next cruise. Our kids never seemed to like eating with the club. Dinner we wanted them with us just to enjoy the atmosphere and eat as a family.

 

[Empire Day]

Just Returned from 5/11 and had late seating with DS7, we (3) sat at a table of 8 another couple with grand daughter 5 and a young couple, there were PLENTY of kids in the late seating.
We did find DS missed out on a few of the activities he wanted to do like the clubs farewell party but most of the big activities were befor 8:30 after seemed to be either free time or movie time at least in the 5-7YO.
We took him to the club after they returned from dinner so mom and dad could have some adult time befor our seating, it worked out good, we did miss alot of the shows as we had so much fun at the pools and on deck!! with early seating I thnk we would have made it to all of them! They really take care of the kids in the Dinning rooms I highly recomend taking them to all of them!

 

[granna]

We just returned from May 17 Magic Eastern. We were at 8:30 seating, with a group of 30-40 for a wedding and only 3 children were under 8, my 3 1/2 yr old Grandson included. He was at our table and the first couple of evenings were an adventure. This wore out soon and he was begging to visit his friends at another table. One night he had a melt down and went straight to the room with his dad. Servers gave us dad's food to take to him.

The last night I brought some little play characters bought in the gift shop and that kept him busy/happy . Should have thought of that earlier and will suggest it to DCL. Also a snack/appetizer of cheese and fruit at the moment they sit down would be helpful, but their food comes quickly and is "kid friendly".

Servers are wonderful with the little ones.

 

[debm]

We've had both seatings with our kids and now prefer the late one. Our kids are 9,7,4, and 8 months. (Only the 7 year old goes to the kid's club-the others prefer to hang out with us.) We like to see all the shows with them too. But at the early seating we found that it was a rush to get dressed for dinner and then my 7 year old didn't want to sit through dinner. So we would take him to the Club part way through. Then after dinner we would go get him for the show--his favorite part---but then after the show he wasn't really keen on going "back" to the Club. And of course by that time we wanted more time alone. So we found with the late seating we had time to see the show and THEN dress for dinner. Once dinner started if any of them got antsy they could go to the club to play and we just picked them up when we were done with dinner, a movie, whatever. Also we didn't feel as rushed. The kids can eat any time with all the food around. If they ate at dinner with us we just asked that their food be brought with our appetizer and then they could leave if they wanted afterwards. Our daughter though takes an hour to eat her "Mickey ice cream" so she will sit there forever!!

I think you really have to look at your family lifestyle to see what would work. We aren't on much of a schedule as far as eating or sleeping when we are on vacation so it is more relaxing for us to do the late seating.