Not so great table mates

[bdink921]

On our Wonder cruise we were seated at a table with just our family of 3.

On our Carnival cruise, we walked into the MDR on that first night to see a couple in maybe their 50's at our table. The look the woman shot us when she saw we had a kid with us made my heart just drop (he's 11 y.o and actually very well mannered at the table--hardly ever picks his plate up to lick it clean or blows his nose in his napkin ) Anyway, after a quick word from her, her husband got up and made a beeline for the Head Waiter. Within a few minutes they left the table having never even said a word to us. Thankfully, our tablemates ended up being grandparents with their adorable 8 y.o GD and a lovely couple in their late 40's that got seated with us on the 2nd night. It ended up being an awesome group. Funny thing is that we would see the 'ice couple' everywhere we went on that cruise.

 

[lg3]

We've always had fabulous tablemates on our Disney cruises. THANK GOD

Not so lucky on other cruise lines - especially Celebrity - Great cruise line, but we were in our late thirties at the time and so many noisy obnoxious older travelers from the east coast. Just saying how it was. I know not everyone from there is like that but it really had a negative effect on the cruise.

 

[goingsouth]

That's so funny..our one bad table mate experience was on Celebrity, too!
Our family of 4 (with 2 young kids) were seated at the "kids table". Seriously, my husband and myself were the only adults at the table. The parents were at the next table and didn't pay any attention.

joanne

 

[orlandothebeagle]

.......just leaving me in stitches.


somewhere I am hearing "WHO LET THE DOGS OUT" song.

Mine? She's 13 yrs old and named Ladybug.


Keeping it real in Dallas -



T.T.F.N.

We bought that outfit for him in orlando one year, glad it made you smile, Ladybug, what a sweet name.

He would not make a great table mate, he is a terrible thief.
but I love him anyway.

 

[MouseinMelbourne]

If you have faxed in the medical form indicating your son's allergies, there is a good chance they will honor your request for your own table. My son has severe food allergies and we have never been seated with another family, even when it is just the 2 of us traveling.

That is great to know! I want a private table for that reason as well.

What date are you sailing?

 

[arianne]

We are a family of 3 and were placed with a mother and daughter. It could have been nicer. They were on a mother, dauther time holiday. The just lost there husband/father. The kids had a language problem (me son does not speak english) and the mother was not much of a talker.
Our next time we hope for bigger group of people on our table. If possible in our same language (for our son) for us it does not mather.

 

[grandy w]

Interesting thread,
We were on the Wonder in April...Didn't even think about who we would sit with.Sat down the first night,Table for 8,4 of us,other group didn't show...Seasick on the way over Next night we met them,same age as DW and myself,same State,Same age children one year difference with the younger ones,all girls.We had a great time,older kids hung out the rest of the cruise,we hope they come on the Dream when we go in May 2011

 

[orlandothebeagle]

Interesting thread,
We were on the Wonder in April...Didn't even think about who we would sit with.Sat down the first night,Table for 8,4 of us,other group didn't show...Seasick on the way over Next night we met them,same age as DW and myself,same State,Same age children one year difference with the younger ones,all girls.We had a great time,older kids hung out the rest of the cruise,we hope they come on the Dream when we go in May 2011

Theses stories are so much nicer than the not so good stories.

 

[birkner]

Theses stories are so much nicer than the not so good stories.

In all our cruises over the years we have never had "bad" table mates. Interesting ones, but not ones where we had to flee the table.

Seems like there are a whole lot more people these days that want to sit with only their families. With busy lives and allergies, it certainly does make sense for some, just not for us. We want to make new friends and share dinner conversation with those new friends.

In the olden days, the cruise line would give you a folder in your stateroom when you boarded the ship of everyone's name and from what city and state. It made a nice souvenir to remember people you cruised with and to have them give you phone numbers and address for more contact. I guess cruising has sure changed from those days!!

Just my thoughts...

 

[DisneyDoc1895]

We did the Panama repo and actually I was disappointed because we were at our table alone. (me, DW and 2 DDs) There were alot of people on their own. It might have been nice to chat with other people a bit.

One time though we were with a women and her daughter and I think they were taking a cruise after a divorce or death - seemed a little awkward at times. Not a big deal at all, but she wasn't "chatty."

I think more people are pleasant and normal than not, but you never know. I guess it is just luck of the draw.

 

[belle'ssister]

this will be our first Disney cruise, but have taken many others before. We've had good luck all but one of the times. It wasn't actually horrible, but other couples (3), didn't have much in common. It was kind of awkward but ok.

We're taking our 9 yr old grandson, and are wait listed for the early seating. Hoping we are put with someone that is his age.

 

[minniemoms]

We have had some great tablemates and some not so great tablemates.

MJ

I agree, we have had GREAT table mates.. Thanks MJ for making our First cruise GREAT

 

[annichan]

Whew....

My partner and I are a gay couple in our late 40's - we're DVC members and while not Disney phanatics, we really enjoy Disney and DCL.

We're both easy going, have good manners and easily strike up conversations with people of any age.

We generally pick late seating as not only does it give us more time to chill when returning to the ship from excursions... we figure most couples with smaller children will select early seating.

We'll be on the Magic in October for the second time and are a little worried over our seating arrangements even though on our last Disney Cruise we were seated at a table of 6 with only one other couple.

We struck up a great conversation, had a great week and still keep in touch several years later... the other couple never appeared - we all just assumed that they got the early seating.

We also cruise on NCL fairly frequently, like the freestyle dining and generally meet up with people from the message boards to dine with...

In one situation in Hawaii we were at a late seating, asked if we would be interested in sharing a table and thought we were going to be seated with the two women (about our age) in line ahead of us...

We were actually seated with an older African American couple who were there with a large church group- which made us a little anxious and they ended up being alot of fun to dine with...meanwhile the two women were seated right next to us were He!! on wheels, HATED everything and made a huge scene...

Guess you can't judge a book by it's cover...

My husband and I will be on the Magic in October too with late seating, so maybe we will even be on the same ship as you?

It will be our first cruise ever, and I am just really looking forward to meeting new and interesting people. Still, I do admit that this thread is making me slightly nervous . But I guess if there is someone you don't get along with AT ALL, there is still the possibility of asking for another table.

The other thing I am slightly worried about is that DH and I will undoubtedly be speaking German every now and then when we are talking among ourselves, only because it's simply quite difficult to keep speaking a foreign language for a couple of hours without a break (it does get easier with alcohol, though ) - so I hope our tablemates will not consider us too rude.

 

[EastYorkDisneyFan]

Sorry to bring this thread up again, but after reading it it made me remember my own not so great table mates. As you can see I said they were the table mates from hell.

This story comes from the 2008 EBPC, I had decided to link my dining with some friends from another board that had the same dinning time (late) as I was. The first night there were some problems with how the tables got setup there was a group of like 20 of us tat were together as a group and do to some problems with the shore side dining coordinator quiting at some point before the cruise. There were a few problems with the servers getting used to us the first night, as well. Then we come to desert one of the people at the table decides that he doesn't want anything off of the desert menu and would like a plate of cheese from Palo. When the head server came over to say that she could not bring it that night but could put in a standing order for it, the person got very rude about it.

The next night there were a few more problems due to the on board staff having to work out what should have been done shore side. The third night when we should up there was a large plate of cheese from Palo waiting at the table as a "peace offering" / "sorry about the mess up" gift. Also that night the person who had asked for the small plate got his for desert too.

Things seemed to improve until we got to the night after we had the signature menu for Lumieres where one of my table mates had requested creme brule every night after that, one night they weren't there so the server dilivered them to there room and they got upset as they had come in from Palo to find two creme brulies sitting on there beds. Then we came to the night before we would be having the Parrot Cay menu and our server mentioned that the chicken wings were no longer on the apitizer menu but he could put in a request for them for the next day. After that yet another standing order. Oh yeah and I forgot to mention that there was alos a standing order for a large cheese plate from Palo for the table every night in adition to the small one for5 one persons desert. Then at some point I don't remember when, but another standing order for Brana bred in the bread basket every night cmae up.

So quick recap on the "standing" ORDERS
Large cheese plate from Palo for table
Small Cheese plate from Palo for person 1
2 Creme Brules for person 1 and 2 (yest thats right in addition to the cheese plate)
Plate of Wings for person 3
Banana Bread for person 3 too

We then get to the mid point of the cruise and have one night were the kitchen for the restaurant didn't have any chicken wings that night so our head server goes all the way across the ship to diversions to get some, and did not receive a thank you for that. The after dinner our head server comes over to the table to find out how things are going and they proceed to throw both our server and assistant server to the wolves. I felt rally bad for all three of them and wanted to crawl under the table and die. The next night was pirate night and I decided to join the other group of people at one of our other tables. One of my then former table mates looks at me and tries to wave me over to there table, I was still discussed by their behavior from the night before I ignored him. Then one of our group organizer that was having some family problems that she end up sorting out showed up and saw where I was sitting and asked why I was there so I told her and the rest of the table waht had happened by the night before. Somone alos said that two of the people at the other table had gone to guest services and reduced the tip they had prepiad top the resturant staff by half. After dinning me and the person who had organized our group stayed behind to talk to the head server and to apologize to her for the other peoples behavior.

Then her (the organizer) and I went to guest services to complain and let them know about some very rude guest and how poorly they were treating the DCL staff, on the way we stopped at a bar where a wonderful bartender sat and listened to our story and made my friend a drink on the house (she went back the next day and gave him a very nice tip). Next was guest services. After talking to them she actually ran into the dinning room manager in the hall way somewhere where around Beat Street, and told him everything that we had told guest services.

The next night at dinner the two offending parties were both at Palo and we also had room at the other table for two of the other people that were at the table I was at. They missed the feeding to the wolves as they were at Palo that night and were horrified about what we told them about our table mates. We all decided to raise our tips to make up for the bad tipping of the other table mates.

On the last night the two people that had reduced there tips had Palo again (I have no clue how they got so many bookings so please do not ask me)and dared to show up to hand over his disgraceful tips to the staff!

After the cruise two of the people in question decided to leave the boards and never cruise with us (the boards in question) again.

Also something I forgot there were at one point before the cruise some insults thrown back and forth on the boards between some of the people in our dining group and it ended up with the same ones who were the most rude to every one not wanting to sit at the same table with the people they had been rude to on the board.

And now my rant is over, maybe it's worthy of Pete on the Dis unplugged. All of this thread is true, I decided to do it with out names to protect those involved.

 

[joksten2000]

One had an odd twist, Mexican Riviera Aug 2005, Two couples at our table one a Father and Daughter, He order two full meals and two desserts every night (Skinny as a rail) and didn't say much as all his time was spent eating. The other couple was from Japan and understood english but couldn't speak it. We did our best to include them in our limited conversations. Oddly enough we have kept in contact with our Japanese couple over the years and have swapped packages of Disney things. We're hoping to see them on our Dream Cruise in Aug 2011.

On one one of our other cruises we were seated at a table of "special people" how that happened I'll never know. There were three tables, so I assume it was a group, how they got us there was beyond me. The next night they squeezed us into our own table, then finally on the third night we got on a table with three other couples.

 

[dylan'smom]

/

 

[alaskanabbott]

this probably needs it's own thread, but I have a question. We have 6 kids, myself, DH and my father going on the Wonder in Feb. I called DCL and asked them to "link" us together for meals. Since there are 9 of us, will we even have table mates?

 

[karentan]

if you booked it as one booking, you'll automatically be sat together. if you booked it as separate family bookings, you'll need to call them to link the bookings together to ensure you're all sat together.
with a group that size, i doubt you'll have anyone else sat at your table with you

 

[BealsRwe]

No excuses for bad table manners of your table mates but I can assure you Disney does not "plant" people to "sell" to other passengers!! LOL!! I think you just had over zealous Disney people.....but, anyone can order two entrees at dinner...it is not frowned upon and done very, very often. Our servers often insisted we order two or three different things if we were unsure of what we wanted to eat. Granted, if they were just trying to make pains of themselves that was wrong.

DCL offers last minute discounts to their employees if the ship needs to be filled so on any given cruise you may wind up with people working for Disney...though even on vacation, they should be holding up the Disney standards.

We have had some great tablemates and some not so great tablemates.

MJ

My DH and I are both WDW cast members. We have been leaders for greater than 10 years each. We always book last minute (generally less than 60 days out). We don't have any choice of dining table arrangements, although now we can choose either main or second dining as a preference. We have had some incredible table mates. Our best table mates have been on the Magic. When we were pregnant with our daughter 7 years ago, our table mates were incredible! When we took my parents and DD on a 7 night eastern, we were 5 mixed with a family of 3. We still keep in touch with all of these families to this day.

We are getting prepared for #11 next month, and we always do the walk on egg shells as you arrive at your table the first night. I am thankful to say that we have had awkward times with table mates, we have no horror stories to share. Hopefully this time will be no different. I am hoping to be with another great family like ourselves!

As for Disney cast talking Disney all the time...believe it or not, so many of us love Disney so much we work there, and vacation there. Some call it crazy or an illness, I call it living my dream.

 

[abouttime]

I know you pick your dining time, but you know ahead of time you will have table mates, or do you find that out when you walk in?