Would you book if there was only late seating left?

[Suzanne74]

Okay so what time does the early shows start and how long do they last? Do you have to be dressed and ready to go to dinner immediately after anyway?

There is no doubt in my mind that my dd will be napping late afternoon so maybe "waking" about during the show will keep her up during dinner!!

 

[newfamilyman]

newfamilyman - you mean that party can call up and add more people to their dining party? We are only a group of 3 so that might be pretty easy - to add us on somewhere. Do I go around and post how nice we are - please take us, please take us!!! Seriously though if that works, I just might do that!

If you go to the Cruise Meets forum, you can "meet" other people who will be cruising with you. Ask if any of them have early seating and if they would be willing to link their reservation with yours. Good luck!

 

[2timecruiser]

I just had to say that we are going on our 3rd cruise in May 2006 and will have late seating, & would not change it for anything. We are not use to eating that late, but with all the other food on the ship, it just works out better. Our youngest ds was 5 months on the 1st cruise & he usually slept through dinner. It worked out well though, because our waiter was the BEST! He cut all my food for me, & anything else that made eating with 1 hand easy. Our 2nd cruise, DS was 1, so he made it most nights, but usually by the end, he was out. I usually had to eat dinner with him sleeping in my arms, but it wasn't a big deal. Our oldest was old enough that it didn't matter for him (he will be 9 on this cruise), so he just adjusted. I say, you know your family, so do what is best for you. Just use these boards as research, & just have a Wonderful Vacation!

 

[pdarrah]

Here is another vote for LOVING late seating. Our first cruise was last October - we chose late seating since DS5 had watched the DCL DVD (over and over and over) and told us "you guy can eat there, I'll eat at the club!". From a couple of past cruises (over 10 years ago) we knew we prefered late seating (less rushing) and since DS obviously didn't care about eating with us, we decided to enjoy adult meals! He knew he was welcome to come with us to dinner, but he only chose to do so once (to see Animator's Pallette).

In reality, he didn't actually like eating with the club - he loved the club, but not the meals and they are awfully early anyway. Instead, we would get him his dinner either as room service while we were getting ready for the evening or up at Plutos. We had "family time" as he ate (and sometimes we snacked a bit - those chicken strips are good )and then he chose whether he wanted to go to the show or not (he went to Golden Mickey's, Hercules & Disney Dreams) and then we would take him to the club. He LOVED the club and we LOVED are adult meals! Everyone was happy and we had plenty of family time throughout the cruise so not being together at dinner (our normal family time at home) wasn't a big deal at all.

I hope this helps. Some of this depends on how flexible your child is with their schedule. Our son has always been able to adapt and a strict schedule isn't really necessary. We didn't have any meltdowns during the cruise - maybe that is why we rebooked on board!

pdarrah

 

[becobscot]

We had late seating and asked to be waitlisted for early seating when we got on board. We were changed with no problems. If you don't get switched, you can always order room service or get food on the pool deck for your little ones and then maybe take them to the kid's club for part of the meal.

 

[Disney Fans]

We love early dinner. Are kids are younger so for us we need to eat first and then that way if the kids aren't too tired we take them to watch the show and if they are too tired to stay up then we just go ahead and take turns that night and while one of us is putting them to bed the other goes and watches the show that way the kids get a good nights sleep and we still can all enjoy dinner as a family and at least take turns watching shows.

I think that if we had late dinner we could not have the choice of what to do depending on how tired the kids are each night. On a bad night the kids would have to eat pizza, etc and then watch the early show and if they couldn't last at the late dinner it would be a bad dinner and bed time for all of us.

We book the cruise early so that we can get early dinning. But I think once childern reach the age of 8 or 9 they will be fine for late dinning but to me childern 7 or younger it could be hard on them. Thats the one thing I wish Disney could do- Make it so that families with younger childern could have the choice of main dinning and when it came closer to the date of the cruise if there were open spots in main dinning then it would go in order of waitlist

Either way I wish you the best family trip

 

[OurDogCisco]

Hi,
We are going on our first DC in May with our two DDs. One will be just turned 22 months and the other just turned 5. Both have 8 or 8:30 PM bedtimes normally. I am wondering if the families who have had no problems with their children eating so late have bedtimes for their children. I would think that would make a big difference. We have neighbors who have two little ones 2 & 3 who have no bedtime at all. Up at 11:30 PM!! So obviously those children would have no problem with an 8:30 PM dinner.

Do you think this is the case with the people who love late seating with children or are things just different for the kids on the boat??

Thanks,

Hi, I just noticed you are from the West Coast. My children do have bedtimes around 8 - 8:30 pm at night. However, when we are on vacations the bedtime thing goes out the window. We are more of the go with flow type family anyways. But since, you are on the West Coast unless you are spending more than a week on the East Coast it will be difficult to adjust to the time change. So, eating at the early seating will be eating at 3 or 3:30 pm on west coast time. The late seating worked great for us.

But I think, you have to do what is best for you and your family. Only you are going to know how your children are going to react to a late seating. When we have gone (2 times now), our children usually end up taking a nap in the afternoon where at home they don't. So, the late seating has worked out fine for us. However, if I was cruising on the West Coast (which I have done) my kids could not handle the late seating. They were out before the dinner started. Thank goodness grandparents had the early seating so they could watch the kids.

GL...

 

[scrapperjill]

Yet...another vote for late seating...Just Love it...it seemed to work out wonderfully. I think there are many +'s to having late seating...most I see have been mentioned already...like no rush to get ready...or rush back from shore, earler shows...where your not sooo stuffed you can't enjoy them...and the list goes on.

Guess we better watch out...it looks like there are more and more people wanting Late seating now-a-days.

 

[aprilgail2]

If they only had late seating I wouldn't go on that cruise. My 5 year old daughter has no bedtime at home, she goes to bed around 10 or so but to just sit down to eat at 8pm would be to late. I wouldn't be able to go to sleep that night if I had all that food in my stomach so late at night.

 

[NCRedding]

Suzanne 74: The shows start at 6:30 and last 45 minutes to an hour, so you'll have at least an hour to get rdy for late seating after the show. I ocassionally dressed for dinner before the show if there was another event I wanted to do after the show, but before dinner.

 

[MarkRG]

And I have a vote for not liking late seating whatsoever.

It's all a personal preference thing. We have done both early and late seatings, and the one time we have done late is the only one I'll ever do. It all depends on how much longer you intend to stay up after eating that late. I never stay up that late and eating at 8:30 then trying to sleep a few hours later was something near impossible for us.

And the point of not feeling so rushed is bunk. Someone else said it, now you're rushing to get to the show instead of to dinner. Either way you're going to have an appointment of some kind at 6:00/6:30 unless you're willing to blow off the shows.

 

[ivanova]

Suzanne,

I would base my booking decision on the time of year that I wanted to cruise, not based on the dining time I was assigned. Worse case, I can live with eating at 8pm (didn't kill me last week) even though I prefer early dining whenever possible.

 

[crisi]

I kind of agree with MarkRG....I'd seriously consider not booking a cruise if my only choice was late dining....and for the same reasons. I don't eat well "late" at night - and I'm an early to bed sort of girl. Since food is a big reason to cruise for us, since we want it to be enjoyable, I'd have to think long and hard about late seating. Maybe we'd decide to make it work, maybe not....but it would take thinking about.

But it would probably factor into "why the rush" to book this cruise. We booked our last cruise almost a year in advance after waiting for my youngest to potty train. Booked the next one two years in advance. Maybe if we were cruising on shorter notice with family or friends, it would be worth it.

 

[Suzanne74]

well the rush for me is that dd will be 4 then, last year before she goes into kindergarten. I didn't think she would take to Disney but last Sept she did, she is in that prime fairytale/loves the characters time and I would hate to miss it. DH also owns a company and there are only so many months in advance that we can book - Aug/Sept are very slow months for him so this would work out well. Also DH and I are trying for baby #2 pretty soon and I can't be more than 24wks pregnant if I want to cruise nor do I want a baby infant on the cruise either. So right there that is about 2 more years away and dd will be 6 and in 1st grade. I can't afford peak (off schoo)l times and I won't want to pull her out of school. I didn't realize that disney books this quick - the other cruises we initially looked into had less than 50% booked and honestly, even if I could there is no way I could book a cruise 2 yrs in advance. The temptation will kill me!!!

But reading the other posts, I would have to think that late seating might actually work better for us. dd naps from 3-5pm, sometimes later so I would hate to wisk her right off to dinner by 5:30pm to get pics and such before eating. We normally eat at 7pm since dh gets home that late. Maybe it will work for us. 6:30 for the shows seems perfect and then a break before dinner to either change or relax seems nice. We ended up booking the Sept 24th. The price was too good to pass up!

Thanks

 

[brack]

Been there done it. And now having had early seating on our last cruise, will never do it again....Too rushed..With all the food during the day we had to push ourselves to be hungry for the late seating, but, once the food arrived...

Nothing would stop me from cruising whenever I could..

This is how I feel. I would cruise if I had to eat dinner at midnight!

 

[TiggerzFan]

As many others have mentioned, we now prefer the Late seating and we've experienced both. We found the Late seating to be less rushed and our DD3 did just fine - in fact, it was pretty much a bonus when she fell asleep. She often ate dinner earlier from Room Service while we were getting ready or from Deck 9.

 

[ivanova]

you can also try to change your seating time once you board the ship - no guarantee it'll work, but it's worth a try if you really, really need main seating.

 

[ann-e-mator]

I prefer late seating... The early seating just seems to cut into the day too much.

 

[Tay N Evie's Mom]

Early seating is the only way to go for our family and I wouldn't book a cruise if it wasn't available. We did early seating on our 1st cruise, but decided to try late seating on our 2nd cruise. It was a disaster for us. Our twins were 3 1/2 at the time and fell asleep at dinner every night. That ment we had to call it a night right after dinner each night. I was really sick to my stomach the first two nights because I went to bed with such a full stomach and had to spend half of the second night in the bathroom trying not to get sick. The last two nights I couldn't eat everything I wanted to just to avoid getting sick again. On our 3rd cruise we requested and got early seating again and had a great time-never went to bed feeling overly full or sick to my stomach. I know everyone has their opinion and you have to do what is best for your family.

 

[gouodux]

How do you possibly get your kids to bed by 8:30? In our wildest dreams could this be possible? Our two girls (5 & 2) can't seem to get to sleep by 10pm!