Early or late dining for Mediterranean cruise?

We are booked for a Mediterranean cruise in June and currently booked for the 5:45 dining. However the excursions we are booked for last 8-10 hours. Should we switch to the later dining? Or will we be so tired and just order room service? My daughters are almost 8 and 10. Thanks for any advice

I would switch to late. I will tell you that the first time we at dinner in Cabanas was after a long excursion in the Med. It was about 7:15, we were hungry and didn't want to wait for our late dinner. But we didn't want to do a snack as then we wouldn't be hungry for dinner. Eating at Cabanas (which is a casual, sit down location for dinner) was the perfect solution. You DO have options other than room service.

The problem with early seating in the Med is that you might find yourself rushing back from your day in order to clean up and go to dinner. Look at the port times for your various stops before you decide.

When we are on the ship, we do a "healthy snack" about 4 or 4:30, which works fine with late dinner.

Agree with moki. We've done two European cruises, and the port days can be long - because there is so much to see and do. I didn't want to rush back to the ship just so we could eat dinner. We would usually have a snack either out in town or right when we got back to the ship. Then we'd have time to shower, rest a bit, then hit dinner.

Agreed. If you can power nap while family members freshen up from the day you get to have a full experience instead of rushing back to the ship for dinner.

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We just did the Mediterranean in Aug on the magic. Our daughter was 9 and we are from Seattle. We have always done the late seating a in the caribe a given it keeps us on our time zone. The issue we had with the late seating on this cruise was our excursions had us off the boat at 7:30am. Dinner had us back to the room at 10pm. Long, hot days with tons of walking had us cranky in the Mornings. Very very cranky. I would do early if I was to go again with long days. We were back on board by 4:30. We would have quickly freshened up and headed to dinner and been in bed by 8.

Late is popular on Mediterranean cruise because excursions are long and these cruises are port intensive. I would go with late.

I also would not do full day tours in all ports because that can get tiring.

Keith

I asked the same question on another message board and received mixed responses. Some people said that they understand in the MDR that on some days the excursions are long so they're more flexible about people being at the first seating right on time. Some responders also said that with the longer days that their families were very hungry by the time they got back to the ship so they were glad to have dinner right away.

It definitely sounds like there are pros and cons to each but I decided to stick with the early seating for my upcoming med cruise.

Late seating. We have done the Med several times on Disney. I could not imagine early seating when you don’t get back to ship until late afternoon. I couldn’t go to dinner in the same clothes. You will have plenty of time to relax, take a shower, eat a snack if needed, go to early show if you want, have s cocktail before dinner, etc. late seating in the Med is usually about 830. Just ask the waiters to move dinner along otherwise you won’t be done until after 10 30. Please don’t just order room service or go to cabanas. The kids will love the ADRs.