early or late dinner seating w/ little kids?

[TSL]

Hi! We're 1st time cruisers excited to be heading to the Mediterranean on Disney's Magic this May with our 4 yr old & 1 yr old... any recommendations as to early or late dinner seating? (When I booked, the agent recommended late seating, according to her it was more important for the kids to be awake to enjoy the 'shows' than dinner... after thinking about it... I'm not so sure... I don't want tired kids at the dinner table either... any recommendations? ...then again I worry they'll be too tired for either with the lengthy excursions. Carpe Diem.) Thanks for your time!

[cb at sea]

Early seating is best for families with small children. The kids club is set up for early/main seating times. Plus, late seating doesn't usually end until after 10pm....too late for small kids in almost every case.

For early/main seating, the shows will be after dinner...so you need not miss anything. If they fall asleep, so be it! They won't remember the shows anyway!

Main seating is the one for families!

[CruizinMom2c]

I 2nd the early dining. We always do early dining, its best because then by the time they eat...play a little, then the are ready for bed at a decent time.

[boulders]

We're on the Magic in May too. :) Which sailing are you on? My kids are 14, 11 and 4. We are going for early seating. The ship gets in to the ports pretty early. Even on the long day ports - Rome and Naples, I plan to be back on board around 5 p.m. We can't last until 10 p.m. at the best of times, never mind if we're tired.

[cyntil8ing]

We're late seating people. Our normal dinner at home is 7:45, so the kids (3 and 6) are used to waiting until then to eat. And with active days, it gives us time to get back to the ship, have a snack, then take a late nap and still not have to rush for dinner.

 

Besides, with a Med cruise and the large time change, I wouldn't worry too much about keeping to a regular schedule. It's going to get very messed up either way.

[brenderlou]

We have always done late seating except for once. The early seating was way to early for us.

We felt like it really cut into our afternoon because we would have to get back to the cabin to shower/change for dinner. When our daughter was 2 yrs old. We would feed her before dinner and then she would snack when we went to dinner. You can also ask the waiter to speed up your dinner so you aren't there for 2 hrs.

Now that she is in love with the kids camp, we take her to the buffet area for dinner and then to the kids club that usually opens at 7:00. and then we went to dinner and picked her up after at 10:00

[highbridge5]

We're late seating people. Our normal dinner at home is 7:45, so the kids (3 and 6) are used to waiting until then to eat. And with active days, it gives us time to get back to the ship, have a snack, then take a late nap and still not have to rush for dinner.

 

Besides, with a Med cruise and the large time change, I wouldn't worry too much about keeping to a regular schedule. It's going to get very messed up either way.

 

We eat at 7:30 or 8PM at home as well and originally had late seating but I found that after a full day of activities and no snacks to speak of, we were starving well before late seating. I changed to "anytime dining" and found that every one of the 7 of us were ready for dinner around 6PM. As it was, my kids were tired and barely made it through dinner before they got the sillies. The 8:15 late seating would have been way too late.

 

I would recommend early seating with little kids. The "any time" dining was great *But* there was one night (prime rib and lobster night) where our group of 7 had to wait more than 45 minutes for a table. We got there around 6:30 and just missed having an open large table available. Our 4 yo fell asleep and my DH ended up eating the whole meal with a 4 YO asleep on his shoulder.

 

In retrospect, I might have split the group up to two small tables rather than wait for a big one.

 

hb5

[mary_228]

Another vote for the early seating. The shore excursions in the Med. leave really early, so you'll probably need to go to bed earlier, and who likes to go to bed right after dinner?

[MMsteffey]

We've cruised several times, including the Med, with our kids starting when the oldest was 2. We preferred late seating because 1)we were not rushed when returning from ports, and sometimes even napped. 2) sometimes the shows were before dinner 3)sometimes the kids would go to the kids club anyway 4)there were ship activities that we wanted to participate in that we would have missed with early seating 5)when we went to an early seating, we did not like feeling rushed by the servers and watching the rest of the dining room get turned over for the next seating while we were finishing our meal. 6) no matter what, we were always dealing with a time zone change and the numbers on the clock were just numbers, and not related to our schedule at home. Thats us, but as you see others prefer early. It's just a preference and dinner should be enjoyable no matter what you choose. Specific to the Mediterranean, the rapid succession of ports was really tiring. I was really grateful for the at-sea days.

[cruzer452]

ALthough really it is up to the family, ours is used to eating before 6:00 pm but I know some family even with little kids who eat at 8:00 or 9:00 pm.

[Eclipsepearl]

We did late dining on a Med cruise because the family we were travelling with had a teenager.

 

Every time we took our children to the dining room, the table next to us would make loud, rude comments. It was like the resented our children making even a peep. They expected them to be silent. They were well behaved but not silent...

 

We eat far later than any of our friends. There was no time change for us and it was simply too late to eat. Our table was empty for most of the cruise. We even tried feeding them and then taking them to the club but that didn't work out very well either.

 

I will add that Celebrity decided to move both dining times back about an hour right before the cruise. I guess there were too many people on the late dining and the early seating would have been too rushed coming in from excursions.

 

I would make this decision based on the schedule. A lot of port days means later dining might make more sense.