early vs late dining and why?

[livetotan]

Which sitting do you prefer: early or late dining any why? I don't want to miss any of the shows and our son wants to do all the teen club events so we are choosing not to do my time dining for that reason. Thanks for your input.

[edjny]

We choose MTD since some days we want to eat early, some days late and some days in the Windjammer. But, generally, it is a good idea to eat at roughly the same time you eat when you are at home.

[temple1]

If cruising with DH we do late seating so we don't feel rushed to get to dinner and we enjoy traditional dining. When I cruise with DS we do MTD so we can eat when and where we please and not worry about tablemates and having a set time to dine.

[DragonOfTheSeas]

You are correct—it is a much more complicated issue than you see at first.

We generally eat “6-ish” at home. So, that more closely matches the first seating. However, we find that the late seating makes more sense for us. We eat more aboard ship. [i think most people do] So, we can go longer between meals. We also, have a couple of adult beverages before dinner.

 

We find that late seating allows us to enjoy the ports more without being rushed to get ready for dinner when we return. Also, there are seldom many children on the second seating. [We have/love children/grandchildren, but, enjoy adult conversation at dinner.]

The one negative is the timing of shows/events on the ship. These are all tied to the main seating. Often they begin right after dinner—can be a bit of a rush.

 

We like having the same tablemates each night. I know some are able to have that with MTD--but, it does not always work out.

[Erik101]

Out of the 3 cruises that I have taken, two of them were late seating and the other was MTD. We decided on the late seating because we did not want to feel rushed returning to the ship from shore excursions. My friends who are avid cruisers have a different reason: they feel that late seating have less children. I don't know how accurate this perception is since I have enjoyed all my dinners regardless of time and the type of people present.

[LookingForward2]

we typically take early seating so we can eat and go to the shows afterward. we check the time in each port and calculate what time we would have to be back onboard so see if coincides with the early dining time of that particular ship. (some ships vary - as early as 5:30 and as late as 6:30)

we do enjoy going to the shows and since we would have to be back onboard and ready to attend the early show before dinner, we might as well eat first.

[time4u2go]

We do early dining. We generally don't stay up real late, and we don't like the idea of having eaten such rich food so close to going to bed (even if going to bed a couple of hours later). Eating early gives those of us that want it the option of grabbing a light snack just before bed. We also prefer seeing shows after dinner. It just seems better to us. Just our opinion, obviously.

[JMG]

Years ago there was a distint difference. Early seating had shows after dinner, late seating had shows after dinner. They have changed that up over the years and now, a lot of the shows for the late seating are held before dinner. As a result, we tend to miss a lot of the shows since we prefer late dining and do not want to rush to get dressed and have a cocktail(s).

 

On another cruise line we do MTD and it works well for us. We just are not fond of RCI's way of doing MTD.

[kastke]

We had early seating for the first time on our last cruise and will go back to late dining on the next one. We thought it would work out ok with a port intensive cruise, but we found ourselves eating lunch at close to 2:00 many days after returning from a port, which then either we weren't really hungry for dinner or had to make sure to eat a light lunch. We also found ourselves rushed to get ready for dinner if we wanted to go to the pool after a port excursion, etc.

 

If it was a cruise with a lot of sea days, I think early seating would have worked out better than it did for us.

[ctcruiser1721]

If cruising without kids, I prefer late seating. I enjoy the venues with live music and there is too much down time for me between the end of dinner and the start of most of the late-night activities.

[KirkNC]

We choose anytime dining so we can eat when ever we want.

[rstout]

We generally do late seating even with kids because we do not like having to rush back from port or leave the pool early to get ready. However this does not leave our kids much time for nighttime kids club activities (which they always want to do) so we are opting for early seating on the Allure in March.

[luvscruising2007]

We eat late at home so we always opt for late seating. It really doesn't matter to us when the shows are because we always can attend one of the times if we want to.

I do believe that if we were on a port intensive cruise, like in Europe, we would opt for MTD.

[MonDreamr1]

We do either late or MTD for port intensive trips. If it were a cruise with a lot of sea days, I might consider early dinning, but would likely pick MTD. I like later seating because we tend to get back to the ship close to all aboard and need the time to decompress, grab a drink, watch sail away, and change for dinner (if it was a dive day a shower is a must.)

[CruisinFromTx]

We enjoy early sitting principally because the food is more recently prepared.

[davekathy]

Early Traditional. We hate eating late.

[Ladysilver]

Early dining for us old folks. :D

[funfamilyof6]

We do early or MTD because it works better for the shows and kids club activities.

[Tom.Terrific]

You are correct—it is a much more complicated issue than you see at first.

We generally eat “6-ish” at home. So, that more closely matches the first seating. However, we find that the late seating makes more sense for us. We eat more aboard ship. [i think most people do] So, we can go longer between meals. We also, have a couple of adult beverages before dinner.

 

We find that late seating allows us to enjoy the ports more without being rushed to get ready for dinner when we return. Also, there are seldom many children on the second seating. [We have/love children/grandchildren, but, enjoy adult conversation at dinner.]

The one negative is the timing of shows/events on the ship. These are all tied to the main seating. Often they begin right after dinner—can be a bit of a rush.

 

We like having the same tablemates each night. I know some are able to have that with MTD--but, it does not always work out.

 

This is exactly our scenario. In the real world, we usually have dinner early (6-ish), and workout afterwards. And we have always opted for early dining onboard until our last cruise. We thought we didn't want to eat late since we'd be missing shows, didn't want a heavy meal sitting on our stomachs before bed, and wanted to look forward to a nice evening ahead without dinner "getting in the way".

 

On our last cruise, a series of events we couldn't have anticipated had us dining during the late seating, and we thought "misery" but we'll make the best of it.

 

As it turned out, we found late seating is an excellent fit for us. We don't have to rush to get ready for dinner following a day in port. (We've missed dinner before because the excursion bus returned late) We're actually hungry by dinner time with late seating. We still got to see the shows we wanted to see. Late seating is much more relaxed, and there's plenty of time for the casino, dancing and digestion before bed.

 

We moved our workout time to follow breakfast. I can't imagine we'll ever go back to early dining.

[sandy toes]

We do early because someone is always starved in our group. If traveling with anyone that is diabetic, then we always do early. There is a program where the kids get their food really quickly and the Adventure Ocean staff will now come get the kids (it is a great program) so the adults can relax from their main course on. Seems the best of both worlds.

[BND]

We do late. We like having the option of staying ashore later or to hang out by the pool/solarium later. The last thing I want to do is have to rush back to our cabin at 4 so we can shower and be ready for dinner. We generally get in the shower around 5-5:30 so we can get to the D event (or CL if we're in a GS) around 6:15, then to the show at 7:15 then onto dinner. If it's a late show, we can get ready a little later and go for drinks closer to 7.

[cruisecookie]

We usually prefer the late seating. We are not early risers, so on port days we don't leave the ship until 10:30 or 11:00 am. Therefore, we don't get back on board until 2:00 or 3:00 pm. Then we eat lunch on the ship. We simply aren't hungry at 6:00 pm. By 8:00 or 8:30 pm we are hungry for a meal.

[sky0000547]

Having just got off the Independence, we had early seating (6pm) and the shows were generally on at 9pm. We usually finished dinner at 7.30pm so there was 1.5hr of spare time before curtain up.

 

Hindsight, having dinner at 7pm would be about the right time since I felt 6pm is a little early. Firstly due to the amount of food and meals (i.e from lunch and tea) that at 6pm I wasn't actually hungry. And secondly there was too much free time between dinner and show.

 

The second seating at 8.30pm would be a little late for me I feel.

[Bookish Angel]

Early seating is too early and late is too late for us so we always choose MTD, table for 2.

 

We definitely do not want to be locked into a set dining time, particularly on vacation.

[sr4mjc]

Early seating is too early and late is too late for us so we always choose MTD, table for 2.

 

We definitely do not want to be locked into a set dining time, particularly on vacation.

 

That's what we did on the Serenade in Feb. However we usually made a standing reservation for 7:30-8:00. The only issue was we typically missed out on the captain's cocktail party, C&A event or the shows because we were right in the middle of things scheduled around the traditional seatings. It wasn't that big of a deal for us, the shows aren't a big priority for us, especially not on the Oasis class. But it's might be for someone else.