Luck with changing to early dining?

[mmouse09]

Our family of 4 booked a cruise for this September a year and a half ago and chose early dining. My parents and sister (and family) decided to join us and just booked this week. The only option was late dining. Our preference is to eat together as a family during early dining. Has anyone had success changing this? We will need to go from a party of 4 in early dining to a party of 11!

 

[jdb in AZ]

Our family of 4 booked a cruise for this September a year and a half ago and chose early dining. My parents and sister (and family) decided to join us and just booked this week. The only option was late dining. Our preference is to eat together as a family during early dining. Has anyone had success changing this? We will need to go from a party of 4 in early dining to a party of 11!

You need to link your reservations to make sure you all are seated together, perhaps at nearby tables if a large table isn't available. It's easier to talk to each other if you have two smaller tables, and you can switch tables (musical chairs) from one night to the next. Have you reached your paid-in-full date? There's often people who cancel at that point, so you might be able to get the whole family on early dining.

We've tried to switch twice. The first time didn't work out, but the 2nd time our on-line cruise information suddenly showed that we had main (early) dining. It wouldn't hurt to call DCL and ask, and be persistent (but nice) if it doesn't work out right away. If it's still a problem by the time you board the ship, go to "dining changes" (a room that will be listed in the Navigator -- daily newsletter -- that you will receive as you board.)

 

[disneyfaninaz]

We have successfully done this. When we sailed with our friends they had main seating, but we could only get second seating when we booked later. We linked our reservations and put our names on the wait list for main seating. We go it about a month before we sailed and were able to sit with our friends. No problem.

 

[Tulles]

We just had this situation happen. Our friends booked last year for November this year and we booked in early May.

We linked accounts and made the note on the file that we requested early dining. We had 6 on early and needed to move 4.

Took 2 weeks but we got it! Good luck!

 

[karl_nj]

As jcb mentioned earlier, you may be able to change onboard if it doesn't happen before then. I was able to do this last year when the other family we were traveling with had late dining and we had early dining. Check the schedule when you board, there should a time listed for that afternoon when you can request dining changes.

We were able to have the other family of 6 to change to early dining, and they were able to change us to be all at the same table. In order to do this they had to change our dining rotation, but we didn't really care what our order was.