Main vs Late Dinner

[ajgardner]

This will be our fifth Disney cruise, so I am familiar with the schedule on the ships and such. We have always done main seating, mostly because we really like having dinner and then going to the shelf rather than show first and then dinner (no particular reason why, other than it just feels right). Our kids are older so keeping them up is not an issue. I know a lot of people really prefer late dinner mostly for not feeling rushed and it being less hectic. Is there truly that much of a difference? Especially when the ship is mostly full? Part of me would like to try the late dining but I don’t know if it’s really worth it. I hate to mess with my seating time and then end up hating it. My family is kind of that, go with what you know and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it people. But we are also willing to give things a try it really seems worth it.

 

[RedSox68]

We have only done the late dining, and for these main reasons: more relaxed, no need to rush back from port, like the show before the dinner so we can get ready for dinner afterwards, and fewer young children.

The one con could be that finishing up dinner at 9:30 or 10 p.m. may be difficult for some. We have learned to take 30 minutes walks before returning to our cabin to let "things settle"

Also, with late dining, you can enjoy an afternoon lunch or partake of the themed buffets without being too full to eat dinner later.

 

[mswhittaker]

We have done both. I actually enjoyed late dining as I feel your day is not rushed, and you can sleep in a bit, and there's some nice downtime before dinner. But eating that late also comes with some heartburn in my experience! My husband prefers earlier dining, so we do that more often.

 

[bbn1122]

https://www.disboards.com/threads/dinner-seating-times.3669181/

This thread was just posted recently and has what you are looking for.

Personally, we prefer late. Even on our first cruise when are boys were 10,12 and 16, it worked well for us.
Like it has been said, no rushing to dinner. You can book afternoon excursions with no worries. We like to chill, have a snack or maybe go to a movie late in the day. If you get hungry around 5p get room service, QS meal or something from Cove Cafe.

When you have late dinner the pool deck, hot tubs and aqua duck are very quiet from about 4:45p till 7p while everyone is at early dinner. One cruise we rode the Aqua Duck 8 times in a row. And another cruise we had the hot tubs all to ourselves.

Good luck.

 

[daedelus]

We've done 5 DCL cruises and always done late dining. We don't mind going to the shows earlier and it makes getting photos between shows and dinner easier (no stains...). Also, we've seen a couple of times where folks who were a little late for the first dining and lingered had to make way so they could seat the late dining group. We love to linger over dinner and have been the last ones in the dining room many times.

In our experience, a lot of families with the younger kids tend to go first seating as well, and since we've got older kids, we like the (comparatively) more toned down and quiet second seating. Not that there aren't any rowdies in second, but there seem to be more in the first seating. Just my 2 cents on that.

Either way, you're getting the same menu and the same great service.

 

[Snowwhyt]

My family has done one early seating and two late seatings.

When we were doing the early seating one person usually had to leave before dessert if we wanted to go to bingo to save the place. Otherwise we had to break up in ones and twos to play and it wasn’t a family activity any longer. We would also share our table with anyone that asked because sometimes you see three people spread out in those large booths. Besides the bingo inconvenience, we needed to get the atrium early for long photo lines because the time after dinner we wanted to have activities so photos would have to be done earlier.
With late seating we were able to go to the show then bingo then dinner one hour activity after and take a walk or shop if we still felt we still have energy. And still found time to get in the photos before dinner

 

[Shanti]

It's nice to get to do the late disembarkation day breakfast. 6:45 is too early for me to be moved out of my stateroom, dressed & wanting to eat.

 

[Trera]

I would love to do late seating as we would also probably feel less rushed in the later afternoon hours if we wanted to skip the show but with a soon to be 5 year old..............we are locked into main dining for a few more years.

 

[MSPeeler]

I would love to do late seating as we would also probably feel less rushed in the later afternoon hours if we wanted to skip the show but with a soon to be 5 year old..............we are locked into main dining for a few more years.

This, and we are also traveling with my in-laws. Late dining wasn’t an option for us with bedtimes. Otherwise I’d have extremely unhappy kids/elders. LOL.

We actually tried late dining night 1 and it was such a disaster we begged to be changed to early dining and they were so gracious with us. Thank goodness!!!

 

[disneyeek]

This is such personal decision really. When we cruised with our 6 year old, late dining was not a problem. But at home, we tend to eat a little on the later side than normal. Plus with the time change for us, it really wasn't that much later. If we needed to we grabbed a snack for DS (and sometimes us, lol) before the shows.

What we really enjoyed was the deck/pool time basically to ourselves if we decided not to go to the show beforehand.

 

[amyg1]

Coming from the West Coast, we've picked late seating on Caribbean cruises, and early seating for Alaska. Then we don't have to adjust our bodies as much.

Having said that, our last trip I did find an issue with late seating. Now that we have a teen, he was having conflicts during dinner. He wanted to work our in the gym, but the only time he was allowed was 9-10PM. There was also the heroes vs villains in the Vibe that he wanted to go to. We rushed his dinner a few times. The service team was happy to accommodate. We had a leisurely dinner, while he rushed to get where he wanted.

If you have early seating and are happy with it, I'd keep it. Much easier to switch to late seating later if you change your mind.

 

[YawningDodo]

How late do you usually stay up on the cruise? If you're planning to go to bed right after late seating lets out, I don't know that I'd want to eat that close to bedtime. Because I usually didn't go to bed until at least midnight, though, late seating was great for me. amyg1 has a very good point about time zones; since I come from the mountain time zone, late dining in the Caribbean meant I was actually eating at my usual dinner time.

 

[ajgardner]

Thank you for all the responses! It sounds as though we won’t know unless we try it...I’m just not sure I dare to give up my main dining spot just yet. One other question - those of you with Vibe/Edge aged kids, did the late DI I g interfere with their schedule? I’d hate for them to miss out on fun stuff at the club because of dinner.

 

[ludari]

I've always preferred the late seating because I always felt the early dinning was just too early for me personally. I'm sure if you gave it a try and didn't like it the DCL staff would be accommodating and change you back to early seating.

 

[StuartMcK]

We had late dining on our first cruise back in 2015 and loved it. Felt we had time to relax in the afternoon. Our son was 7 at that point & he liked that the team from the kids club would come & collect him from dinner to take him off to the clubs - allowing us to have a more leisurely meal.

We've booked to have late dining again on this years WTBA.

 

[RedSox68]

This is such personal decision really. When we cruised with our 6 year old, late dining was not a problem. But at home, we tend to eat a little on the later side than normal. Plus with the time change for us, it really wasn't that much later. If we needed to we grabbed a snack for DS (and sometimes us, lol) before the shows.

What we really enjoyed was the deck/pool time basically to ourselves if we decided not to go to the show beforehand.

With late dining, we also enjoy having the cheese platter or snack late afternoon as we relax in our room. And as a PP pointed out, you get the later disembark breakfast time which is also a plus.

 

[wallskm]

We are late dining people, even with young kids (they were 8, 5, and 2 last cruise). We like to not feel rushed to get ready for dinner and spend more time relaxing by the pool. We love the pool during the hour before the main seating- so quiet! On nights we don’t plan to go to the show we get in tons of time on the aquaduck before we go get ready to eat. Our kids are super flexible when it comes to vacation- often staying up till midnight no problem! After dinner they would go to the club/nursery and DH and I would go to the adult entertainment. Then we’d sleep in the next morning. Worked perfect.

 

[dad of 3 addicted to DCL]

We had late dining on cruise #1 and it was a disaster mainly because we didn't feed the horde mid afternoon (kids were 10, 8 & 8). We switched to first seating for cruises 2-5 and that worked out well. On cruise 6 (kids were 13, 11 & 11) we switched back to second and made sure that everyone ate a mid afternoon large snack/small meal (& mom and dad had a strong coffee!). This really stretched the day out for us and let us do more in the day, not constrained by cutting off the day to get ready for dinner in late afternoon. For cruises 7-10 we're committed to second seating!

This is our experience and tailored to our family etc...

 

[iivye]

We have always done late dining but the most recent cruise my daughter (in the Edge) complained that all the other kids she hung out with had early dining and she had to always leave late dinner early to be on time for the evening programming.

 

[Dug720]

I've always preferred the late seating because I always felt the early dinning was just too early for me personally. I'm sure if you gave it a try and didn't like it the DCL staff would be accommodating and change you back to early seating.

IF there was space. Early is always a hard-to-get thing (I'm with you...way too early for me), so odds are high that the space given up to try late has been filled by someone wanting early. They will try, but they cannot put a table where there is not one.

I will say that if it can be done, there is a high likelihood that you will not be able to keep the same servers - and possibly not even the same rotation.