Dining Room with 3 year old?

[Chai_Tea_4_Me]

Hi all,

 

I'm cruising with my extended family in about 6 weeks! So excited--my husband and I have cruised before, but not since our 3 year old son was born. My question is about the dining room. We are planning on eating there each night. My son is fairly good in restaurants, but I think that the whole 90 minute dining experience is going to be too much for him. Is is possible to take him to dinner with us, have him eat his kids meal stuff in 30-45 minutes, and then excuse ourselves to bring him to the kids club? (This is assuming he will love the kids club, which I don't know yet. If he doesn't like it, we'll probably just have to eat in the buffet, which isn't the end of the world.)

[jam82]

Hi all,

 

I'm cruising with my extended family in about 6 weeks! So excited--my husband and I have cruised before, but not since our 3 year old son was born. My question is about the dining room. We are planning on eating there each night. My son is fairly good in restaurants, but I think that the whole 90 minute dining experience is going to be too much for him. Is is possible to take him to dinner with us, have him eat his kids meal stuff in 30-45 minutes, and then excuse ourselves to bring him to the kids club? (This is assuming he will love the kids club, which I don't know yet. If he doesn't like it, we'll probably just have to eat in the buffet, which isn't the end of the world.)

 

Yes, that is possible. We have a 3 year old too. We're taking him on his 11th cruise next week. We bring him to dinner sometimes, and sometimes not. The waiters usually bring the kids meal with your appetizer so that would work with your plan. We always eat late, so sometimes we feed our son pizza from the lido or order him room service ( He loves room service!) while we get dressed, and then drop him at the kids club on our way to dinner. It is so nice to have an adult dinner once in a while. Some lines also have certain nights when the kids clubs has a kids dinner. We don't use that service, but it is usually available a couple of times per cruise.

 

P.S. Our DS LOVES the kids club. We send him there a lot, but he would spend even more time there if we let him.

 

Have a great cruise!

[SuperCoolOne]

Our older kids ate with us for 2 nights (ages 6 and 7) and our 3 year old ate with us for 3 nights in the MDR. The other nights, they ate with the kids club.

 

We sailed with Carnival on the Fascination and they had crayons and kids menus in the MDR.

 

Our older kids were done after 2 nights but our 3 year old enjoyed it and did pretty well.

[tmitchell82]

Hi all,

 

I'm cruising with my extended family in about 6 weeks! So excited--my husband and I have cruised before, but not since our 3 year old son was born. My question is about the dining room. We are planning on eating there each night. My son is fairly good in restaurants, but I think that the whole 90 minute dining experience is going to be too much for him. Is is possible to take him to dinner with us, have him eat his kids meal stuff in 30-45 minutes, and then excuse ourselves to bring him to the kids club? (This is assuming he will love the kids club, which I don't know yet. If he doesn't like it, we'll probably just have to eat in the buffet, which isn't the end of the world.)

 

Absolutely. We did this a number of times with our DD, who was 5 at the time, on our cruise and it worked out great. Not sure what cruiseline you are going on, but if you have some type of anytime dinning, trying to get the same wait staff really helps with having a child in the dinning room as well. Some will bend over backwards to make the dinner enjoyable for you child.

[Chai_Tea_4_Me]

Thanks for the quick responses! We are going on Carnival, and opted for early seating, so we'll have the same waitstaff every night. We'll only have our family at our table, so I don't have to worry about him being perfect, but I want everyone to be able to enjoy the cruise. We'll have five other kids, but all of them are at least 5 years older than my son. We'll have lots of help with entertaining him, though! :)

 

I think he'll enjoy the kids club. He's used to daycare, so the concept of us leaving him somewhere and coming back for him isn't a new one. He also LOVES the kids room at our local grocery store---he likes having different toys/activities, which should work to our advantage with the kids club as well.

 

I"m starting to get really excited--cruising is such a stress free vacation, compared to other stuff we've planned and done!

[SuperCoolOne]

We did anytime dining and had the same staff for 2 nights but switched up the times the last 2 nights and had different staff. They were all good.

 

We also liked the flexibility of not rushing to get to the dining room if we were busy elsewhere.

[cb at sea]

You'll be surprised at how long younger kids can manage in the dining room....there's alot of activity going on..it keeps them entertained and occupied! The waiters will dote on your child...try it and see how it goes!

[sail731]

When we took our 2 year old daughter, I often brought small things to entertain her in the dining room. Legos, cars, small books, stickers, etc. These kept her occupied while we waited for the food. Also, before dessert came each night we played a game. She was in charge of asking each person at the table (myself, husband, and my parents) "What was your favorite part of the day?" It was fun to share our daily adventures and it was interesting to see what she thought was fun and exciting.

[Kerry's Girls]

There is so much going on in the dining room and different foods being brought out at different times, I've found that my girls have been able to eat full meals in the dining room since they were 13 months. I bring little distractions, and they are usually eating their ice cream while I'm finishing my entree, but I do get to finish my entree! I think you'll find that your child may be able to spend more time at dinner than you're anticipating. And, as others have said, you'll find lots of other parents taking their children to the kids club mid-meal and returning.

 

Have a great time!

 

Best,

Mia

[maggipie]

I don't think you will have a problem, especially with so many others at the table to entertain! We've always chosen main seating, and both my kids (now 6 and 10 but starting at 18 months and 3), have sat through the entire dinner without needing to be excused to the kids clubs. Like sail731, I've had small toys like trains/cars or books/crayons/paper to keep them occupied, even bringing it all in a little backpack that is designated a "dinner time play" bag. And it's true the waitstaff tend to be doting. We had one waiter who was excited to draw a smurf for my daughter, but she was perplexed since there haven't been smurf cartoons in the US since maybe the early/mid 1980's?

[seashell36]

We've done the "get the kids dinner with our appetizer" once or twice. It's not the younger kids that want to leave part way through dinner, with us it's the teenager. On our Carnival Legend cruise the younger children (then 4 and 5) were content watching all of the activities going on in the dining room. It was the 11 and 12 year olds that wanted to go join friends in Camp Carnival.

 

The waitstaff has always made our dining experience with the kids so much fun. They adore the kids and want them to be happy. We've had waiters come up to us in the buffet/grill area at breakfast and lunch to bring the kids cookies or napkin animals.

[A&Jfamily]

Also, the wait staff really, really dotes on the kids. If you say on the first night, for example, that my child always drinks milk with dinner, and would love to start with some fruit, they will have it ready and waiting to be served within minutes of your arrival. Between that and the bread, there are enough nibbles to keep mine occupied and take the edge off that cranky I starving thing that can creap up so fast.

[eh24fan]

On our Miracle cruise in April, our 3yr old and 9 1/2 year old ate dinner in the dining room with our group every night. There were a couple of nights that our 3yr old fell asleep before his dinner even got there though because we wore his little rear end out during the day. LOL

 

Generally speaking though, our kids were both fine throughout the dining experience every night. Our 3 yr old LOVED the waitstaff and couldn't wait to see his new "friends" every night. They doted on both kids. The 3yr old LOVED dinner and the 2 nights he fell asleep, we had to wake him up before we left so he could say goodbye to the waitstaff.

[RoadTripFanatic]

I agree with the other posters you will be surprised at how long they can last through dinner. DD at age 2 used to sit through dinners with us. We would bring some small toys for her to play with or crayons to color. I don't remember any dinner melt downs when she was a toddler on a cruise.

[foxesden1]

we did the disney cruise when our DD was three, it worked great. she only had one melt down at dinner *but that was because she had picked up a doozy of a cold. we just went back to our cabin.. about 20min later our waiter showed up, and had our meals with him! talk about service!

[jtm22372]

we had our 18 month old dd with us everynight in the mdr and was fine .there is so much going on around she forgot to be fussy:D

[kjunea]

On his first cruise, my then 5 year old ate with us only once, then begged to eat with the camp the rest of the time. (It's his vacation too, so we consented. We normally eat dinner as a family every night, so this was a treat for him.) On his second, he ate three times with us, 4 times with camp. (his choice).

 

We brought books and once even brought his portable DVD player with headphones to dinner. That made him very happy! The wait staff (we had anytime dining, but the same table and people each night) were wonderful, making him origami animals, etc. And the magician came around with specific tricks just for him!

[Baxter]

We may have hit on bad service, but it always took just about 2 hours for dinner each night. Our daughter was as good as we could have expected -- but we always brought a book to read, and she brought her Princess little figures to play with (quietly) at the table. Towards the end, we got smart and picked up a slice of pizza from the Lido deck and brought it to the dining room. We couldn't trust that she would eat what we ordered for her (or what she said she wanted at the time)...

[AJI2596]

We ate with our 2 yr old every night in the Dining Room and did the early seating. We never had to leave dinner early. It went better then I could have imagined. We brought the DVD player and some crayons and he did great. I loved having him with us at dinner:)

 

Try it out and see how it goes. You might be surprised.

[sprockie]

You'll be surprised at how long younger kids can manage in the dining room....there's alot of activity going on..it keeps them entertained and occupied! The waiters will dote on your child...try it and see how it goes!

 

I agree. We just took our 3 and 8 year olds and we ate in the dining room every night because they were so well behaved. We didn't think they'd last, but they were A-1.

[Julienatul]

When ours was 3 yr old, she did fine in the dining room with books, dvd player, stickers, quiet activities. A few times we were seated next to the window and she would watch for boats. On carnival they sing and dance each night so that also entertained them.