Dinner Seating - Likes/Dislikes

[ljt064]

A newbie to carnival. We are booking the Dream for 1/8/10, and have to decide between early, late or open. :confused: I'd love you likes or dislikes about seatings. Its me and my wife, plus our 2 kids (12 and 9). We ate at the early seating on Disney Criuise, but that was 5 years ago so everyone is now older.:eek:

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Thanks!! :D

[BigRed93]

A lot of people like the open seating for flexibility and works well with smaller parties. I don't personally prefer how it works - like traditional and we do late seating when we can. However, we don't have kids and work long hours at home, so eating at 8-8:30 is regular time for us. Also allows for time to relax after ports, shower, nap, cocktail, whatever, without feeling rushed.

[azkcruizers]

My kids are 10, 12, and 15 now...but we have cruised the last several years with them and always enjoy the late seating......for several reasons

We are very port intensive and by the time we get back on board everyone needs to chill for a bit and shower up for dinner.

With all the food onboard I find myself still full at the early seating time...

On sea days I like to relax and the thought of watching the clock and pulling everyone in at a certain time to get ready reminds me of the schedule I'm on at home!

So for us late seating does seem to work out better, but I will admit that the kids have been tired at times :)

[Synthetic]

Well, I'll chime in here... We are Karaoke buffs so we always get early seating now to take part in Karaoke...

 

I['ve done both... no real difference. Early seating sometimes gets in the way of ports.

[FlaGrl4Evr]

We were also very torn between traditional and Anytime. We originally chose traditional and then changed to AT, mainly for the flexability. I do admit that the one thing we were really looking forward to was sitting at a large table and meeting other nice folks and also having the same wait team each night. Not to mention the singing/dancing waiters. :(

[Rirruto]

I've always picked late seating because I didn't want to feel rushed trying to make early seating, especially after spending the day on the island or by the pool. Gave us time to relax, rest, shower, and dress at a leisurely pace for the late seating.

 

We've picked anytime dining for our upcoming cruise. I love the fact that I wont have to deal with rushing to go to the Maitre D after embarkation to ask for a table for 2 and also like that if we happen to be hungry a little earlier or later in the evening, we can pretty much go whenever we want.

[3Hearts]

I agree, we much rather have late seating. Just so we do not feel rushed. Our son much rather eat at Camp Carnival anyways. So we take him at 6 I think and he can eat and have fun with other kids.

 

Also, there is always food around to help with hungry pains.

[okgirl]

I don't have children, but have been seated with kids the ages of yours several times. I think Carnival does an excellent job of matching up dining companions. For the most part we've been at large tables with other singles and occasionally at a large table with a family.

 

Having said that. Since I tend to eat in the MDR for every meal that's offered. We prefer Your Time Dining in the evening. I don't mind being seated at a large table with strangers during the day, but after all that conversation I'm ready to be alone with my sister in the evening.

 

I also really like the flexability of YTD. We don't have to rush back from the beach to get cleaned up, we get to eat more sushi since we can choose to have that as a pre-dinner appetizer then eat around 8:30ish. It just really appeals to our style of cruising.

[DragonMouse]

This last trip we did the "any time" dining on the Ecstasy. It actually worked out great. The only two nights we had to wait a little were the first and second nights (maybe 10 minutes at the most)...Otherwise we got right in like any regular resturant and there were 7 of us.

 

Sometime during the day we caught up with each other and decided on a time and just met at that time.

 

I kinda preferred "early" rather than the "late" dining we had the first time simply because there were "activities" we wanted to do.

[mali06]

Well, we are two 61 year olds who love early seating. The one time we had anytime dining was on NCL and we went to the dining room and signed up for the same table every night at the same time. So we had the same effect as traditional. We do early seating because we are very active during the day, are used to eating at that time everyday anyway, and like to have the option of seeing the different entertainment choices after dinner and going to bed when we poop out as we will be up early again the next day (usually 6AM). Just works for our lifestyle.

[laumicmah]

We've done all 3 options. We did early seating on Disney in 2007 with kids and inlaws, late seating on Carnival 3/10 with just DH and I and open (your time) seating on Carnival 8/10 with kids and another family (party of 9). I liked open seating best. Even with a party of 9, we NEVER had a wait. It was nice to go whenever we were ready. The one negative was that we had different wait staff each night. You can request the same staff, but we were told it would be a bit of a wait (since we were a party of 9), so we just got seated with whoever had availabilty. Another possible negative is that some nights the service was really bad, like one night we were about to get the sauce for our prime rib and sour cream for our potatoes when the guy ran off to do the waiter dance and never came back, nor did our head waiter. After 15-20 minutes we had to grab someone who wasn't one of our staff to give us the sauce and sour cream and then eat the food cold(don't know if the open seating throws the normal flow off wack). I like the late seating the least. We would have a couple of drinks before dinner and maybe get 1 with dinner and then dinner would take so long that when it was over we were very sleepy and just wanted to go to bed (even though it was only @ 9:45). We also had a tough time making any of the shows. So, I would do open and then early seating, but never again will I do late seating.

[imdawn]

We didn't know Anytime Dining was an option until right before we left for our cruise-then it was all filled up. (I am going to request this for the next cruise)

 

So we chose Late Dining-we eat late at home anyways.

We don't have any kids and we are kind of private people like to do our own thing and not be scheduled...some nights we even skipped the Main Dining Room.

 

Thanks to Cruise Critic Boards-I was advised that if you wanted a private table for 2-all you had to do was as soon as you got onboard the ship-go to MDR and request one-it was nice to dine with just my husband every night and not a bunch of strangers....towards the middle of the cruise I did say it would have been nice to mingle more and meet people, just then something went down the wrong pipe and I coughed for like 3 minutes...so NEVERMIND :o

[JRock59]

Don't like late as we feel "to Full" and don't sleep good that way.....:o

 

Like early but at times it can be a rush to get there in time.....:)

 

LOVE "My Time" as it fits our schedule every day! :D

[klmorg]

For us, anytime dining is the ONLY way to go. It's a personal choice... weigh your options & what's important to you. We like the flexibility of going to dine when we are hungry, and when we are ready, at anytime between say 5:30 pm and 9:15 pm. We don't care for trying to keep on schedule while on vacation. And we are apparently anti-social enough so that sitting with others that we have nothign in common with is not that appealling to us. :) We meet lots of fun people along the way regardless. I'm sure you'll be happy, whichever you decide. Enjoy!!

[travel girl23]

I think this is truly a personal preference. Some people prefer to eat late and others like to eat early when at home. We always eat early and prefer the early dining. We did have late dining on one cruise and while we really liked our table mates and waiters, we did not like eating that late at night. We do prefer assigned seating and eating at the same time with the same waiters every night. We are not the least bit interested in Your Time Dining. We don't buy the argument that there is not enough time after a port stop to get ready for dinner. We have always had time before the early seating. So, I guess it all boils down to what you and your family like to do.

Hope you have a great cruise on the Dream.

[zqvol]

IMO Anytime is the way to go. It offers the best of early and late, without any of the disadvantages.

 

You can usually have the same table each night, and the same wait staff the entire cruise. The main advantage is that the time you eat, is determined by what works best for you and your family.

 

The only real disadvantage is that you are not put at a table with strangers each night. (To some of us that is a big advantage!)

[TNM]

I don't have children, but have been seated with kids the ages of yours several times. I think Carnival does an excellent job of matching up dining companions. For the most part we've been at large tables with other singles and occasionally at a large table with a family.

 

I didn't know that...So 2 of us couples travelling together will most likely be seated with other adult couples or singles? :)

[laumicmah]

I didn't know that...So 2 of us couples travelling together will most likely be seated with other adult couples or singles? :)

Yes.

[golfadj]

The best part of cruising to us is the evening entertainment.

 

By doing early seating have the whole evening to enjoy it.

[rbabiak]

We just cruised the Dream on 8/28/10 and did the 6pm (early seating) but have 3 kids( ages 3,7,14). Early seating forced us to go to dinner and it was early so the kids could go back to camp or do whatevert hey wanted. Aslo, if you do the 6pm dining in the Crimson Dining Room tell Draggo Mr Babiak said hi!

[N2DFIRE]

We had anytime dining on the dream. That is the way to go for us. We got to choose wait staff and seating every night. We always went with the same wait staff, since we were happy with the service. On some nights we chose different tables. The kids like a booth, the booths are on the inside next to the railing over looking the downstairs dining. Except on formal nights we chose table seating. Like hanging dinner jacket on the back of chairs.

 

Pros:

Choose table mates.

Time of Dining.

Choose servers and table location(within the anytime area)

 

Cons:

Can't have your favorite drink waiting on you at your table.

Sometimes a wait.

[ljt064]

After much debate between the DW and I, we went with the Early Seating. We like having waiters who know what we like and having drinks waiting for us. My daughters most memorable line from the Disney Cruise was "I want Pablo to fill my belly". Let's hope our wait staff can fill all of our bellies :D.

[ajmac01]

By doing the anytime dining, do you miss out on the cruise dining experience (the sing and dancing waiters)? For some I'm sure this is a good thing.

[Tbay-eh]

I can't see why you would miss out on the entertainment, you are seated in the same dining room - your wait staff just aren't dancing. You can take as long as you wish to dine - be gone lickety split or nice and leisurely. I don't need my drink waiting for me, don't need it that badly plus I may just change my mind one evening. I get to meet new people every night, not that I have ever had bad tablemates - they have always been great. I will let you know how it goes after our cruise as this is the first time it has been offered when we cruised.

[ajmac01]

I realize you are in the same dining room, but do they do their song and dance the same time every evening or does it change? Do they even do it every night?