What are the pros and cons to both dining options?

[michellecru]

Early or Late? Thanks

[leighj]

EARLY:

 

IMHO, the main PRO for the early seating is getting dinner over with at an hour that's better for your digestion and leaves the rest of the night for doing whatever you choose to do. The main CON (for me) is that it can potentially create a rushed situation that I like to avoid at all costs on vacation! More than once, I've been in a situation where I feel like we need to hurry through a day in port to race back to the ship, shower, change, and be on time for the early seating.

 

LATE: Not to be redundant, but a PRO here is not being as rushed to get ready and show up particularly on days where you're in port. Another thing that could be looked at as a pro or a con is that there tend to be fewer kids at the later seating. Anyway, a potential CON is that dinners often take a couple hours, so that puts you at about 10:00 for getting on with what's left of the evening. We didn't mind having late nights, so it wasn't a big deal, but a lot of people might opt for shutting down early, which means going to bed on a full stomach!

[judy&steve]

The one time we had early seating (25 years ago on our first cruise so we didn't know any better) we felt very pressured to get out of the dining room so they could get ready for the next seating. So, it was a rush in and a rushed feeling to get out. Never did another early seating again.

 

Judy

[Merion_Mom]

Although we are in general late people, and nocturnal by nature, we have always preferred main seating. We tried late seating once, just to see if we would like it better, and we didn't. We like to have the rest of the evening stretching out before us, after we have eaten. We prefer to go to the show AFTER dinner rather than before. We have NEVER been rushed in the dining room, no matter how long we lingered, though we had good enough manners not to linger so long that we hampered the setup for the next round.

 

That having been said, there was a particular situation on the Enchantment this summer, and many other cruisers (different weeks) have reported the same thing. The show for main seating cruisers was ALWAYS crowded, OVERcrowded, with major battles to find seats, and the need to get there earlier and earlier to get ANY seat. The other show time, for late diners, was NEVER crowded, much less dog-eat-dog grab-a-seat.

 

This seems to be unique to Enchantment, because of the stretch. They added more passenger capacity without adding seats in the theatre. It just seemed to get bunched up in one show. One speculation has been that this is due to many older cruisers who eat early, go to the show, then conk out.

 

Either way, you'll love your cruise, so good luck!

 

Carol

[Chevdiver]

we opted for late for several reasons. 1. no rush getting back to ship on port days with plenty of time to shower and dress for dinner (DW liked that) 2. Less kids at the late seating. most all the families with kids opted for the early seating. Since this was our first vacation w/o kids, we opted for a more adult scenario for dinner. 3. we had early scuba excursions so we just used our dinner time to visit and wind down , then one last stroll around the ship before turning in for the night.

 

Had we not had excursion that required adequate rest, then an early dinner and more night life might have been more fun.

 

I guess it just really depends on how you see yourselves spending your evenings.

[katiel53]

We prefer late seating. At home we don't eat until 7 at least and many times it's later than that. We did try first seating once, and it had tons of kids and old people. We also felt rushed. By the way, we aren't young ourselves, but don't we don't go to the "early bird specials" either.

 

Also, when we are in port, we don't like to have to rush back from the shore excursions or whatever to get ready for dinner early. We also enjoy having a cocktail before dinner, so we allow time for that.

 

I guess the only good thing about early dinner for me is that you have the whole evening to enjoy yourselves doing whatever. We are not early to bed people, and the shows aren't that important to us. We spend time in the casino so late dinner works for us.

 

Whichever you choose, I am sure you will be happy. Enjoy your cruise.

 

Katie

[cruz1234]

Depending on who you are travelling with. We had late seating one time and DD would miss the kids getting to the club and by the time she got there, they had all grouped up and she was always the late comer trying to squeeze in. We opted to eat early as a family and then she could go off and meet the other kids. Then we can go off to the show.and other activites. This has really worked great for us.

 

When we did late seating the show was before dinner..we missed every single show! We make ourselves get ready for dinner to be on time, but we never got motivated early enough to be ready to see the shows. I remember the good loe days when they had 3 shows..If you had late seating you could see the show after that seating. That was nice then you didn't feel rushed and got to see the shows. So if you plan on seeing the shows then you'll still be getting ready early for either the show or dinner.

 

We do feel a little rushed on port days to get back and get ready for dinner, but if it was a place we really didn't want to leave could always order room service or go to Windjamer.

[KruzDude]

I ditto the late votes ... no rushing around! :)

[WeLuvVacation]

Wife and I prefer early seating.

 

Always have had plenty of time on shore days to get freshened up, changed and down to the DR. Never felt rushed during the early seating. If you get there promply at your assigned time you have 2 hours to finish. IMO plenty of time.

 

Like to have the rest of the night to do what we want. Eating at 8:30 and finishing at 10:30 seems way too late.

 

But then different strokes for different folks. If you like late seating, go for it!

 

It IS your vacation!

 

The ONLY requirement is that you have AS MUCH FUN AS YOU CAN HANDLE, AND MORE!:D

[wrp96]

Late for me. All my cruises have been on East Coast time, which is an hour ahead for me. Late seating is much closer to my natural eating time.

 

One pro is that when everybody else is clearing out of the pool deck to get ready for early seating (most of the families with kids), you have free reign over the pool deck and your choice of seats.

 

I also agree about not having to rush back from excursions. We usually get back mid afternoon, have a light snack, maybe a nap. Then as everybody is going to early seating, we are getting up, getting dressed, watching the sunset, having a pre-dinner cocktail, etc.

[Merion_Mom]

Oh, Wrona reminded me............

 

I check the port times when thinking about which seating to choose. On our last cruise, we had to be back on board at times like 3:30, 4:00, 4:00, 4:30. No issues with "enough time to reboard after excursions/time ashore and get ready for dinner" for early seating AT ALL.

 

So, I hope that that helps the OP in making a decision.

[mspink98]

We’ve always had late, so I can’t speak to early with experience, only perception. We choose late because we don’t want to feel rushed, especially on port days. With the exception of a stop in Aruba when we were in port till 11PM, we have always had time to enjoy the island and still get back in time for dinner. We heard people who were at early seating having to leave the bar where we were watching the sunset in order to be back in time for dinner. Not the end of the world to eat elsewhere on ship or in port, but in our case last time, we were on a very tight budget and eating on the ship was the best way to not go over that budget. Checking the port times, as Mom suggested, is a great idea. Also, we notice that our internal clocks seem to change while on vacation, whether cruise or land based. At home, we’d rarely think about eating at 8;30, but on vacation, it just seems to happen that way, even when we don’t have an assigned dinner time.

[vickiw0318]

I vote early. I always thought that I would feel rushed getting ready for dinner - like so many others have mentioned - but I found that this was not the case. I have had late seating on most of my cruises and found that when I did get back on board, I felt like I had to eat something to tide my self over to dinner time. Just what I needed on a cruise - a fourth meal. With late seating, you don't even want to think about looking at a midnight buffet. When we were part of a mixed age group on our last cruise, we found that late seating was too late for the 70 somethings and timed badly for the young singles who were already in the midst of varied activities. Out of a table for 12, only 4 of us ended up showing up for dinner. The early seating left the evening wide open.

[nascarfans_wny]

We'll be early this time around -- the preference of our "cruise director" (Kathy's sister) and the rest of the family.

 

We felt pretty rushed on port days on Sovereign, but on our other three cruises were disappointed that after late seating we never had any room for much more than a tiny taste of the midnight buffet. I'm looking forward to having the evening ahead of us after dinner this time, and the option to enjoy one of the midnight buffets. We'll just have to plan our excursions to be back onboard a bit earlier in three of our ports -- we're in San Juan from 2pm to 8pm on Tuesday, so I think we'll schedule a late dinner at Portofino for that night.

[Max Circus]

Dined late on first two cruises and have requested same for Jewel in 01/06. On port days we loved having more time to get ready and then relaxing with a cocktail or two before dinner. One "con" is that you won't be hungry enough to want to eat at the buffet. For us this was actually a pro. We didn't like the buffet on our first cruise - didn't seem like the food was very fresh. There was so much pre-cruise build-up that I suppose we were destined to be disappointed. Went to look at the one on Navigator. Nice setup but wasn't worth waiting in line with the masses of people - and like I said we had just eaten a couple of hours before. Nothing ruins my appetite more than watching "starving" people pile loads of food on their plates. You know many of them won't eat it all. Very wasteful and just plain gross.

[gerif]

I vote for late also - we did early for the first time this summer because we were traveling with DGS. The only "pros" I could think of were having extra casino time after dinner and I didn't eat as much because we didn't have our usual late afternoon cocktail and snack. Other than that, I totally vote for late seating! Haven't attended the midnight buffets for the past several cruises - who wants to stand in long lines for picked over food that's been sitting out for way too long? DH does usually go to take pictures, but not to eat.