I wish DCL offered a dinner buffet

[hnthomps]

MDR dinner is too long for little kids without entertainment, so on the Fantasy it's fine in Animators, and ... yeah, it was hard for us on our first two cruises (kids were 2&5 then 4&7). The waiters were awesome and did everything they could, including bringing the kids' food first, and swapping in things they knew our kids liked, but some of those nights were a struggle. We eat dinner together almost every night at home, but that's a 30 minute affair. We ended up just bringing coloring books for them most nights and crossing our fingers.
It should be easier this time. now that they are bigger,
It's not that I want a buffet, per se, as we skip the Cabanas buffet for most lunches, sticking with pool side instead. The lines are hard, people are rude, etc, it's not a great experience at lunch. I can only assume the same would be true of dinner. I just wish there were a shorter option for the MDRs -- but I know so much of this is tied to just the reality of life on a cruise ship, it's hard to customize.

 

[Jsoenning]

We did eat up on the pool deck one night and we really enjoyed ourselves - my DH said it was his favorite meal that week! We loved not rushing to get changed for dinner and our kids had the slide to themselves! It felt like we gained so much extra time that night and were able to do many more things! My DH said if we do another DCL cruise he would want to eat most meals up on the pool deck again. I wouldn't necessarily mind this but there's not a ton of choice if you're eating there every night!

We love skipping a MDR meal for the pool deck each cruise. Although on our last cruise in December on the Disney Wonder, the kids pool closed really early, I want to say 5 or no later than 6 pm each night. We often skip ports of call and do the pool as well but in this case the kids pool didn't open until I want to say 11 am or noon. The pool by the outdoor movie was open longer in both cases but not the kids pool.

Glad to see from your post that maybe it was just a one-off for our cruise. On Disney Fantasy we rode the Aqua ride over and over with hardly any line, and it was awesome with the lights at night.

 

[StarSeven7]

We love skipping a MDR meal for the pool deck each cruise. Although on our last cruise in December on the Disney Wonder, the kids pool closed really early, I want to say 5 or no later than 6 pm each night. We often skip ports of call and do the pool as well but in this case the kids pool didn't open until I want to say 11 am or noon. The pool by the outdoor movie was open longer in both cases but not the kids pool.

Glad to see from your post that maybe it was just a one-off for our cruise. On Disney Fantasy we rode the Aqua ride over and over with hardly any line, and it was awesome with the lights at night.

I do think the twist & shout closed early - maybe at 6? I don't remember the exact time but we weren't sitting right by the slide - we were up on deck 10 just down from where you climb the stairs to the slide but we couldn't see it from there. We sent our kids over to ride and they didn't come back for quite a while so we went to search for them and realized the slide was closed but didn't know where they went! We searched all over and finally found them - apparently they had forgotten where we were sitting and found the slide closed and didn't know where to go! Lol!