Mediterranean cruise - early dining?

[mjosburn]

We normally do the early dining on cruises. That’s how we’re scheduled for our Med. cruise this summer. How close will we be cutting it for dinner if we take all day Disney excursions? Thanks for any insight.

 

[cedricandsophie]

We only do late dining on any cruise. Eating at 545 or 615 is way too early for us. On the European cruises we have been on the excursions generally return at about 4 to 5 depending on when the ship is leaving. Some do get back earlier but it depends when they leave. After getting back on ship I like a drink, a shower, do my hair and makeup and to put on nice clothes for dinner. That’s another reason we don’t do early dinnng. It’s just not relaxing.

 

[PrincessShmoo]

We normally do the early dining on cruises. That’s how we’re scheduled for our Med. cruise this summer. How close will we be cutting it for dinner if we take all day Disney excursions? Thanks for any insight.

We typically do early dining on cruises. However, for our Med cruise we did late seating. Some of the places (where we had all day excursions) were at least an hour from the port. So, on occasion, we were just getting back to the ship sometime during the early seating time. We found that worked best (for us). Of course, we had the luxury of "if we miss something (like a show), we were on the following WBTA to catch it on the next cruise"

 

[cheermom2four]

When we were on our Med cruise ion 2017, we had late dining and glad we did. A lot of the excursions came back and cut it close or didnt make it back in time for early dining. It was just too rushed for us and we saw how frustrated and razzled our cruise friends were trying to get to dinner on time after a long day in Rome or Florence. They arent close to the port so thats why the excursions ran long. Just keep that in mind.

 

[fredandkell]

We had early dining and it was fine. On the big all-day ports (e.g. Pisa/Florence, Rome) Cabana's is open for a buffet. So if you're too tired and you can't face a sit-down dinner that's an option.

 

[kiford]

We always did late dining but we found that on the Med and Baltic cruises, they often shifted the early and late dining times when in port to slightly later times to accommodate people on tours.

 

[LAX]

We always did late dining but we found that on the Med and Baltic cruises, they often shifted the early and late dining times when in port to slightly later times to accommodate people on tours.

Was that on a daily basis & predetermined? I prefer early dining because I can't go to bed with a fairly full stomach & I don't want to sleep late.

LAX

 

[ALBA]

Most of the Med cruises that I have seen the navigators for have dinner seating as 6pm for main and 8.30pm for late.

We usually do early but in May we are on the Med cruise and with the long port days and the kids being a little older we have decided to try late. If we decide we want to eat earlier we can skip the MDR and go to Cabanas, which is not a buffet in the evening but has the same menu as the MDR.
Alba

 

[mjosburn]

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. This board sure helps so much, & I greatly appreciate it!

 

[kiford]

Was that on a daily basis & predetermined? I prefer early dining because I can't go to bed with a fairly full stomach & I don't want to sleep late.

LAX

IIRC, every day the Navigator stated what the time for both seatings would be and it was adjusted based on whether it was a port day or not and presumably on what times a lot of the port tours got back. They were always around the same time but could be adjusted by 15-30 minutes or so.

 

[Chrissy-Mickey]

We had early dining on last year's Mediterranean cruise. No problems at all; our Rome day was a late one, but the servers expect that and it was no problem taking your time to change for dinner and be 30 minutes late.

 

[anjuan]

I also prefer early dinning and had the same question as you before our med cruise last year. As others have said, dinner is a little later in the Med and they are used to people coming in late, etc. The only day that we were a little late was for Rome day and it was no problem at all. The night before our waiters actually encouraged us to go ahead and still come to dinner if we were running late. It wasn't a problem and I was glad I had kept early dinner. The touring days were long and I usually went to bed right after the shows and was glad I wasn't going to sleep on a just full stomach.

 

[LAX]

IIRC, every day the Navigator stated what the time for both seatings would be and it was adjusted based on whether it was a port day or not and presumably on what times a lot of the port tours got back. They were always around the same time but could be adjusted by 15-30 minutes or so.

Thanks and that's good to know. I might be booking a Med itinerary when the summer 2020 schedule is released.

LAX

 

[anricat]

We are actually normally late dining people, but with the shifted dining times, the late dining seemed too much later so we switched to early dining. We were actually glad to have early because it was slightly later (6 PM I believe). We never had a problem getting back in time. I think we were maybe 5-10 minutes late one evening, but it was fine. We pretty much went back to our room after dinner and collapsed into bed, we were so tired!

 

[PsylockeSmythe]

We normally do the early dining on cruises. That’s how we’re scheduled for our Med. cruise this summer. How close will we be cutting it for dinner if we take all day Disney excursions? Thanks for any insight.

We were on the Med last summer; and had early dinning. We only booked 2 full day excursions and on the days that we would be arriving back to the ship after or close to the 6pm dinner time; we made sure our servers knew if we would be arriving late and it was never a problem. As long as you let your servers know roughly when you should be arriving; showing up late should not be an issue.

If I remember right; on one of the nights we didn't get to our seats until just after 7pm and we still got all of the courses and didn't feel rushed to finish.

Was that on a daily basis & predetermined? I prefer early dining because I can't go to bed with a fairly full stomach & I don't want to sleep late.
LAX

On our Med cruise last summer; the dinning times were 6:15pm for early and 8:30pm for late for the whole cruise. They didn't change the times; based on if it was a port or sea day.

Psy

 

[DisneyHelen]

We did early dining in 2013 and made it to Dinner every night.they did not mind if you were a bit late with excursions.

 

[Barbamama]

I remember that many of our excursions were very early in the morning, so it makes for long days when you finish dinner at 10 pm and need to meet your tour group at 7:00. However, I am still glad we had second seating and would not have changed it because it allowed us to get the most out of each port.

 

[Jason Martin]

We did early dining and there were some nights that we literally dropped our bags in the room and went to dinner. They were more flexible with late arrivals compared to other sailings

 

[babyruth]

great question but now you have me thinking I need to try and switch to early dining!!! gah!!! we took late because of thinking that we'd rather make sure the little one can see the show earlier if she couldn't make it through a seated dinner...but it didn't occur to me that dinner would take an hour and a half?! not finishing until 10pm!!?

 

[disneyfaninaz]

We did early dining. For the 2 nights that we did DCL all day excursions, we simply went straight to our MDR. Our serving staff was great and understanding as most of the passengers would arrive late to dinner. The MED cruise also has early dinner at 6:00 rather than 5:45 on other cruises.