Odds of little kids in the MDR....

[darlacat]

...first cruise is coming up fairly soon. We scheduled the late dinner seating, hoping that there will be fewer or no little kids there. Is this a good strategy? I love toddlers as much as the next person, (raised a couple myself), but would prefer to minimize the potential to hear screaming, crying, whining whilst trying to enjoy a nice dinner. I'm hoping that this is too late for most little kids - is it?

[cruzinlisa]

I have a small toddler and we do ATD. I would not do fixed dining at all (toddlers are too unpredictable), but if I did, I would not do late dining. From what I hear on here, most people with small children do early or ATD. But if your cruise has a lot of small children, you never know. Hopefully their parents would not allow them to scream. I know ours got fussy a couple of times, but if we could not get her calmed within a few minutes, we took her out. But that was in the MDR. She did have fits elsewhere unfortunately. :(

[Flying Scot]

We usually dine later on in anytime dining and sometimes our two young ones will be with us if they dont fancy camp carnival for some reason.

[crewsweeper]

Difficult to say. You are traveling in the early portion of the family vacation season. Some families and groups with lots of younger children use the Lido for most of their evening meals. Others let the children stay in Camp Carnival. Others though will drag the kids kicking and screaming into the MDR with them. If you are using ATD, you can request a smaller table each time and perhaps avoid being near largertables with children. If you have seated dining, and find yourselfs either at a large table with children or near a larger table with unruly children, you can reuqest the maitre d' to find you a more suitable table.

 

In my expereince, while there are occassionally crying outbursts from babies, or squriming kiddos about, most(not all) children are relatively well behaved at dinner. Not all angels but not all terrors either.

[darlacat]

....if we were travelling with kids, we'd do anytime dining as well - like the earlier poster said, toddlers can be most unpredictable!

 

I don't want anyone to think I'm a kid hater - if we were, we wouldn't be on a cruise! But with so many dinner choices, I'm just hoping we've chosen the one least attractive to families with little ones - just so we can have more adult company for a couple of hours over dinner.

 

I expect that when we have lunch and breakfast - there will be little kids everywhere - which would not bother me in the least. If I had little ones of my own at home, they would be there too.

[irishnyc]

Hope you're not on the same ship as us. We'll have 5 under 4 with us, and we plan to go to the MDR most nights.

 

Happy sailing!

[sanmarcosman]

Yes, your strategy in general is a good one.

[OCruisers]

With LATE seating you won't find very many young children.

 

You made a good decision.

 

LuLu

~~~~

[bjd2]

Lol, our first cruise (late dining) the table next to us had 8 people every night and one of them was 2-3 years old by my guess. To entertain him they gave him both lids to the butter dishes and let him bang them together (picture the monkey banging symbols) until dinner arrived. I couldn't believe that they did that. It took all of my might not to say something to them. :rolleyes:

[Weezerwoo]

I always do late dining, and cannot remember being bothered by anyone! Maybe because I was having so much fun at my table!

You'll be fine!

[Mistyhon]

Seems like a good strategy. We're planning to bring our 6 and 3 year old to early seating with us (unless they would rather do camp.)

[skittl1321]

We have done late dining twice. We have never had our dinner interupted by children misbehaving.

 

Though to be honest, in 21 days on Carnival (I know, not that many) I can only think of a single instance where I was annoyed by the behavior of a child, and their parents complete inability to do anything.

[guxu]

How many times did you hear screaming, crying, whining kids in MDR? I do not recall any in our past cruises. And we always cruise when school is off because we always cruise with our kids. So you bet there were tons of kids in our cruises. Maybe we were just lucky.

[chriscol20]

We take our little one (3) to Camp Carnival. No reason to ruin others dining experience by having my kid throwing silverware and spilling drinks. Plus, I like to relax and enjoy and not worry about lil Johnny!

[WetToes]

...first cruise is coming up fairly soon. We scheduled the late dinner seating, hoping that there will be fewer or no little kids there. Is this a good strategy? I love toddlers as much as the next person, (raised a couple myself), but would prefer to minimize the potential to hear screaming, crying, whining whilst trying to enjoy a nice dinner. I'm hoping that this is too late for most little kids - is it?

 

 

You've probably made a good decision, ... but you do realize that it's not only toddlers who scream, cry and whine, don't you? ;)

Happy sailin'. :)

[WOWGirl]

When first cruised with our daughter she was 3 years old. We chose late dining option because we figured she will pass out right after dinner. Some nights she feel asleep at the table, couldnt even make it through dinner.

 

We have always gone with Late or ATD. Even with the kids.

[Athankfulheart]

I think that late dining is a pretty safe bet for an older crowd. I will say that I don't remember any loud children in the dining rooms on any of our cruises. Loud adults seem to outnumber loud children in my experience. The only time that I saw children doing something that they shouldn't was a family who kept sending their 6-12 year olds to save rows of seats for shows. It was annoying, but I felt sorry for the kids. They knew what they were doing was wrong :( and they were very nervous.

[WOWGirl]

On our next cruise we chose late seating also. However, I was afraid to see a lot of old men with hair in their ears. So I tried to avoid them during the early bird special....Just kidding..I wanted to make a funny! :p

[Perini3]

You might be on the wrong cruise line.

[larkz]

I haven't seen outrageous kid behavior in the dining room on any cruise so far. I was late dining on one, and early dining on the other three recent cruises.

 

That isn't to say it won't happen. But I think most parents who have3 kids that absolutely refuse to cooperate would be exasperated fairly quickly by the 90-120 minute meals.

 

Late dining does have fewer kids. Either way, it's wasted effort to worry about.

[Elaine5715]

Most toddlers prefer early dining. Needs to chow and hit up the Casio before the crap table gets hot ...

[thomarvin]

We had someone comment on my sons behavior on the Lido deck one day at lunch. It totally ruined my whole trip. He has autism and had dropped his cupcake and started to cry. Mind you we were on the Lido deck at lunchtime with lots of other people. Some guy approched my son and said, "Some of us would like a quiet lunch" What an A**. I just started crying told him that my son has autism and ran back to our cabin. He is a very well behaved boy and was just upset about his cake. We ALWAYS take him out of a situation if he gets upset and would expect the same from others.

[misguidedangel]

Early seating for young kids would be better than later. The last cruise I did we had a whole family with four generations of the family travelling. They were three, six, seven, and 10. The kids all behaved--as in they all were respectful and didn't act out or misbehave. The waiters we had were very patient and they seemed to love that the kids where there. Both had kids at home and they treated the girls like little princesses.

 

Now, some parents aren't as attentive or have granny, and great granny to make sure they behave with them....those are the kids you want to go to Camp Carnival for dinner.....

[rprice11]

As a parent o three toddlers, we chose early seating because my kids could never had made it to 9. Several nights they didn't make it to 6. Slept in their strollers during dinner. That said I think most parents of toddlers would choose the early dinner.

[chriscol20]

I send my kids to save seats, what's wrong with that!