The Case for Late Dining

Traditionally, families with children and senior citizens have chosen early dining in such overwhelming numbers that assignable seats filled early, possibly discouraging late arrivals from booking at all when they learn they can't get their preferred dining time.

Mainstream cruise lines have increasingly embraced open dining, which at first glance seems to eliminate that problem by promising guests they can dine any time they want.

In actual practice, however, lots of people show up for dinner between 6:30 and 8:00 PM, which can create lines of aggravated, hungry people who refuse to show up before 6 or after 8:15 (essentially the usual assigned dining times), because, damn it, they were told they could dine any damn time they wanted.  'Twas not always thus, but it definitely is sometimes, depending on the passengers.

I would like to present the case for Late Dining.

The hip crowd already knows about Late Dining, because they like to stay up late to dance to the pounding beat of the disco and enjoy all the great live entertainment in various nightclubs on board.  It's an entirely different world.

Most families and seniors have gone night-night by 10:30 PM, leaving the hip to enjoy the floating resort free of the maddening crowds.

Admittedly, it might be harder to wake up for an early morning port of call, but a nap in the afternoon will keep you from burning out, whether you snooze in a lounge chair on the beach or by a pool, or upon returning to the ship from a full day of touring amazing historic sites.

While you may be used to eating dinner at 6 PM back home, there's absolutely no reason to stick with that schedule on a cruise, especially if you're in a different time zone.  Your digestive system can adjust.

In return, you enjoy less crowded venues throughout the ship, and in particular for the big production shows.

You don't have to stay up all night to take advantage of that prime time between 10 PM and 1 AM.

Increasingly, I hear cruisers complain about crowded shows on some ships, saying they can't find seats even when they show up thirty minutes early.

Obviously, the strategy that worked five years ago to get good seats for the production shows (and probably angered people who showed up 5 minutes early for shows back then) no longer works.

The ramifications of any time dining have spread.  Without an imperative for half the people to have dinner and then go to the show scheduled to coincide with their dining times, it becomes a free-for-all grabbing seats for early shows.

In a way, it is kind of humorous, seeing grannies, who probably yelled at their kids for playing video games twenty years ago, sitting in the theater playing Candy Crush on their iPads as they hold seats for friends and family who have only a 50% chance of showing up at all.

Let her have her fun.  Switch to late dining and go to the inevitably less crowded late show after you've finished your second dessert and after dinner coffee.

Getting to know your wait staff and fellow guests at dinner is one of the great traditional pleasures of a cruise, and being on assigned dining inevitably results in a very pleasant, leisurely multi-course meal, the perfect preamble to an evening "on the town" while cruising to your next great port.

And if you definitely still want early dining or any time dining, hopefully more people taking late dining will clear some room for you.