Disney Magic 12nt. British Isles
Sunday, July 9, 2017 – Dover, England
Night 1 ……...........
(our weather July 9, 2017 – sunny high 77 °F / 25 °C)
(weather Sept 2, 2017 – clear high 64 °F / 17 °C)
Rotational Dining – Take I
If you’re new to cruising, here’s a brief intro per the DCL website:
https://disneycruise.disney.go.com/faq/dining-food-beverages/rotational-dining/
Dining, Food & Beverages – Frequently Asked Questions
Q. What is rotational dining?
A. Rotational dining is the Disney Cruise Line way of making sure that all Guests get to enjoy each of the 3 themed dining venues while on board.
You will receive your restaurant schedule upon boarding. Then, each evening, you, your tablemates and servers will rotate to a different restaurant. As you rotate, the same wait staff—who know your preferences—will serve you each night while you get to experience the unique atmosphere of each restaurant.
Children's menus are available in all the restaurants in your rotation.
In other words, you are assigned a dining schedule that rotates you and your serving team between the 3 main dining rooms for the length of your cruise.
A few key points worth noting:
I. There are 3 rotation schedules per cruise. (they vary - call the DCL for your sailing)
For this 12nt BI cruise they were:
ACLACLACLACL (our rotation)
CLACLACLACLA
LACLACLACLAC
A= Animator’s / C = Carioca’s / L = Lumiere’s
(note: 2018 changes to the Magic = C will be replaced with R - Rapunzel’s Royal Table)
II. You can request a specific dining rotation with DCL in advance.
(no guarantee - but ours have always been granted)
III. There are themed nights and special menus for most cruises.
Here’s our list from the BI cruise:
themed nights were: Formal / Semi-Formal / Frozen - Freezing the Night Away
Night 1 (At Sea) - menu: Let the Magic Begin
Night 2 (Le Havre) – menu: World of Flavour
Night 3 (Portland) –
Standard Rotational #1 ** (
Lumiere’s for us)
Night 4
(At sea) –
Formal Night –
Standard Rotational #2 ** (
Animator’s for us)
Night 5 (Dublin) –
Standard Rotational #3 ** (
Carioca’s for us)
Night 6 (Liverpool) – menu: Pixar
Night 7 (Greenock) –
Freezing the Night Away party - menu: Frozen**
Night 8 (Hebrides - at sea) –
Semi-formal Night – menu: Captain’s Gala**
Night 9 (Kirkwall) – menu: Land & Sea
Night 10 (Invergordon) – menu: Prince & Princess
Night 11 (Newcastle) – menu: Seasons
Night 12 (At Sea) –
menu: ‘Til we meet again**
** -
offered on many Med. sailings (nights will vary)
IV. Formal Night is traditionally held on an At Sea day and usually doesn’t offer a special menu. (check with DCL)
V. Semi-formal night could happen any night of the cruise and serves the Captain’s Gala menu.
VI. Disney Med. cruises will have at least 3 nights designated as “standard rotational”.
This gives guests the opportunity to dine at each location as you are rotated around to all 3.
Each restaurant serves a different menu - designed unique to their theme and décor.
But only during the standard rotational nights will the menus vary between restaurants.
Every other night is “themed”, where all 3 restaurants serve the same exact menu with identical food no matter which one you happen to dine in.
Ok so why am I talking about all this?
Because many cruisers like to know the rotations and theme nights ahead of time to plan activities around once their booking window opens up.
Whether it's to dine at a particular restaurant on Formal and Semi Formal nights.
or because you don’t want to miss a new restaurant menu on a rotational dining night (Rapunzel’s in 2018) by having it conflict with something else.
But the most common reason is to help figure out which night or restaurant to give up for dinner at Palo.
And with the new website changes
@wajones2 has been alerting us to, this information is going to become increasingly valuable. As DCL seems to be making it virtually impossible to modify or change any cruise reservations once they’re initially booked without having you cancel them first. (whether online or over the phone)
So it's important to emphasize this point: Get as much dining information for your cruise upfront and be prepared to keep those original online reservations if you have to.
Ok let’s eat.
When it comes time for dinner, your KTTW card says it all:
You are Table Number: 48
Your Dining rotation:
ACLACLACLACL
Your Dinner time: 2nd seating @ 8:30pm - which for some cruisers is a little late.
(1st seating was at 6pm)
"What dinner time - Late or early?" - is a constant recurring question on the Disboards.
(And one I tend to avoid since there’s really no right or wrong answer here.)
You have pros and cons either way.
It simply comes down to knowing your family and deciding what works best.
Personally, we prefer the late seating when we cruise.
I’ll share a few reasons why:
- Late dinner doesn’t cut away from being on deck as you leave each port. (Something we love to do) It will really depend on the departure times.
This is a lot of fun, and not to be missed on a BI cruise. We had so many great sendoffs.
Some of my favorites –
Liverpool (these pics don't do it justice)
Greenock
and Newcastle - where they lined up as far as the eye could see.
Cork being a brand new port for the Disney Magic in 2018, will hopefully bring a special welcome there too!
More reasons for late dining:
- We like to decompress after a full day of touring. Nobody wanted a situation where we’d have to jump right in and get ready for dinner at 6 when we’re just getting back onboard.
- For this cruise, we flew in from the US with a 5hr jump ahead to the UK.
So an 8:30pm dinner was the equivalent to eating at 3:30pm back home.
If we picked 1st seating, we would basically be having dinner at 1pm in that 6 pm time slot.
- 2nd seating has an slower feel and pace to it with everything winding down for the evening.
But there were several cons to that 8:30pm seating on this trip as well:
- After a full day out, we were usually pretty hungry around 6. Options were room service or grab something from the poolside grill before dinner. Which, if you’re not careful, meant eating too much in a short period of time – like a burger and fries or big steak sandwich right before a full course sit down meal.
- It was really hard to catch the early shows before dinner. We would always eat then catch a nap around that hour and couldn’t pull ourselves out of it in time to get to the theatre. So we missed a lot of the Walt Disney Theatre entertainment.
- It’s pretty late by the time you finish dinner. The night activities seemed to fly by at that point and before we knew it - it was the next day already. I kept wanting every day to last longer.
- You’re assigned 2nd breakfast seating the morning you disembark. This is usually too late for our schedule and we tend to skip it.
So after 9 cruises, and considering all the positives and negatives, late dining is still our usual pick.
But for anyone asking, all I can say is take the time to weigh the options and choose wisely for your situation. You really can’t go wrong. It’s just dinner.
Speaking of dinner, who’s hungry?