Like I think I posted pages ago, your home time zone and your home routine are probably the biggest factors in deciding a dining time. My hat has always been off to working parents with kids who do after school activities to even be HOME by 5 pm, let alone be home and have dinner fixed and on the table by 5 pm. In the fall it was always pick my daughter up at school at 3 pm for soccer 330 pm to 630 pm, home just before 7 pm to START fixing dinner. In the spring it was always pick my son up at school at 3 pm for Little League from 3:30 pm until 30 minutes after sunset time* (which can be as late as 8:24 pm in May), home at 9:15 pm to START fixing dinner, doing homework, taking showers.
*Thank goodness our fields don't have lights, those games can go until a 10 pm curfew!
it depends on after school activities. Sports is not the only after school activity.
I work full time, single mother, my son goes to hebrew school 1x per week and participates in the fall and spring school play and math club and chess club and we are home by 6 generally but sometimes earlier. Honestly my son is on the spectrum with adhd and on meds - that schedule would not work for him. he is pretty much done for the day by 6pm and we have dinner, he showers, then we have downtime while he does his nightly reading for school. Bedtime is 8:30 and he is an early riser - up at 6-6:30 no matter what time he goes to bed so I have to make sure he gets to bed at a reasonable hour to get enough sleep.
Meds at 6:30am, gets dressed and has breakfast - homework 7-8am (he does not have more than 30-45 minutes not counting a half hour of reading the night before) and then we leave for school shortly before 8am.
I shop and meal prep on the weekends so "making dinner" involves reheating something I already put the time into over the weekend... it does not take me long to get dinner on the table. I sometimes make a fresh meal mid-week when we are home around 5:30 and spend about an hour on it.
Even if we eat at 6:30, 5:45 seating with food on the table by 6pm is a lot closer to that than 8:15 seating with food on the table starting at 8:30pm. As I said he is a naturally early riser so we are having breakfast on the ship pretty much as soon as Cabanas opens. If we were sleeping til 9-10am then 8:30 dinner would be fine.
I obviously do not enforce an 8:30 bedtime on vacation and sometimes we slip to more like 8am wakeup/breakfast but my son is basically still an early riser and just gets less sleep, which is why we always return on Saturday and not Sunday.
Just because it's the way you live doesn't mean it's the way everyone lives. I don't require any hats off either, I just do what works best for my family like every parent does! Which is why I don't understand a lot of these "I don't understand why people do it differently than me" comments... Everyone has their own life and their own routine and that's ok!
I think the people making a big deal are 1st time cruisers who can't imagine their snowflakes up past bedtime. They don't realize there are no bedtimes on a cruise. Like I said in my PP, we were that family with young kids who thought we needed main dining. We hated it!!! Next cruise we got late dining, and keep it every time. So much nicer.
Yes my son is on the spectrum and yes I do tend to try to stick to a routine with him because kids on the spectrum do better with routine. At this point we have a "vacation routine" and a "home routine" and at the age of 11 he can move fluidly between then without much difficulty but vacation routine much more closely resembled home routine when he was younger. That doesn't make my son a "snowflake." It means I'm his mom and I know what is best for him and I make decisions for our family based on what is best for us and for crusing that includes early dining... and I would feel the same if he were neurotypical as well but was still an early riser and our eating schedule was shifted early. And before you say "well I didn't mean kids with special needs"... having a child with special needs has made me more aware of why kids do what they do and act the way they act and I think it really behooves any parent to know their kids, know their kids' limits and respect them, whether they are neurotypical or not. Parents who are concerned about the impact of eating schedule on their kids are not being ridiculous, they are generally just being good, conscientious parents. Some kids have no trouble with being flexible, but some kids do and it's our job as parents to balance helping them learn to be flexible with not making life for them miserable while they are learning that lesson... neurotypical or not. I will say that the way to foster flexibility is NOT to put kids into a situation where it causes them great distress, but rather to put them into situations where their flexibility can grow over time. So for some kids eating so far off schedule might be really hard for them and it doesn't mean a thing is wrong with the parents or kids.
What I really don't understand is how judgmental people are of parents. You pretty much can't do anything right. You don't know and respect your kids' limits and the kid has acts out and you're a bad parent because your kid is behaving badly. You DO know your kids limits and respect them and now you're raising a "snowflake."
I always (on both of my recent cruises lol) book early and get main dining and it's not an issue. I have sympathy for parents who need to make hard decisions WRT their kids as I have had to at several points in my life, doing things I wish I did not have to do because it was best for my child even if not what I wanted at the time. I don't blame Disney for not being able to accommodate everyone... if it were that important to me and I knew it would ruin my trip, I'd book a cruise where I could be guaranteed main dining. Or if I thought I could roll with it I would roll with it.