DH & I have decided that we want to take the kids (13, 12 and a week from 2 at time of cruise) on a Disney cruise this summer.

We're all newbies to cruising - any of you seasoned pros have any advice for toting the almost 2 year old around (to dinner especially?)

We plan to book really soon - are discussing dates now and seeing if DH can get the 10 days off work we'd need to drive to Orlando and back :D

That sounds like lots of fun! Which cruise are you going to do?
(Unfortunately, I have no advice about dining with a 2 year old.)

Looking at June 4th on the Wonder I think it is. I'm getting really excited - I've wanted to go on a Disney Cruise since the very first time I saw it on the Disney or Travel channels :P

tamarae, we went on the WestBound Repositioning Cruise earlier this year with a then 4 mo. old. We LOVED the option of taking him to Flounder's Nursery during dinner when he was just too fussy to sit with us.

If you find that you don't want to do that every night (it costs, at the time we paid $6/hr) and perhaps the wee one is too disruptive during dinner, you can always go up to Topsider's. It's a buffet at breakfast and lunch, but they have more casual table service than the other three restaurants during dinner.

Perhaps the tot will surprise you and be well behaved in a new environment? There's so much to look at and watch people bustling by the whole time, he/she may just want to watch the show that is the dinner experience.

Good luck!

You will probably want to request the early dinner seating, but there is no guarantee you will get it. We ended up with the late dinner seating, which, of course, was later than my kids usually eat dinner. I made sure to "pre-feed" them, so they would not be starving by 8 PM or so. There are lots of food options on the pool deck, or you can order room service, and, if they ate something around 5, they were not starving before dinnertime. It was a longer dinner than they are used to, and, a couple of times, my younger daughter, then 6, just could not sit through dessert, but they did behave just fine.

tamarae, we went on the WestBound Repositioning Cruise earlier this year with a then 4 mo. old. We LOVED the option of taking him to Flounder's Nursery during dinner when he was just too fussy to sit with us.

That seems like it was so long ago.

mom22gls has a great idea of pre-feeding. I'll have to remember that one myself for the future.

That seems like it was so long ago.

In some ways it was. Yet it was only 6 mos. ago. He's a completely different creature now. Sitting on his own, eating something more than nursing, sleeping a LOT less....