My Time Dining vs. Traditional

[kfamily2534]

Have never done MTD, usually do the late seating as the family has no problems eating late, but figured for this cruise we would do MTD and made reservations for 8:00. However am slightly confused on all the workings of it. How does it work if we want to go to shows and such since they are scheduled around the traditional seating times? Are we able to change our reservation nightly if we want to go to a show that night...? Is it worth it or should I just switch to traditional late seating?

[MiniMom57]

you can make reservations at different times every night. or you can just show up when you are ready to eat. We found it to be a wonderful compromise for dinner in the main dining room.

[lovemylab]

We did MTD for the first time last December. The ship we were on didn't require reservations, we just showed up when we were ready to eat. I don't imagine you'd have any problems changing the time of your reservation.

 

On most evenings we dined between 7-7:30pm. A few nights we arrived closer to 8:30pm. We also like to go to the shows and we didn't miss any.

[denamo]

We've done MTD on three ships with mixed reviews. First two worked well, however, they really do want you to lock in those reservations. Sometimes we do and sometimes, we choose to wait.

 

Our last experience was on our Christmas cruise. Service was slow, our assistant waiter would never make eye contact so he didn't have to acknowledge your needs. We would wait and wait for food to be delivered. We found going early was better, but not overwhelmingly so. Our waiter did a remarkable job considering the number of tables assigned to him. We decided we would have been better going with the regular dining for that cruise. Our conclusion is that MTD was overbooked for that cruise making MTD a less effective and attractive option.

 

We've pretty much decided that MTD varies from ship to ship. We will go with main seating this time, trying speciality restaurants when we want, and if we choose to do MTD, we will do so in the Windjammer.

[akupupule]

MTD Does seem to vary from ship to ship, with the newer ships (Freedom class designed with MTD in mind)) seems to work well rather than the older, smaller ships which weren't expressly designed for MTD. We love having the flexibility of dining when you want to...you can even still request your favorite wait staff. But MTD is of limited availability, so don't wait too long to choose that option.