No more Anytime Dining reservations???

[floridalover5623]

 

Our experience has been that we are usually put on a waitlist for AD and have had no problem getting a TD time slot when making cruise reservations.

 

I think you posted that in reverse? There's never a wait list for AT dining.

[caribill]

I may be wrong but I always assumed that letting people reserving the same table each night (at the same early time) in the AT DR was because there just isn't sufficient room in the TD DR for all those that requested TD.[/quote

 

Our experience has been that we are usually put on a waitlist for AD and have had no problem getting a TD time slot when making cruise reservations.

 

RCCL and Carnival put a limit on the number of AD passengers and will assign the "overflow" to TD.

 

Princess does the opposite, limiting the number of TD passengers and will assign the "overflow" to AD. A wait list for AD on Princess does not exist.

[notentirelynormal]

While we are booked for ATD on our next cruise (and have done it before as well) we actually prefer TD. However, on our last cruise we had a "confirmed" time that was magically moved to 5:30 when we were onboard. That was just too dang early for us. If we could keep our "confirmed" time it would be great but being issuing a confirmation and then having Princess change the time is something we didn't like at all.

 

This. I've had this happen a few times and it is never later. If I want to eat at 6:30 then that is how I planned my days (in advance). When they change it to 5:30 once I am on board then that changes the dynamics of my day. Now instead of having a late lunch I'm either too full for dinner or I have to eat too early for lunch or change what I'm eating for lunch. It changes my entire evening. This really annoys me. Personally 5:30 is too early for me. 6:30 is perfect and 8:30 is too late. But wait - if they move me to 5:30 then the late seating is at 7:45 which works better then 5:30! :rolleyes:

 

Princess - leave the dining times at what you say they will be. Surely with all those ships you have, with all those nights of experience you must have some clue how to run the dining rooms enough to be able to pick the dining times.

[caribill]

Princess - leave the dining times at what you say they will be. Surely with all those ships you have, with all those nights of experience you must have some clue how to run the dining rooms enough to be able to pick the dining times.

 

HQ has no idea at the times bookings are first available (often over a year in advance of the cruise) what the actual dining times will be chosen by the management on the ship when it comes time to do the actual sailing.

 

I once had late seating listed in the Personalizer for a B2B booked as two cruises as being 8 PM for both segments.

 

Actual time for the first segment was 7:45. For the second segment it was 8:15.

[dotty52]

When we were on the Regal Princess in 2014 they had 2 lines in the atd one for people whom had booked and the other like us that didnt book ,we waited for 30 minutes whilst the booked line went right on through ,but I would still do ATD as the wait is not normally that long especially if you dont mind sharing a table

[Times Prince]

Because of health reasons we need to plan for evening meals around a certain time, lest blood sugar levels get dangerously low. Our normal dinner time is around 6:45PM, so our body clocks are adjusted to that.

 

Over the past couple of years we've tried TD, and EVERY TIME they moved the confirmed early seating to an earlier time, making it too early because of activities of the day (excursions, etc.).

 

However when we use Anytime, we find a) one AT dining room still has TD dining in progress (it was supposed to start at 5:00), and we are given pagers and asked to wait, normally for "10 minutes". On a 7 day cruise, this causes us to eat in a buffet 4-5 days, as the wait extends beyond "restaurant time" of 10 minutes). We can see plenty of empty tables from the door in the Anytime restaurant, and don't see groups of people coming for their "reservations".

 

Anytime Dining should be just that - Anytime, NO RESERVATIONS unless there is a true health reason.

 

Because of this we discovered Café Caribe - and now they've discontinued that for evening buffet. I can understand the crab shack thing, but they stopped using it for dinners on the other nights, and it truly was a step above the Horizon Court experience.

 

Princess really needs to improve how they handle dining

[Times Prince]

HQ has no idea at the times bookings are first available (often over a year in advance of the cruise) what the actual dining times will be chosen by the management on the ship when it comes time to do the actual sailing.

This is hard to imagine. It has been a long time since they instituted Anytime Dining and Princess should have statistics on when people dine for ships of each passenger capacity. They should especially be able to see when the reservations are from their system, and be able to tell the ships when to start each dining session.

 

I know people management is an art, but it does yield to analysis.

 

However from our last cruise, the issue with lengthening the time required for each Traditional Dining session has been aggravated by apparent reductions in the serving staff, making maintenance of a 6:00PM and 8:00PM offering untenable. If my observation is correct the Princess is creating unhappy passengers to save a few extra crew member salaries. That would not be good.

[notentirelynormal]

HQ has no idea at the times bookings are first available (often over a year in advance of the cruise) what the actual dining times will be chosen by the management on the ship when it comes time to do the actual sailing.

 

I once had late seating listed in the Personalizer for a B2B booked as two cruises as being 8 PM for both segments.

 

Actual time for the first segment was 7:45. For the second segment it was 8:15.

 

Fair enough but what makes the decision? I mean if you are going to the same ports just a week later, why change the times? They surely must know the month before I go when they start sending the emails so that I can change once I board. I say this as an example because I really do like fixed seatings. I enjoy the same servers. I really am curious to your explanation. Inquiring minds want to know :).

[geoherb]

I'm another who agrees about not allowing traditional diners into the anytime dining room during the busy time. We almost always have late traditional dining. Several times, we've been seated at tables with people who thought of traditional dining as their fall-back plan. They'd show up some nights and skip others. And of course they did not have the courtesy to let us know whether they'd be there or not. It did not help that sometimes when they came to dinner, they were 10-15 minutes late. Their behavior threw off our waiters.

 

We generally will not miss more than one dinner in the dining room when we have traditional dining. We always let our waiters and tablemates know the night before that we'll be eating in a specialty restaurant or somewhere else (balcony dinner, Chef's Table).