New Dining Times & Corresponding Main Show Times

[mcrcruiser]

Has any one experienced   the coordination of their dining times with seeing the main shows  ?

 

 We are particularly interested in using the 7:15PM last dining ;but ,we do not know when the last show will be seen ?

[Micahs Grandad]

Others have reported that they have not adjusted show times to the new dinner times.

 

Has me worried as we have late seating of 7 15 for cruise next week and if shows are 7 and 9 how do we get decent seats for the later shows without rushing thru dinner?

[reedprincess]

We were aboard Emerald, disembarked Sunday. So, after the dining times had been changed back in October. 

Show times varied - sometimes 7 and 9, sometimes 6:30/8/10:30.. Depended on the show it seemed. Trivia and game shoes were generally 9ish, sometimes 8:45, sometimes 9:15, etc. Champagne waterfall at 7pm, remakes from captain at 7:30....

Dinner onboard was actually 5:30 for early traditional and 7:45 for late traditional in aft traditional only dining room, and 5:15 in the traditional dining room that then becomes anytime afterwards. All paperwork, website, discussions, etc showed  4:45, 5:15 and 7:15..  Go figure. 2018, and they still can't get their website info and ship info together.  Although - Princess website is leaps and bounds ahead of Celebrity's site! Lol.. 

[Lucky TGO]

1 hour ago, Micah's Grandad said:

Others have reported that they have not adjusted show times to the new dinner times.

 

Has me worried as we have late seating of 7 15 for cruise next week and if shows are 7 and 9 how do we get decent seats for the later shows without rushing thru dinner?

I was told they are adjusting the show times to the new dinner times. Today by a Princess representatives. I hope so because I have the 7:15  dining time also. 🤞

Tony

[DimSum]

I was just off the Royal (Nov 17 - 24).  We had traditional early dinner at 5:30pm and had plenty of time to make it to the 8pm show in the Princess Theater.  Looking at some of the Princess Patter newsletters, I kept, the Princess Theater had 2 show times 8pm and 10pm.  So you should be able to make it to the 10pm show. 

[jennybenny]

2 minutes ago, DimSum said:

I was just off the Royal (Nov 17 - 24).  We had traditional early dinner at 5:30pm and had plenty of time to make it to the 8pm show in the Princess Theater.  Looking at some of the Princess Patter newsletters, I kept, the Princess Theater had 2 show times 8pm and 10pm.  So you should be able to make it to the 10pm show. 

Do you happen to recall what the late TD time was?

[DimSum]

5 minutes ago, jennybenny said:

Do you happen to recall what the late TD time was?

I think it was 7:15 or 7:45pm.  I'm leaning more to 7:45pm because we usually left the restaurant around 7:15pm and that was when the restaurant was pretty empty.

[jennybenny]

4 minutes ago, DimSum said:

I think it was 7:15 or 7:45pm.  I'm leaning more to 7:45pm because we usually left the restaurant around 7:15pm and that was when the restaurant was pretty empty.

Boo, that's later than I had hoped, 7:30 was my wish.  😞

Thank you for responding

[mcrcruiser]

1 hour ago, jennybenny said:

Do you happen to recall what the late TD time was?

The late dining time is 7:15 PM 

[jennybenny]

22 minutes ago, mcrcruiser said:

The late dining time is 7:15 PM 

Awesome!! Thank you!!  That's what I was hoping for!  So if they have one 7:15 and one 7:45 I will fight tooth and nail to be in the first one!

Thanks

[caribill]

5 hours ago, mcrcruiser said:

Has any one experienced   the coordination of their dining times with seeing the main shows  ?

 

 We are particularly interested in using the 7:15PM last dining ;but ,we do not know when the last show will be seen ?

 

Unfortunately as several of the above posts show you actually do not know when your dining time will be until you embark. The 7:15 is a place holder. Some report that the late seating is actually at 7:45 and not at 7:15 which the personalizer shows. And it could turn out it is neither of those two times.

[caribill]

1 hour ago, mcrcruiser said:

The late dining time is 7:15 PM 

 

40 minutes ago, jennybenny said:

Awesome!! Thank you!!  That's what I was hoping for!  So if they have one 7:15 and one 7:45 I will fight tooth and nail to be in the first one!

Thanks

 

I think mcrcruiser was saying the personalizer shows 7:15, not that he has sailed and found that to be true.

 

There will not be both a 7:15 and a 7:45 late seating on a ship. It will be one or the other or possibly even a different time.

[jennybenny]

2 minutes ago, caribill said:

 

 

I think mcrcruiser was saying the personalizer shows 7:15, not that he has sailed and found that to be true.

 

There will not be both a 7:15 and a 7:45 late seating on a ship. It will be one or the other or possibly even a different time.

Oh, I see it as 7:15 on the personalizer....

I was just hoping for a 7:30 time.  We used to do early, the second early.  I didn't realize there's only one late, but I guess that means the other time is ATD.  We used to do ATD (years ago) and started hating the lines, so made the switch.  I feel stuck!! 

[Micahs Grandad]

3 hours ago, jennybenny said:

Oh, I see it as 7:15 on the personalizer....

I was just hoping for a 7:30 time.  We used to do early, the second early.  I didn't realize there's only one late, but I guess that means the other time is ATD.  We used to do ATD (years ago) and started hating the lines, so made the switch.  I feel stuck!! 

 

Remarkable how they have made traditional dining times so complicated and apparently different from ship to ship. Hopefully they have gotten enough complaints by now to realize they screwed up big time and fix this mess.

[joe d]

We were on the Island Princess earlier this month. The Shows were at 6:00 and 8:00.  Traditional dining was at 5:15 and 7:30.  According to the Cruise Director it was designed so that those who ate early could go to the 8:00 show and those who ate late could go to the early show.  We found that this worked very well for us. The line ups for anytime dining and for the show times were the best we have experienced in a long time.

[jasbo49]

6 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Unfortunately as several of the above posts show you actually do not know when your dining time will be until you embark. The 7:15 is a place holder. Some report that the late seating is actually at 7:45 and not at 7:15 which the personalizer shows. And it could turn out it is neither of those two times.

Yes. This was our experience Nov. 1-11 on the Regal. We signed up for 7:15, but upon boarding found out it was really 7:45. That's the second cruise in a row where it was different than what we signed up for. In September on the Ruby we signed up for 6 p.m., then found out our time was really 5:15. We said no thanks to that and they switched us to ATD.

 

They really should be able to do a better job than that.

 

Jim

[Fran Record]

We are sailing on Island Princess in a few days.  We've been told new traditional dining has changed to 5pm & 7:15pm.

[jennybenny]

41 minutes ago, Fran Record said:

We are sailing on Island Princess in a few days.  We've been told new traditional dining has changed to 5pm & 7:15pm.

Please report back what you end up with.

 

[mcrcruiser]

We think Princess has a lot of logistical work to do with regards to dining times & the shows on all their ships . 

[caribill]

2 hours ago, jasbo49 said:

Yes. This was our experience Nov. 1-11 on the Regal. We signed up for 7:15, but upon boarding found out it was really 7:45. That's the second cruise in a row where it was different than what we signed up for. In September on the Ruby we signed up for 6 p.m., then found out our time was really 5:15. We said no thanks to that and they switched us to ATD.

 

They really should be able to do a better job than that.

 

 

The basic problem is that people book a cruise up to two years in advance and the actual dining times may not be known until a month or two before the cruise plus they may be different on each ship.

 

So the personalizer basically has place holders of listed times for early and late sittings. Previously they were 6 PM and 8:15 PM. As almost anybody knows from experience, it was pure coincidence if those were the actual times.

 

(I once was on a B2B with a listed time for both segments of 8 PM for the late sitting. Ended up being 7:45 for the first segment and 8:15 for the second segment. Well, they did average 8:00.)

 

So now Princess has changed the placeholders to 5 PM and 7:15 PM. Posts on CC have shown that these are as accurate as when they were 6:00 and 8:15.

 

On other threads there are many posts about people switching to the 7:15 time because that is "perfect" for them. Many of these people will be disappointed once on board the ship. A number of them may then switch to anytime making anytime more crowded (meaning lines to get in) than it would have been if more realistic times had been in the personalizer.

 

I think it is impossible to have accurate times posted many months in advance for 18 different ships on many different itineraries. At the least the personalizer should indicate that the listed times are approximate and could differ by xx minutes.

[BarbinMich]

The above responses are the main reason we prefer anytime dining:  every night we can choose when to eat depending on show times that night.  However, must admit we have usually eaten in the Horizon Court or its equivalent because we're not particularly into long dinners.  When we have eaten in the dining rooms, we've often had to wait to be seated for a table for 2 even when we eat later than the peak times.

[Therese S.]

Got my official email from Princess this morning regarding change in dining times.  After reading the actual times onboard, think I’ll stick with the early TD, though I like the sounds of 7:15.  Last cruise we had late dining at 8:00 and made it difficult to make the main shows and the comedy/game shows.  Princess is over a month behind in this notification, thankfully everyone here keeps me up to date.      Dear Therese,    Making our guests happy is our number one priority. Because of overwhelming feedback requesting earlier dining times, we’re adjusting our Traditional Dining schedule. We’re making the following changes to Traditional Dining times only:  For Traditional Dining, the new times are: 5 p.m. first seating  7:15 p.m. second seating    Anytime Dining remains the same, running from 5 p.m.onward.  You can review or change your dining time by visiting Cruise Personalizer, calling your Travel Agent, or calling 1-800-774-6237(North America), 0344 338 8663 (UK), 132 488 (Australia), or 0800 780 717 (New Zealand).  We look forward to welcoming you on board soon!

Manage your dining selection

[Tedferg]

20 hours ago, reedprincess said:

5:15 in the traditional dining room that then becomes anytime afterwards.

What time did it convert to Anytime ? I thought it used to be 7:15. We are always Anytime and 7:15 ish suits us. We liked that two dining rooms were then Anytime.

[Tedferg]

I suspected that Late Traditional was under attended at 8:00 and the 'request for earlier times' might have referred to the 8:00 slot. So moving that earlier forces them to move the 6:00 slot earlier. We've only ever used Anytime so this is just speculation. Could someone familiar with late Traditional please comment.

[Mike45LC]

I have almost always been Second Seating Traditional.  You are correct that it is usually not crowded, and that this might be why Princess is messing up the schedules.  I have speculated that they have made the times so unpopular in order to  force us the Traditional Dining people to switch to Anytime.

 

As Second Seating, I have long been accustomed to many of the events (not the main shows) being scheduled right before or in the middle of our dinner, precluding our being able to enjoy those events.