Fixed Dining Times

[Clodia]

On 7/16/2019 at 11:34 AM, jeanlyon said:

We have opted for freedom dining on Aurora in October.  This will be our first experience of it.  The only ridiculous queues I saw on her in April were at 5.15!!!!  Snaking all the way round to the atrium area.  I presume there are no queues at, say 8 pm?

Jean I have done Freedom several times on Aurora.Yes, the queue begins at 5.15 for those determined that they won't accept a shared table, so they queue for a table for 2, of which there are fewer on Aurora than on the larger ships because she was initially designed for the 2 sitting system.

I have turned up at various times depending on how hungry I am, whether I had a small or large lunch, what entertainment I want to go to. As long as I've been prepared to share a table I've been seated straight away any time between 6.30 and about 8.15. My favoured time is around 7 and there never seems to be a problem; even those wanting tables for 2 are sent with a pager until about 7.20 when the 2s which were taken at 6pm start to empty. I never saw queues at around 8pm at all.

[jeanlyon]

Great.  Thanks for that.  8pm would be our choice.  We normally go Second Sitting but due to an absolutely dire table on the first night, when we had to move, decided we would give it a try.

[Selbourne]

To go back to the original question, we know nothing for certain but my speculation would be that all new P&O ships will now be Freedom Dining only. Existing ships will retain one dining room for Club dining, until such times as demand for Freedom dining is such that these ships will become 100% Freedom Dining as well. Freedom Dining seems to ‘sell out’ first and we often see passengers who have been allocated Club trying to change to Freedom (presumably those who booked Savers).

 

We did Club Dining for years when there was no other option but after 3 cruises in a row where we had poor table companions we were pleased to make the change to Freedom and have never looked back.