Booking speciality dining :suggestion

[Windsurfboy]

I've  just booked my first Saga cruise so with nothing better to do have been reading all the Saga threads to learn as much as possible. 

 

One thing lots of people mentioned is the chaotic system for booking speciality dining  which seems both undignified (especially the  more elderly  queuing on embarkation day) And unfair.

 

There are 188 speciality dining covers a night with 999 passengers. Enough for only 1.3 visits per person per week.

 

My suggestion advanced booking system must be centralised.  You are allowed  ONLY ONE ADVANCED booking per week.  Any more bookings should be on an as available basis, booked after 5pm on the night , either centrally or at the venue. This would give everyone a fair share.

 

Any thoughts

[Glenndale]

1 hour ago, Windsurfboy said:

I've  just booked my first Saga cruise so with nothing better to do have been reading all the Saga threads to learn as much as possible. 

 

One thing lots of people mentioned is the chaotic system for booking speciality dining  which seems both undignified (especially the  more elderly  queuing on embarkation day) And unfair.

 

There are 188 speciality dining covers a night with 999 passengers. Enough for only 1.3 visits per person per week.

 

My suggestion advanced booking system must be centralised.  You are allowed  ONLY ONE ADVANCED booking per week.  Any more bookings should be on an as available basis, booked after 5pm on the night , either centrally or at the venue. This would give everyone a fair share.

This how we achieved our extra bookings 😉

Any thoughts

On our 7 night cruise last September we followed Cinnamon's advice (read her live from, very helpful).

We were pro-active and dined twice at the Club, twice at East to West and once at Coast to Coast.

We were prepared to share, and weren't too fussy as to the dining time, there were 3 of us, and many people wanted 2 tops.

On our CtoC visit we had been chatting to a single lady, before we dined, who hadn't yet eaten. On arriving at the restaurant we were on a 4 top, I had a word with the Maitre D' asking if we could invite her to dine with us. No problem, so one of our party hurried away to find her.

The ships rarely travel at full occupancy and not everyone wants to dine in the specialities.

The food in the main dining room is very good.

Yes, an advanced booking system could work, it seems to work well on Oceania and it is always possible to snag extra visits.

On Saga they gave priority to people who hadn't had previous bookings so kept it as fair as they could.

 

[Windsurfboy]

Sorry misread number of covers in the club,  thought it was 40 but that's in the bar , it's 100 , so that's 250 speciality dinning cover enough for 2 per week per person.

 

Same process but 2 advance bookings per week