Dining enquiries

[geoherb]

My Patters from 2019 had a set time on the first afternoon for "dining enquiries." The ones since the restart and the switch to "Dine My Way" have not. 

 

I have sailed solo on three cruises since the restart. Most of the time, I shared a table with others. Occasionally it was just with friends who went to dinner with me at the same time. Most of the time, though, it was a shared table with random people also willing to share. I found that if I went too late in the evening, no one else was requesting to share a table. I've gotten used to eating alone in such situations. (That also happened to me when I had traditional dining and none of my tablemates showed up a couple of nights on my southbound Alaskan cruise in 2019.) 

 

For my upcoming cruise in August on the Caribbean Princess, the app is not allowing me to reserve a reasonable set time for sharing a table. It has shared tables showing up as available before 6 but not after. Nothing is available between 6 and 7. 

[Nicole&Pete]

10 hours ago, geoherb said:

My Patters from 2019 had a set time on the first afternoon for "dining enquiries." The ones since the restart and the switch to "Dine My Way" have not. 

 

I have sailed solo on three cruises since the restart. Most of the time, I shared a table with others. Occasionally it was just with friends who went to dinner with me at the same time. Most of the time, though, it was a shared table with random people also willing to share. I found that if I went too late in the evening, no one else was requesting to share a table. I've gotten used to eating alone in such situations. (That also happened to me when I had traditional dining and none of my tablemates showed up a couple of nights on my southbound Alaskan cruise in 2019.) 

 

For my upcoming cruise in August on the Caribbean Princess, the app is not allowing me to reserve a reasonable set time for sharing a table. It has shared tables showing up as available before 6 but not after. Nothing is available between 6 and 7. 

We love sharing a table with people, it’s a part of cruising we really enjoy. With all the other venues now though we find not everyone actually shows up for dinner in the main dining room and we can see multiple large tables with just couples or singles. I almost wish they would ask people what they plan to do ahead of time so that they group the people up who will be in the dining room every night.

 

When we booked our dining through dine my way we couldn’t book a shared table, we assumed that was because of Covid. It’s interesting that you can seen shared tables available. We were absolutely up for trying to change our table to shared later but then we’ve heard of lots of people being quarantined due to Covid, so thought it might be better to eat just the two of us to lower the risk. I will definitely miss talking to others at dinner for this cruise.

 

I hope you can book a shared table when you cruise in August and you don’t have to eat at 5 to do it!