Party split across multiple tables dining reservation

[darnoc23]

My Alaska cruise is in a couple of weeks and have been monitoring the dine my way reservations.  I booked the dining earlier on and they never had a full table for a party of 4, except the party split across multiple tables.  Are the Alaskan cruises getting fully booked and what's the chance of us all seating at the same table?  Last cruise I went to for the Pacific Northwest the cruise was less than half full.  Princess is not able to tell me the capacity for my sailing.  Thanks. 

[Cruise Raider]

1 hour ago, darnoc23 said:

My Alaska cruise is in a couple of weeks and have been monitoring the dine my way reservations.  I booked the dining earlier on and they never had a full table for a party of 4, except the party split across multiple tables.  Are the Alaskan cruises getting fully booked and what's the chance of us all seating at the same table?  Last cruise I went to for the Pacific Northwest the cruise was less than half full.  Princess is not able to tell me the capacity for my sailing.  Thanks. 

 

We got that same notification for the Discovery when we booked it with a couple of friends.  Even though the cruise was full, we were always able to sit together at the same private table each night.  As a matter of fact, we've always been able to adjust our DMV reservations in the app once onboard. 

[cruisevac4]

We are just off the Majestic.  Our reservations indicated "across separate tables".  When we arrived at the dining room, we just asked to sit together and it was not an issue at either dining room.  The ship was about 2/3 full

[Rick&Jeannie]

1 hour ago, cruisevac4 said:

We are just off the Majestic.  Our reservations indicated "across separate tables".  When we arrived at the dining room, we just asked to sit together and it was not an issue at either dining room.  The ship was about 2/3 full

This is exactly what we have seen...just have everyone arrive at the same time and ask to sit together.

[5:00_Somewhere]

In answer to your question about passenger capacity, if you read other discussions here on Cruise Critic (and other cruising groups) you will find that the ships are sailing at close to capacity these days. Reports are 80%-90% or higher.  We were on Discovery Princess to Alaska in May and she was sailing at just over 80% at that time. 

[cruisevac4]

Of course, the app was actually correct.  We had (2) 2-tops (478 and 480) that were pushed together!

[tetleytea]

My party of 2 shared tables throughout our B2B cruise, and we shared tables with parties of 4 very regularly.   We sat multiple times with the same party of 6 on an 8-person table.  

 

I think the private-table-for-4 part might be the schtick.  It's possible your odds improve if you're willing to share with another party of 2--whom you will outnumber, anyway.

[Eaglecw]

We just came off the Discovery on Sunday. We ate at 6:20 in the Ketchikan dinning room. There was 2 line those with reservations and a line for those who didn't have reservations. We had reservations and got right in. After dinner I asked the hostess if we could change our dinner reservation to a earlier time, she said no problem will 5:20 work. The next evening at 5:20 we showed up there was a long line waiting to get in, we walked by everyone and were escorted to our new table, by the a window in the corner, we had that table for the rest of the week. Our waiter told me that they have a couple of 19 coming in at 6pm in that section so we had the section to ourselves. We were done with dinner by 6pm every night. The key is to make reservations and check your reservations once you get on the ship, a few people we ran into there dinner reservation time changed.

[Eaglecw]

On 7/4/2022 at 6:17 AM, 5:00_Somewhere said:

In answer to your question about passenger capacity, if you read other discussions here on Cruise Critic (and other cruising groups) you will find that the ships are sailing at close to capacity these days. Reports are 80%-90% or higher.  We were on Discovery Princess to Alaska in May and she was sailing at just over 80% at that time. 

Last week the Discovery at almost 95% capacity, there were 2285 first timer cruisers, 145 Elites and the rest were Platinum, Ruby and Gold. I wonder how many of the 2285 first timer cruisers will ever come back to cruise Princess again?

[Steelers36]

On 7/3/2022 at 3:08 PM, darnoc23 said:

My Alaska cruise is in a couple of weeks and have been monitoring the dine my way reservations.  I booked the dining earlier on and they never had a full table for a party of 4, except the party split across multiple tables.  Are the Alaskan cruises getting fully booked and what's the chance of us all seating at the same table?  Last cruise I went to for the Pacific Northwest the cruise was less than half full.  Princess is not able to tell me the capacity for my sailing.  Thanks. 

Another factor in this (and please tell me if wrong in your situation), is DMW seems to be loaded only with 2 of 3 DR's and the third one is never loaded, or not until on board. 

 

There should be plenty of seating to get what you want, but the App is useless at trying to allocate and provide it.

 

I had Private table space until we re-fared bookings sometime back and then only had Split option available after that.  At the time, there was only ONE DR available in DMW.  More recently, Princess added a second DR< so I switched our res into that one to secure Private space again.  Still no 3rd DR with under three months to go.

[5:00_Somewhere]

12 hours ago, Eaglecw said:

Last week the Discovery at almost 95% capacity, there were 2285 first timer cruisers, 145 Elites and the rest were Platinum, Ruby and Gold. I wonder how many of the 2285 first timer cruisers will ever come back to cruise Princess again?

 

I'm curious to hear why you say that about new cruisers. Other than issues with the Medallion and internet - which were frustrating, but not "fatal" - our cruise on Discovery was wonderful. But, I'm genuinely curious. 

[Lizabu]

11 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

Another factor in this (and please tell me if wrong in your situation), is DMW seems to be loaded only with 2 of 3 DR's and the third one is never loaded, or not until on board. 

 

There should be plenty of seating to get what you want, but the App is useless at trying to allocate and provide it.

 

I had Private table space until we re-fared bookings sometime back and then only had Split option available after that.  At the time, there was only ONE DR available in DMW.  More recently, Princess added a second DR< so I switched our res into that one to secure Private space again.  Still no 3rd DR with under three months to go.

This will be my second time on the regal princess and I’ve never seen Symphony pop up on the app. They give me Allegro or Concerto. And then I have the option to book Crown Grill or Sabatinis if I want to