questions about booking your restaurants on Pacific Adventure

[korky1]

We are sailing on Pacific Adventure for the first time on 20th March.  Have sailed many times on other  P&O ships with the 3 free dining options etc. but would love to gain some insight about experience on Adventure, 

- apparently the MDR, Angelo's and Dragon Lady change their menus every 3 days to encourage us to rotate between them on a 3 day cycle.   We are happy to do this and were going to prebook through the app but choices were 5.30 - 6.30 or 7.30 - 8.30.  We would like to eat at 7.30 each night but apparently you will be assigned a time anywhere between 7.30 and 8.30 and won't know what time it is until you are on board.  8.30 does not appeal to us at all.  Do you think we should wait until we get on board and speak to someone then?  Have you had any experience of trying to book dinner day by day once on board or for the entire cruise?

 

Thanks for any experience you can share with me.

[Ozwoody]

1 hour ago, korky1 said:

We are sailing on Pacific Adventure for the first time on 20th March.  Have sailed many times on other  P&O ships with the 3 free dining options etc. but would love to gain some insight about experience on Adventure, 

- apparently the MDR, Angelo's and Dragon Lady change their menus every 3 days to encourage us to rotate between them on a 3 day cycle.   We are happy to do this and were going to prebook through the app but choices were 5.30 - 6.30 or 7.30 - 8.30.  We would like to eat at 7.30 each night but apparently you will be assigned a time anywhere between 7.30 and 8.30 and won't know what time it is until you are on board.  8.30 does not appeal to us at all.  Do you think we should wait until we get on board and speak to someone then?  Have you had any experience of trying to book dinner day by day once on board or for the entire cruise?

 

Thanks for any experience you can share with me.

As I understand it from our trip on the Pacific Explorer, the times are for sessions, ie: for the 5:30-6:30 session you are supposed to be out by 6:30,so the staff can get the tardy first session people out and prepare for the 7:30 people to arrive. I don't think the second session is so critical to be out by the 8:30 time, but the staff would like to clean up and go down and relax.😁

[SinbadThePorter]

3 hours ago, korky1 said:

8.30 does not appeal to us at all.  Do you think we should wait until we get on board and speak to someone then?

 

On the Encounter I found that the app was not very connected to reality and it was much better to book face to face.

[korky1]

1 hour ago, SinbadThePorter said:

 

On the Encounter I found that the app was not very connected to reality and it was much better to book face to face.

Did you have any problem getting bookings for the time you wanted to eat at?

[Ozwoody]

8 hours ago, korky1 said:

Did you have any problem getting bookings for the time you wanted to eat at?

No as Sinbad said 1st thing you do is check your dinning sheet in the paperwork they leave in your cabin, if unhappy with their allocation of dinning, (probably yes), scoot down to the dinning room it instructs you go too to make any changes.

Do this the 1st thing, as when we went down, a large line formed pretty quick behind us.

After our bookings were adjusted everything was smooth sailing.

 

edit: Forgot to mention all our app requested times were totally messed up, and the couple we went with was assigned different dinning rooms to us.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Ozwoody

[korky1]

Sounds like a right nightmare,  My husband and I have chosen 7,30 -8.30 option, as has our friend who is travelling alone.  I phoned P&0 today to try to link our dinner bookings but as she has used a travel agent all they would do is give me a 3 letter link code to give to her to pass on to her travel agent as they will have to request P&O to link her booking to ours.  No idea why he wouldn't do it as I gave him her booking number and all details but he was quite firm that because she had used a ta she would have to make any requests via them.  

 

She rang her ta now (a very well known online booking site) and all she got was a recorded message saying that due to covid they were no longer taking calls and will only communicate via email.   Maybe they think you can catch covid over the phone LOL????  Really????  That excuse has surely become outdated by now.

 

Seems like we are going to be in the same boat as you  (pun intended) and will have to sort it all out once on board as we don't want our friend having to dine alone every night.

 

Wish us luck!

[cheznandy]

33 minutes ago, korky1 said:

Sounds like a right nightmare,  My husband and I have chosen 7,30 -8.30 option, as has our friend who is travelling alone.  I phoned P&0 today to try to link our dinner bookings but as she has used a travel agent all they would do is give me a 3 letter link code to give to her to pass on to her travel agent as they will have to request P&O to link her booking to ours.  No idea why he wouldn't do it as I gave him her booking number and all details but he was quite firm that because she had used a ta she would have to make any requests via them.  

 

She rang her ta now (a very well known online booking site) and all she got was a recorded message saying that due to covid they were no longer taking calls and will only communicate via email.   Maybe they think you can catch covid over the phone LOL????  Really????  That excuse has surely become outdated by now.

 

Seems like we are going to be in the same boat as you  (pun intended) and will have to sort it all out once on board as we don't want our friend having to dine alone every night.

 

Wish us luck!

Korky1, the 3 digit code is a TWID code ( Travelling with Identification) and is used to link bookings.

If you had both booked direct with P&O the agent would have been able to do, but as your friends have and TA, P&O cannot alter the booking, so yes, the TA has to do it their end.

Get your friends to send an email with your booking number so they can link the bookings.

 

When you board, as stated above, go straight to the dining room that is handling dinner reservations, on Adventure it was in Dragon Lady restaurant. Don't stress, they will accommodate your requests.

The paperwork in our room had one night in each restaurant, we changed that two in one and one in the other.

TBH, I have yet to find a cruiseline with  perfect dining system, it's either too late or too early, you can't select table sizes online, you get put in restaurants you don't want to eat in, Anytime/My Time/your Time has long waits, people on set dining eat Anytime etc

[korky1]

1 hour ago, cheznandy said:

Korky1, the 3 digit code is a TWID code ( Travelling with Identification) and is used to link bookings.

If you had both booked direct with P&O the agent would have been able to do, but as your friends have and TA, P&O cannot alter the booking, so yes, the TA has to do it their end.

Get your friends to send an email with your booking number so they can link the bookings.

 

When you board, as stated above, go straight to the dining room that is handling dinner reservations, on Adventure it was in Dragon Lady restaurant. Don't stress, they will accommodate your requests.

The paperwork in our room had one night in each restaurant, we changed that two in one and one in the other.

TBH, I have yet to find a cruiseline with  perfect dining system, it's either too late or too early, you can't select table sizes online, you get put in restaurants you don't want to eat in, Anytime/My Time/your Time has long waits, people on set dining eat Anytime etc

Have you sailed on Princess recently?  I sailed on Majestic in December and again in February.   They have 3 MDRS all serving the same food with the menu changed every night. For each cruise I prebooked through the app and rotated my bookings through each of the 3 restaurants just for fun.  Dining time choices were between 5.30 and 9.00 from memory, with choices in 20 minute increments.   I chose 7.20 each night and everything ran like clock work.  I guess what makes P&O more complicated is the choice of 3 different restaurants which I love.  I sail on all the cruise lines, P&O, Royal Caribbean,  Celebrity,  Carnival and Princess.  Love all my cruises.  Sailed on Carnival in November,  Princess in December and February and will be on  P&O in March and on Carnival again in May.  

 

We gotta make up for all those lost cruises LOL

[cheznandy]

2 hours ago, korky1 said:

Have you sailed on Princess recently?  I sailed on Majestic in December and again in February.   They have 3 MDRS all serving the same food with the menu changed every night. For each cruise I prebooked through the app and rotated my bookings through each of the 3 restaurants just for fun.  Dining time choices were between 5.30 and 9.00 from memory, with choices in 20 minute increments.   I chose 7.20 each night and everything ran like clock work.  I guess what makes P&O more complicated is the choice of 3 different restaurants which I love.  I sail on all the cruise lines, P&O, Royal Caribbean,  Celebrity,  Carnival and Princess.  Love all my cruises.  Sailed on Carnival in November,  Princess in December and February and will be on  P&O in March and on Carnival again in May.  

 

We gotta make up for all those lost cruises LOL

Sailed on them all too, not Princess recently.

I guess they all have good and bad!