Technology Woes

[pappy1022]

Going into last nights specialty restaurant reservation process with 2 other couples, I started with high hopes that the Regent website woes of the past were behind us. When we did our shore excursion selections it was smooth and quick, so I expected the same. NOPE. The website was extremely, extremely slow. Each of the 3 couples was selecting a different restaurant on a different day and adding all 6 of us to each reservation. We eventually would get a confirmation email saying we booked a reservation for 6 on the selected day. OK, all good, but some of the reservations didn’t show up in individual accounts and one time a reservation was in the account and moments later it was gone. I decided to logout of my Regent account and log back in and lo and behold all the reservations appeared and after the 2 other couples did the same, they showed up in their accounts. On one reservation, we still don’t see the names of all of the couples but we do have an email saying that we have a reservation for 6 and all 3 couples show that they have 3 specialty dinner reservations made. It took over 1 hour to work our way through the system.It should have been done in 10 minutes or so.

[irishwitchy]

Funny, we try to make it perfect and than we get on the ship and end of changing the reservations because of a late excursion, someone not feeling well,  really love the menu in Compass Rose that night, etc.   Lol. - relax it will all be fine.  

[pappy1022]

Here is Regent’s explanation. Doesn’t make any sense. The reason you guys had a hard time was because of all three of you were trying to do it and it doesn't work. That way one person has to make the reservations for everyone and if you're all trying to do it at the same time it glitches the system she said it's funny. She said it just works like that but anyway. 
Each of us was making 1 specialty restaurant reservation at a different restaurant on a different day. Total of 3. If Regent’s technology can’t handle that it’s in worse shape than I thought. Time to spend more resources on IT and forget about the fancy decorations. 

[pappy1022]

3 hours ago, irishwitchy said:

Funny, we try to make it perfect and than we get on the ship and end of changing the reservations because of a late excursion, someone not feeling well,  really love the menu in Compass Rose that night, etc.   Lol. - relax it will all be fine.  

I’m not stressing out about it. I just expect things to work in a logical way. Regent admitted that it’s quirky and sadly in this day and age, technology should be so much better. And the application performance is poor. A max of 375 people could have been online at the same time making dinner reservations and it came to a grinding halt. We shouldn’t accept technology that is so poor.

[wcsdkqh]

I would be more inclined to think the issue was related to database locking since all of you were updating the same records with reservation info concurrently.

[pappy1022]

That’s certainly a possibility. Modern day databases manage those types of updates and the delay should at most be a second or 2, since this is a very small amount data being updated. Anyway, a lesson learned. In the end the Regent representative cancelled all of our reservations and redid them all with some minor changes to the schedule.

[wcsdkqh]

Pappy— the operative word there is “Modern”. If IT infrastructure isn’t so modern, then some sort of dead-lock condition may have occurred resulting in queued  updates. Mike Moore can probably comment on that possibility. From my personal experience making dining reservations for traveling companions, I didn’t see any of that sort of delay, but then I was making all of the reservations with the multiple booking numbers. Just a thought…

[Mike Moore]

The dining reservations functionality generally runs quickly and smoothly, so I've not heard before someone having this many issues with it. The good news is it is currently being redesigned, and we are targeting to have the new and improved experience live before the end of the year.

[pappy1022]

Good to hear. We made it through the process but it was painful. 

[irishwitchy]

2 hours ago, Mike Moore said:

The dining reservations functionality generally runs quickly and smoothly, so I've not heard before someone having this many issues with it. The good news is it is currently being redesigned, and we are targeting to have the new and improved experience live before the end of the year.

As a former DBA, I would love to know what is actually under those covers and if you are moving to something new.