Traditional early dining and/or anytime dining

[spearmint]

My wife and I had always chosen second seating dining on Celebrity..... still at 8:30; and, for an upcoming Nov. cruise on Equinox, I have done so again. I am traveling with friends, and we may want to change that as they probably will find it too late.  For the life of me, I cannot find on the Celeb. website when first seating time is. (If I recall, it is quite early.)  I know that someone here will tell me.

 

Would we also be better off choosing anytime dining?  I like to have the same waiters etc. each night, and on Princess, I just made a reservation each morning for that night's dining, asking for the particular table/waiter.  After awhile when we showed up at the door, we were just told do go right in.  No problems.  Can that be done on Celebrity?

 

We have lots of time to change our seating times prior to sailing.  Or could we just do it onboard? I understand that part of the main dining room is set up for anytime dining, so does that make it more difficult to make changes? I am assuming that space might be limited.  (On Regal Princess there were at least two separate dining rooms to accommodate anytime dining.)

 

Thanks for any info that you can give me.

Bill

😀🙄

 

[tigervixxxen]

I believe the early seating is 6 pm officially although I’ve seen the restaurants open as early as 5:30. With anytime we’ve always still been assigned seating within a certain section so the waiters are generally the same and the tables we are seated at may vary but are always in close proximity. We also don’t reserve a time to eat at the MDR and haven’t had issue getting seated but we usually eat around 6 to 6:30. It seems busier around 7 so if that’s the time your group settles on then a reservation couldn’t hurt but we just never found much need for a reservation time at the MDR. If there’s a crowd they form two lines, reservations and non reserved and the lines get served the same or there’s fewer people waiting in the no reservations line lol. If you want flexibility to eat with another party I would go with anytime, there’s really no downside going that route. 

Edited August 14, 2023 by tigervixxxen