Dinner Time vs. Evening Show Schedules on Celebrity

[jaldag]

We are taking our first cruise with Celebrity on the Eclipse in December.  I see they let you book your reservations for dinner time at the website now.  Is that something you should try to do?  Will everything end up being booked before we ever get on the ship?  Also, we tend to prefer later seatings for dinner.  But how do the evening shows work on Celebrity?  For the main shows, do they usually have two show times a night?  Let's say you eat around 8 pm--will that be a problem if you also want to go to that evening's show?  

[WestLakeGirl]

Shows are generally at 7 and 9.  They last 45 minutes.  It will be quite easy to go to the show and then have dinner.

[phoenix_dream]

We usually go to the earlier show and then dinner after.  On Eclipse the shows will likely be 7 and 9.  One word of advice - if you don't want to wait in a bit of a line at the restaurant, just leave the show ASAP as soon as it ends while the Cruise Director is wrapping it up with info on what's going on that night (which you can find yourself in the app or the daily planner).

[StopTheWorld]

Just off Apex where the theatre shows were at 7:30 and 9:30 nightly. We usually went to the 1st show and booked a table at 8:30pm. If we didn’t manage to book in advance we just waited for a table (no more than a 10 min wait). 

[Milhouse]

I like booking our dining times precruise to ensure we get a slot that aligns with when we expect to get back to the ship and onboard activities (like shows).  Slots getting booked up seem to vary on a variety of factors.  Eg. Formal nights seems to be busier.  Dining around 6-7pm seem to be busier.  For nights that had large time slots booked full precruise, we were able to grab a table by coming in early (ie before 6pm).  They also try to seat in the same section nightly so if you are flexible to sitting in another section, that might help too.  

 

You might also want to factor in dining time length if you are wanting to eat somewhat late and also want to see the late show.  I find our dinners can run around 1.5hrs sometimes depending on how fast our wait team gets to us, if we order additional appies, if the dishes come out slow, etc

[ScottC4746]

23 hours ago, WestLakeGirl said:

Shows are generally at 7 and 9.  They last 45 minutes.  It will be quite easy to go to the show and then have dinner.

We did Select Dining on Beyond to Alaska and our concierge set us up for 6 PM each night.  That gave us time to get through dinner, back to the stateroom to freshen up and get to the theater in time for the 9ish PM show.

[ScottC4746]

22 hours ago, phoenix_dream said:

We usually go to the earlier show and then dinner after.  On Eclipse the shows will likely be 7 and 9.  One word of advice - if you don't want to wait in a bit of a line at the restaurant, just leave the show ASAP as soon as it ends while the Cruise Director is wrapping it up with info on what's going on that night (which you can find yourself in the app or the daily planner).

When we were back to back on events, we would sit on the back row on the end so we could quickly slip out.  Still a great view.