My Time Dining

[KeywestK]

We’ve used My Time Dining exclusively since its inception many years ago. We used to be able to make a reservation for whatever time we preferred. Well, I’ve been on 4 cruises since last year, and have 4 cruises booked through next year. Our recent My Time Dining experiences have been awful. The earliest we can reserve is 6:45 or 7, and it feels like Their Time Dining.  Does anyone know if this current MTD scheme will continue, or is there hope on the horizon for an improved system?  Please do not tell me to book early or late seating. Neither of those times are acceptable to us.

[Another_Critic]

"Overflow" Early seating now uses the MTD area, so that is why MTD doesn't start until 6:30-6:45.

 

You can go the the MTD dining area before 6:45 and ask if there are any open tables.  YMMV.

 

If you don't want early, late, or 6:45-7, then what time do you want?

 

 

Edited June 9 by Another_Critic

[pcur]

Another_Critic is correct.  The beginning of this year they switched the earliest seating for MTD to when they "estimated" fixed early seating would be done.  So, now the earliest you can get is 6:45, and it fills up fast with early bookings.  I was on the Jewel TA in April, and MTD was absolute chaos the first several nights.  

 

I went at 1pm on embarkation day, picked a table, and it was added to our reservations. I explained this was because I did NOT want to wait in a long line, so table and time were confirmed. But, he told us to check in when we arrived. When we arrived that evening there were about 200 people in line.

 

This is what I did, and it worked very well:  I walked through the line to the podium, leaned in and quietly told the maitre 'd we would NOT be eating there that evening, because it would take us 30 minutes to get to the podium because of the crowd. He said to go to our table and he would check us in.  After that we just walked in to our table. They knew we were assigned and checked us in.

 

I figure if I went to the trouble of checking in and confirming out time, table, and room numbers, I was NOT obligated to wait with hundreds of people to do it again that day. After that they knew we would show up on time.

 

Remember:  if you don't show up they lose your tips for the day.  So telling him nicely we would make other arrangements got his attention. It's THEIR job to run that restaurant, not mine to wait with hundreds of people.

[reallyitsmema]

30 minutes ago, KeywestK said:

We’ve used My Time Dining exclusively since its inception many years ago. We used to be able to make a reservation for whatever time we preferred. Well, I’ve been on 4 cruises since last year, and have 4 cruises booked through next year. Our recent My Time Dining experiences have been awful. The earliest we can reserve is 6:45 or 7, and it feels like Their Time Dining.  Does anyone know if this current MTD scheme will continue, or is there hope on the horizon for an improved system?  Please do not tell me to book early or late seating. Neither of those times are acceptable to us.

 

We have booked my time dining for years and hate what they have done to it.  We have switched to early seating, though that is earlier than we want.  It has been acceptable up until our last cruise where we found out they switched us out of early seating to my time dining along with 200 others because they supposedly overbooked early seating.  We went to have it fixed and they "put us on a list" and we told to just come fifteen minutes after early seating start time.  The wait was 45 minutes in line to get a table!  No way we were going to do that on a 9 night cruise.  We were told that early seating on our reservation was just a request for that seating and not a reservation!  We were not showing waitlisted on our original cruise booking or our cruise documents and had never been told this in our many cruises.  None of the suits that were working the line would do anything other than tell us to get in line.  Concierge wasn't able to do anything either after multiple calls.  After two nights of this, the head waiter happened by our table and said there were no available tables to assign us but that he would make sure we were seated every night without having to wait in line.  We would get there at 5:30 and not get in the line that was all the way past the bridge between the elevators and either he or a specific maitre d' would signal for us to come into the dining room.  They would seat us at a table they had held aside that someone didn't show up for early seating.  We had four different tables over the 9 night cruise and three different waitstaffs.  Not ideal but better than waiting 30-45 minutes in line each night.  

 

Seating people like this really messes up the flow for the waiters though.  We would be seated as others were eating their appetizers and some nights it took a while for the waiters to take out order as they were in the galley getting mains for their other tables. We would then be rushed out of the dining room at the end of our meal as they were flipping all the tables around us for my time dining.

 

They need to go back to a dedicated dining area for MTD at the same time as early seating or allocate a larger area to early seating so there aren't large numbers of people bumped to a dining time they don't want.  Having an option of no access to the dining room would also help them know who is never going to show up to a table they have been assigned.  Many people are booking dining packages and are never in the MDR all sailing.  Others choose to only eat in Coastal Kitchen on ships that have it. They need to fix their MDR issues.  I know we are giving it one more chance and if it is still a nightmare, we will be cruising with someone else.

[GTO-Girl]

After the awful changes they made to MTD we changed back to fixed Traditional dining.

 

I agree with the above poster in that they need to go back to having a designated dining room just for My Time instead of trying to “fit them in” as early diners finished.

 

Not sure who can up with this crazy idea, but it’s not working!!!

[KeywestK]

3 hours ago, Another_Critic said:

"Overflow" Early seating now uses the MTD area, so that is why MTD doesn't start until 6:30-6:45.

 

You can go the the MTD dining area before 6:45 and ask if there are any open tables.  YMMV.

 

If you don't want early, late, or 6:45-7, then what time do you want?

 

 

We have gone to request seating before 6:45, and feel like it’s a fight to be seated. We are very easy go with the flow kind of travelers, but the current MTD just stinks.  So, to answer your question, we want to go when we feel like it, not when they try to pidgeon hole us into their schedule. Yes, first world problems for sure, but still an annoyance.

[Another_Critic]

Some ships are trialing a "mid" dining time (fixed 6:30 or 6:45 dining).  We had booked 7 PM MTD every night on the Oasis TA.  The first night we were in line and a host was walking around asking if anyone wanted 6:45 fixed dining (same table, same waitstaff).  I took the offer.  Worked out well.  I hope they offer the "mid" seating on my upcoming Symphony and Odyssey cruises.  🤞 

  

Edited June 10 by Another_Critic

[KeywestK]

1 hour ago, Another_Critic said:

Some ships are trialing a "mid" dining time (fixed 6:30 or 6:45 dining).  We had booked 7 PM MTD every night on the Oasis TA.  The first night we were in line and a host was walking around asking if anyone wanted 6:45 fixed dining (same table, same waitstaff).  I took the offer.  Worked out well.  I hope they offer the "mid" seating on my upcoming Symphony and Odyssey cruises.  🤞 

  

Yes, I remember reading about that a few months ago.  It’ll be interesting to see if the trials prove to be success and go fleet-wide. 

[Mick B]

Hi,

I too was on the Jewel's TA back in April and had MTD booked for 1845 each night.

On the first night we arrived at 1830 and was told basically to go away and come back at 1845.

We stayed where we were and within minutes there were over 100 other people joining the queue and some of those from the conversations I could hear (as it got loud and heated) did not even have a time booked, which meant that if we had done what we were told and went away at 1830 and came back at 1845 then there would have been over 100 people in front of us in the queue and we would never had gotten in at the time we wanted - which is what My Time Dinning is, our time, not theirs.

 

Throughout the 15 nights we kept the same waiters which we like to do as we only tip at the end (and not nightly) if everything has gone smoothly. We did change tabled a few times, but that didn't bother us.

 

During the wait at 1845 I heard a lot of people shouting and telling the staff that they will go to the Windjammer instead. The staff did not seem too bothered about that.

To be fair, a lot of the people I heard arguing had turned up at 1845 but had not arranged a time, so staff were busy trying to sort them a time (which they were not going to like as it was going to be an hour or so), but then whilst dealing with them, the other passengers who had a time, were now stuck in a queue delaying them until after their time.

 

It all got a bit heated and a bit silly too.

 

This is not what going on a holiday is all about. I want to chill and relax and enjoy every moment. 

 

As it turns out, some nights the 1730 eaters would go to somewhere like Chops etc freeing up their table for anyone who wants it. Sometimes the free table will be for 2 or 4 or more passengers. Now depending on how many of you there are in your group, and depending on your demands (not wanting to be by the window when there is no table available by the window), then the staff should be able to sort you quickly.

 

It may also be possible that Royal wants rid of MTD altogether, but they want to be careful here. The reason we go for this service is because sometimes when we are on a port intensive cruise, we may not get back from a trip until 4pm. Then we have to wash/shower and get changed for dinner and to be on time at the MDR (to not keep the other guests at the table waiting) then it would be a complete rush or we would be late. Does Royal want us to not want to book their trips?

Also we may want to go to a show. Yes I know there are normally 2 showings, but sometimes there may be something else on during one of them that we want to do. So again, we would choose MTD for that reason. Again, does Royal want all passengers to turn up at the theatre at the same time?

 

The simple solution is to revert back to how it was and admit that the new way of doing things whether just a test or not, does not really work and just annoys a lot of hard working people who have worked hard all year and saved up a lot of money for their holiday/vacation.

 

Mick.