"Open Dining" - Specific questions

[curry767]

Firstly my apologies for having to ask these questions as I assume they have already been asked but for the life of me I cannot find them in the hundreds/thousands of posts on this subject.

 

1. If you sit down late in 'open dining' say 8:45pm, do you have full choice of the menu or do they start to run out of the more popular dishes like king crab legs?

 

2. The main reason we want to use 'open dining' is to dine late because of the extended daylight hours in Alaska. Can someone offer their experiences of sitting down after the second session of fixed dining at 7:45pm?

 

3. What happens if you have an early shore excursions that leaves the ship before you can make a dinner time reservation, is there a message service?

 

4. As a party of two are we guaranteed to have a table to ourselves if we so wish?

 

Finally we will be on the Volendam in Alaska this August and I very keen to hear from people who have been on the Volendam in Alaska this season as to their experiences of the 'open dining'

 

Cheers

[jer_l]

Firstly my apologies for having to ask these questions as I assume they have already been asked but for the life of me I cannot find them in the hundreds/thousands of posts on this subject.

 

1. If you sit down late in 'open dining' say 8:45pm, do you have full choice of the menu or do they start to run out of the more popular dishes like king crab legs?

 

2. The main reason we want to use 'open dining' is to dine late because of the extended daylight hours in Alaska. Can someone offer their experiences of sitting down after the second session of fixed dining at 7:45pm?

 

3. What happens if you have an early shore excursions that leaves the ship before you can make a dinner time reservation, is there a message service?

 

4. As a party of two are we guaranteed to have a table to ourselves if we so wish?

 

Finally we will be on the Volendam in Alaska this August and I very keen to hear from people who have been on the Volendam in Alaska this season as to their experiences of the 'open dining'

 

Cheers

 

This is based on our AYW dining on the Veendam to Alaska.

 

1. We ate after 8:00 pm several times and they always had all the choices available.

 

2. Although we ate late occasionally, when we weren't in port late we usually chose to dine at 7:00 so we could go to the 9:00 pm show. Since we were on a b2b we usually skipped the show when dining later.

 

3. We quite making reservations and just went and took our chances. We never waited over 5 minutes and were usually seated immediately. When we didn't make reservations we sometimes sat at a table for 2 and other times at larger tables.

 

4. You aren't guaranteed a table for 2 even when requesting it. Our first night we were seated at a table for 4 , but it was just the two of us. After we had ordered another couple was seated at our table. This was unusual and happened because they were sent to a table for 10 and the other 8 people spoke only Italian so they needed to move them. It turned out fine since they were also on a b2b and we saw them frequently throughout the cruise and even ended up seated with them at the Mariners;' Luncheon. Once when making reservations I asked to be seated with others and was told that only a table for 2 was available. When we arrived the table for 2 wasn't available and we ended up being seated at a table for 10. Our only "negative" was the first night when things were a bit hectic and many people with reservations cut in front not realizing that those in line also had reservations. After that everything went quite smoothly.

[curry767]

Thanks Jerry, I appreciate those answers.

[hammybee]

We also had a good experience just walking in. If you want a table for two and one is not available, you can wait for one to open. Given you prefer to dine late, I suspect you will not have too long of a wait. They are sometimes a challenge to snag in all the dining venues because mass market cruise ship dining is based upon the banquet dining concept.