Just off the Caribbean Princess for the 13 day New England/Canada cruise. We had reserved 7:20 every night on the app. Somehow it got changed to 7:00pm. We were assigned to the Palm dining room, the larger dining room on deck 6 aft. Dinner on embarkation day was a chaotic mess. There was a very long line to get in. Once we were finally seated, it was clear the servers were overwhelmed, and after approximately 15 minutes of waiting for our server, we walked out. The maitre d'(?) seemed concerned as we left, but the situation seemed unfixable.
There was a very long line again on day 2, and we were seated in a different section. Service was more prompt, but it was clear the server was having difficulty keeping up, and he was not particularly friendly/pleasant.
We talked to a manager in the Coral dining room about getting a table with the same server there each night, but he said he could not guarantee it, but would be more likely to be able to accomodate us at a later time.
We returned to the Palm on day 4, there was no line, and the concerned maitre d' specifically assigned us to a certain server's section, as he did the next 2 times we returned.
In the end, we visited the World Fresh Marketplace for dinner 7 out of 13 nights.The MDR experience on the Caribbean Princess was much less pleasant than the late seating schedule during our cruises on the Emerald in December and March. It would seem that the servers cannot be happy with the present situation, and are likely receiving far fewer incidental gratuities than they would with the early/late seating schedule of the past.