Anytime Dining

Please correct me if I am wrong. I thought I read somewhere that you have to call and make a reservation each night for dinner? I know on other cruise lines anytime dining means you show up at the dining room and they seat you. TIA

No. You don't have to make a reservation. You are free to try to make a reservation. Sometimes one can and other times one can't. It will depend on the ship and who is in control. Some folks simply don't allow the staff to take reservations.

Normally you can just show up. If there is seating you will be seated. If not, you will be given a beeper. The scenario will likely depend on the time you choose to try to eat.

We just went back to second sitting dining on Regal. Loved it.

The upside was having two regular excellent waiters who had little else to do except keep us fed and watered as the dining room was half empty every night.

The downside was that the Dan Falconer the CD put our favorite Princess gameshows on at 8pm at night so we never got to play or watch them.

I was told that there were fairly long lines at Anytime Dining, and sometimes the AD people were sent into our dining room to save them waiting too long.

I think any cruise with a more senior age group usually has less demand for second seating dining.

I forgot to put in my original post I am on the Island Princess for Alaska cruise

Please correct me if I am wrong. I thought I read somewhere that you have to call and make a reservation each night for dinner? I know on other cruise lines anytime dining means you show up at the dining room and they seat you. TIA

As the others have said, you simply show up for ATD whenever you want, no need to phone ahead. And yes, the ATD dining rooms can get pretty busy, so a beeper is always a possibility, especially if you want a table for two. We have no problems getting a beeper, it just means more time for martinis before dinner, :D and the wait is usually less than 15 minutes.

 

I think any cruise with a more senior age group usually has less demand for second seating dining.

So true.

We're standing on line to eat at 4:45. :p

I forgot to put in my original post I am on the Island Princess for Alaska cruise

Oh that does somewhat change things, that ship was sadly cut about to add quite a few more passengers and now has more passengers than the dining rooms were originally designed for.

I hope you like waiting in line for anytime dining...………………..Good Luck

Never made a booking.

Personally I wish they wouldn’t take bookings at all.

On the ships with 3 main dining rooms, the one at the Aft of deck 6 is Traditional. The other 2 are off the Piazza on deck 5 & 6, with the one on deck 5 being Anytime. The one on deck 6 is Traditional Early Dining and then around 7 it becomes Anytime. And the maitre'd will often seat Anytime people during Traditional Early at empty table, but don't generally do that the 1st 2 or 3 nights, until they see if the assigned people are going to show up.

If you are Anytime and they ask if you are willing to "share", that means you are willing to sit at a table of 6 or 8 with passengers you may not know. We like to say yes to Sharing when we are not traveling with friends.....we are together at home, in the plane, in the cabin, in Horizon Court, etc. and it is really nice to meet some other people!!

We always do Anytime dining and almost never make a reservation--maybe twice. We rarely have to wait at all, the most a couple of minutes, but we do like to eat late--usually 8 or later.

We also usually ask for a table for two.

We usually do Anytime. If we are traveling alone or 2 couples, we ask to share a table. We have met some wonderful people that way. But if there are 3 or 4 couples traveling together, we usually book our reservations in Anytime.

You don't have to make a reservation with ATD.

With ATD on an Alaskan cruise, you will likely end up waiting for dinner with a pager. If you don't consider yourself lucky! We gave up on ATD when we got tired of waiting. The wait times were not necessarily terrible, 15-30 minutes, on a bad night longer. We used to consider it similar to "wait time" at a land restaurant. We used to be able to make a RSVP if we were OK with dining right when they opened, which defeats the purpose of ATD.

I am not of fan of how Princess does ATD. We now do Traditional dining. The nights we don't want to "wait" for our dining time, we do specialty dining, it works out fine. Club Class has also worked even better. That is TRUE ANYTIME Dining. However, I'm not willing to pay the extra every cruise to get that. I'd rather cruise more, and have Traditional dining.

All that being said, I've never had a bad cruise, even with the minor frustrations of ATD. So, don't sweat the small stuff and enjoy your cruise. :)

We just returned from an Alaska cruise on the Coral. We had ATD and ate in the dining room 4 nights and never waited more than a couple minutes. I would say we arrived between 545 and 7 each night. We were willing to sit at larger group tables though....had we wanted a table for 2 there may have been a wait. IMHO ATD should not take 'reservations' but it is what it is. Dining with 10 was taking longer than we preferred and a couple nights we just decided to go to Horizon Court buffet.

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Please correct me if I am wrong. I thought I read somewhere that you have to call and make a reservation each night for dinner? I know on other cruise lines anytime dining means you show up at the dining room and they seat you. TIA

Just show up and they will seat you as soon as a table is available.

Please correct me if I am wrong. I thought I read somewhere that you have to call and make a reservation each night for dinner? I know on other cruise lines anytime dining means you show up at the dining room and they seat you. TIA

Just show up when you want to eat.

I have always said..........making reservations for AT basically defeats the entire purpose of anytime dining. :rolleyes:

You don’t have to make a reservation. Just go there and get in line. :eek:

Tony