Finding Mystery Dinner & Other Specialty Dining Nights

[bundito]

Finding the Mystery Dinner Theater has been a trial for me, because of an annoying design decision on RCCL's website. Once you view your reservation and cruise enhancements, there's a set of links for Specialty Restaurant options. One of them says "Mystery Dinner Theater".

 

My wife and I have been clicking this link every day for two months and always get the same unhelpful message:

 

Dining reservations are not available at this time. Please try back at a later time or you can inquire once onboard the ship.(*)

 

So, like crazy people, we keep checking back at a later time - once a day. We always get the same message. We're not too interested in the other choices, so we've never clicked the other links.

 

However... if you click the link that reads "All Specialty Restaurant Options", you get a magic listing of what is actually available, along with a day-picker to make a reservation.

 

For our 14-day itinerary, we see

 

- Dinner At Chops

- Chops Wine Dinner Series

- Dinner At Portofino

- Portofino Wine Dinner Series

 

(You can choose the specialty restaurant any night, but the Wine dinner is only offered once per restaurant - at least on our itinerary.)

 

The Mystery Dinner Theater is not listed. At this point - 56 days prior to sailing - we have to admit defeat and accept that it's not going to be offered.

 

I hope spelling this out will help others navigate (no pun intended) the bizarre behavior of RCCL's website.

 

Best,

 

-Dito

 

(*) As someone who's designed corporate websites for a living, this kind of error message pisses me off. Notice that it doesn't give you a clear explanation. It doesn't say "This option is not offered during your itinerary, sorry." It just says "try again later". I've got plenty of other issues with the RCCL website, but this it truly poor design. And on top of that, my wife is going to be upset. She's been expecting that, one day, the Mystery Dinner Theater link is going to let her book the package. Something as simple as a better-written error message would have saved us considerable frustration, and now, disappointment.

[nyer]

This happened to us on our last cruise two years ago. The way it was explained to us was that Royal will only take a certain amount of reservations prior to boarding the ship. Once onboard we were able to go directly to Portofinos and book the Mystery Dinner Theater. We did it shortly after we embarked.

Good luck and enjoy your cruise.

[bundito]

This happened to us on our last cruise two years ago. The way it was explained to us was that Royal will only take a certain amount of reservations prior to boarding the ship. Once onboard we were able to go directly to Portofinos and book the Mystery Dinner Theater. We did it shortly after we embarked.

Good luck and enjoy your cruise.

 

Well, thanks for giving us a glimmer of hope. I remain annoyed at the process, though.

 

 

-D