Late seating of dining is 9PM?! on Mariner of the Sea Holy Lands

[nho9504]

We are sailing the 10/09 11 days Holy Lands Mariner of the Sea.

 

I just check in online today and saw our dining option is Late Seating at 9pm.

 

We normally cruise HAL and Princess and use the Anytime Dining option. This cruise is preceding HAL's Noordam Transatlantic back to Ft. Lauderdale. We wanted to do a cruise in Europe before the Noordam Transatlantic and the Mariner of the Sea won out on its schedule (brought us back to Rome 2 days before the Noordam's sailing date) and the price was dirt cheap.

 

Our agent usually booked us Anytime but for whatever reason she put us on Early Seating 6pm and I asked it to switch to Late Seating. However I never thought the Late Seating would be as late as 9pm - is this RCL's policy? In my memory both Princess and HAL late seating is either 8 or 8:30pm. I dont ever see HAL has 9pm late seating.

 

I gather once you are booked with traditional dining you could not change to My Time Dining until you get on the ship because I just discover that RCL would charge the gratuities before boarding if you opted for My Time Dining. Does RCL allow you to put the daily gratuity to your shipboard account? Or you must do the old fashion way by handing out those stupid envelopes?

[xxHadleyxx]

The LATE dining is common on RCI in Europe. They have a lot of Southern European cruisers who are on a much later schedule and find that time to be about right (it can be hard to find a decent restaurant open in Barcelona, Milan, etc before 8:00 or even 9:00 pm!) . It is also common to see young kids (who do not seem over tired) out and about until midnight or later on some of these sailings too:)

 

Did you double check the EARLY time? We have found that early dining on some of the cruises in the Med ends up being moved to 7:30 or even 7:45. It feels odd for us to book "early" after years of booking "late" on other lines--but often it works better for us, on RCI in Europe.

[nho9504]

On ours it is 6pm for the early dining hence I asked my agent to change us to late dining.

 

I understand the Spaniards they take Siesta and dont start working again until it is 3pm... We were in Milan for almost a week this Spring. No, the better restaurants did not necessarily open late like the Spanish ones did. I found the restaurants in Madrid were those that had the latest open time in the evening - but in recent years with the American tourists so "popular" in many European cities, the business style changed quite a bit. Decades ago only the tourists would stand at restaurants door at 8pm waiting for the doors to open. These days many restaurants open tor dinner business around 7 to 7:30. If they want the $$$ from the tourists, they better accommodate the tourists' dining habits.

 

Back to the cruise - on all our European cruises on HAL and Princess, their late seatings are NEVER 9pm. Though with Princess the Anytime Dining works GREAT because you can go to the M'D on the embarkation day afternoon and request a fixed table firxed time for the whole cruise - we know exactly which table(s) we want on the Emerald / Ruby / Crown ships and we get them on every single cruise. HAL's is more annoying but still, by 9pm they are actually start to clear out part of the restaurants...

 

I doubt our 11 days Holy Lands cruise in Oct would have many kids - it is not a Med cruise on one hand, the ship goes to Egypt and Israel. It is not in the Summer sailing time either. I hate unruly kids and would not hesitate a bit to scold them if they become offending.:rolleyes:

[Zou Bisou Bisou]

We are sailing the 10/09 11 days Holy Lands Mariner of the Sea.

 

I just check in online today and saw our dining option is Late Seating at 9pm.

 

We normally cruise HAL and Princess and use the Anytime Dining option. This cruise is preceding HAL's Noordam Transatlantic back to Ft. Lauderdale. We wanted to do a cruise in Europe before the Noordam Transatlantic and the Mariner of the Sea won out on its schedule (brought us back to Rome 2 days before the Noordam's sailing date) and the price was dirt cheap.

 

Our agent usually booked us Anytime but for whatever reason she put us on Early Seating 6pm and I asked it to switch to Late Seating. However I never thought the Late Seating would be as late as 9pm - is this RCL's policy? In my memory both Princess and HAL late seating is either 8 or 8:30pm. I dont ever see HAL has 9pm late seating.

 

I gather once you are booked with traditional dining you could not change to My Time Dining until you get on the ship because I just discover that RCL would charge the gratuities before boarding if you opted for My Time Dining. Does RCL allow you to put the daily gratuity to your shipboard account? Or

you must do the old fashion way by handing out those stupid envelopes?

 

You can pay your gratuities in advance with Royal Caribbean at any time. You do not need to be signed up for My Time Dining to do so. The envelopes, if

you pay in advance are no longer necessary.

 

Once onboard you can change your dining time from late to early seating or

My Time Dining, just go to Dining Room upon embarkation to talk to the Maitre de. Have a wonderful cruise!

[xxHadleyxx]

I only asked if you double checked the early times because on our first Mariner cruise (which was supposed to go to Egypt but was rerouted to Istanbul due to rioting--I am surprised they are going to Egypt next month actually), we initially were told 6 for early dining. That is the default on the website (so said my travel agent) but when she CALLED and asked directly it turned out that in reality early was 7:30 (and that WAS the case when we got on board). This was sailing around Easter 2011.

 

As far as kids on board--with RCI, which markets so heavily to families and so well internationally, we find it varies tremendously from sailing to sailing but that you cannot depend on knowing based on US holiday breaks.

When we sail Celebrity on our kids' fall break they are some of very few kids on board (especially for things like a Holy Land or even a Western Med cruise). RCI, we have found, it seems that half the time our fall break coincides with Spains and half not. When it does--lots of kids. We have also sailed with ships full of Mexicans and Venezuelans in Europe recently, who have different breaks and many young kids too.

 

BTW--I said the kids were awake, not that they were unruly. I have only encountered a few problem kids sailing--more often than not there are adults who are rude and unruly. Luckily most of the time most people, of all ages, are nice to be around :)