My time dining question

[the stevensons]

hi there-i am new to this board so please be gentle with me. We are going on our 2nd cruise in february and have opted for my time dining. Our first cruise was with disney. We really enjoyed getting to know our servers on disney. How does it work with my time dining? I believe we will be assigned a dining room? But will we still always have the same servers or will we just be given a table anyway in the restaurent orwill we wait forone to be available with "our" servers?

 

Also do we really need tomake reservations or can we just turn up when we are ready?

 

We are 2 couples-will we be sat alone orwith others? Dont mind either as we made great friends with our tablemates last cruise.

 

Thankyou

[cruisnseas]

These are all great questions.

 

MyTime Dining gives you lots of options. You do not "need" to make reservations (and to be frank, sometimes making reservations can be a pain!). If you do not make reservations, sometimes there may be a wait for a table but being a group of 4 that is unlikely.

 

You can request to sit alone or be sat with others. If there is a wait, offering to be seated with others may help get you seated faster.

 

If you like your waiters, you can request the same waiters each night. Otherwise it is hit or miss but it is the same group of waiters serving the MyTime Dining section.

[the stevensons]

Thankyou for the reply. Just trying to get my head around it all. As i said its only going to be our second cruise and we have been completely bowled over with cruising. We also have another cruise on the fantasy booked for october. I am sure i will be back with a ton of questions.

[KirkNC]

Weclome to Cruise Critic!

[bancytu]

We had MTD on our last cruise. We made a reservation each day for around the same time. We also sat in the same area in the dining room with the same wait staff. It was nice having the same wait staff each day just like normal dining. It was less formal then regular dining but still the same quality of food.

[TxKroozer]

We have used MTD for last several cruises. You can make a reservation time in advance of the cruise for every night for convenience and then adjust it each night as you prefer. Or as stated you can just show up in advance of your reservation time and wait for a table. If you do go to another restaurant the automatically know and cancel your MTD reservation. We made our reservation time around the same time each night and they always seated us in the same section and normally with the same waiter. On occasion we would be a table or two over and get another waiter, but the same assistant waiter. You still can get to know your waiters unless you eat at totally different times each day by substantially different times.

[Beaching It]

hi there-i am new to this board so please be gentle with me. We are going on our 2nd cruise in february and have opted for my time dining. Our first cruise was with disney. We really enjoyed getting to know our servers on disney. How does it work with my time dining? I believe we will be assigned a dining room? But will we still always have the same servers or will we just be given a table anyway in the restaurent orwill we wait forone to be available with "our" servers?

 

Also do we really need tomake reservations or can we just turn up when we are ready?

 

We are 2 couples-will we be sat alone orwith others? Dont mind either as we made great friends with our tablemates last cruise.

 

Thankyou

 

A group of 6 of us just did MTD for the first time on Oasis. I was a little worried about it but it was perfect and I would highly recommend it. We made reservations online before boarding based on our show reservations. Our dinner times varied from 6:30 to 8:00 depending on the night. We had a friend with lots of allergies, so it was important for her to have the same wait staff so she didn't have to explain it every night.

 

The first night we were seated at a table for 6 quite close to the main door. It was a busy area, but our head waiter and staff were AMAZING! We asked for the same table every night and they made sure it happened. We were also told that the best waiters work in the MTD area. You have to prepay tips to eat there, so they are guaranteed their tips. The service was phenomenal!

 

There were 2 line ups to enter the MTD room - one for reservations / one for no reservations. Well I can tell you that on the Oasis the people without reservations seemed to be waiting a LONG time while we just cruised in every night to our lovely table. I would drop by the dining room early afternoon just to confirm our time (or change it) and request our table... worked like a charm!

 

Enjoy!!

[parrotfeathers]

I really liked MTD and plan to continue it. I ate at the same table every night, with the same waiter. I don't mind prepaying gratuities. Don't think I will ever do mainstream again.

[KeywestK]

To OP: Welcome to Cruise Critic. All of your questions are very valid, and I think you will enjoy the flexibility that MTD provides. We have been doing MTD for the past several years and would never go back to traditional. You can make reservations in advance for your preferred time/table configuration. We have always enjoyed having the same wait staff for the entire cruise, so we just tell the Maitre 'd to please give us the same table each evening. If, for any reason, we don't plan to come to the dining room one evening (specialty restaurant ressies) we always tell our wait staff and maitre 'd, so they know not to expect us--common courtesy.

 

If you have any other questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to post them.:)

[Kellie Poodle]

We did MTD on our Grandeur cruise in October. The captain made an effort to seat us in the same area each night so that we would have the same staff. We never requested it and we never had a reservation. We did eat around the same time each evening, give or take a half hour. Some nights we were seated next to people we'd been seated by earlier. It made for interesting conversations.

 

We became friendly with another couple on the ship who also had MTD and were able to dine together on the last formal night.

 

We've been cruising for many, many years and always enjoyed mainstream dining, but this port intensive cruise seemed made for us to try MTD,

 

Don't think we'll ever go back to mainstream.