Open dining on Summit

[travelite]

Have done Open Dining on other ships.

Does it run smoothly on the Summit? Long waits?

Is it possible to reserve a dining time for each day? Who and when to contact?

[greydog]

On Summit last week. Tried Select on second night at busy period and service was below average, not so much attitude but delays with dishes being served, soup, other items not hot. Ended up doing Specialty and Evening buffet (offers sushi too) on other evenings.

 

On boarding, visit dining room to coordinate a repeating time slot with same waiters or do daily advance varying reservation time. KEEP IN MIND SHOW TIMES and that others will be filling dining area around show times too. If flexible, ask about less crowded time slots. GOOD LUCK

[kendon]

NO, it does not run smoothly. Do yourself a favor and book fixed seating. There was a mad rush to do this on our Summit cruise after the first night. As a result, the fixed seating in the dining room was so crowded that there was about an inch and a half between guests leaving no room to eat comfortably.

[A Sixth?]

Been on the Summit many times and always do select dining with no problems at all.

 

Occasionally there was a short wait but never long enough to finish a drink... :p

 

Found the service to be fine and we almost always loved our food.

 

I wouldn't cruise on a ship that DIDN'T have a form of select dining.

[ngaspar]

Have done Open Dining on other ships.

Does it run smoothly on the Summit? Long waits?

Is it possible to reserve a dining time for each day? Who and when to contact?

 

Just off Summit and select dining was the by far the worst we've experienced on any Celebrity Ship. We waited one hour for our reserved time on the first formal night. Other nights we did not wait (reserved in advance on line). But every night we experienced painfully slow and inaccurate food delivery, temperatures that were off, quality that was diminished and service was incredibly poor and indifferent. Since we've never had a problem with Celebrity before we were wondering if this was just a Summit issue or if the MDR is slipping in general fleet-wide. It was really the only source of disappointment to us during the trip.

[karena1]

I wouldn't cruise on a ship that DIDN'T have a form of select dining.

 

 

I would not probably go to that extreme, but we are pretty much with you. We have done MTD, open dining, etc, since it was introduced. Love the flexibility of eating when we feel like it. We rarely, if ever, make reservations, always get the same wait staff, once in a blue moon do we wait for a table more than a few minutes, food/service is always great. Perfect for us.

[Beach Ball]

We were on the July 21st Summit sailing and had Select Dining. We made reservations for 6:45 each night online before we sailed. Never had to wait more than 5 minutes to be seated. Had a different table each night for 2 (all over the dining room). Service was good to great and food was delicious. Chose to eat at Normandie the last evening and it was fantastic and a perfect way to end a great cruise.

[travelite]

We were on the July 21st Summit sailing and had Select Dining. We made reservations for 6:45 each night online before we sailed. Never had to wait more than 5 minutes to be seated. Had a different table each night for 2 (all over the dining room). Service was good to great and food was delicious. Chose to eat at Normandie the last evening and it was fantastic and a perfect way to end a great cruise.

 

 

How/where (interactive TV ?) did you make a reservation online before sailing? Did you make a reservation each night before sailing (approx. 4 - 5 p.m. ?) for the following night?

Is it possible to make a reservation for the first night?

[Kartgv]

How/where (interactive TV ?) did you make a reservation online before sailing? Did you make a reservation each night before sailing (approx. 4 - 5 p.m. ?) for the following night?

Is it possible to make a reservation for the first night?

 

Celebrity encourages but does not require reservations for Select Dining. You can make them once on board; I believe we had a card in our room giving us the phone number to call. I don't remember being able to do this on the interactive TV, but maybe someone else knows if that's possible.

 

You can also make reservations online up until 3 days before departure. There have been several threads on how difficult Celebrity makes it to do this, and apparently there are a couple of different methods that work. Here's what worked for us:

 

Once you have logged in to the Celebrity site -

1. Click on "Manage Reservation"

2. Click on "Reserve Dining"

3. On the right side of the page is a small box titled "Your Dining Reservations". (Mine showed '0'). Click on "0 purchased".

4. This finally brings you to the "My Cruise Extras" page. Click the "Add More" box.

5. The last option on the pull-down menu is "Celebrity Select Dining".

 

You're finally where you can actually make the reservations - another 3 or 4 step process for each day. Now wasn't that easy?

[DonnaK]

Hmmm...we had to choose late dining because early was not available for our upcoming Summit cruise. We were placed on the wait list, but have not cleared the list as of yet. (Cruise leaves on Sunday). I was going to try to move to Select dining once onboard (we don't want to do it beforehand because we don't want to prepay tips - we'd rather them be added to our onboard account so we can use OBC to pay for them), and figured we'd make a standing reservation for the same time as early traditional dining. But, if the service is poor and slow, then maybe I need to rethink this plan.

[JerseyGem]

Been on the Summit many times and always do select dining with no problems at all....Occasionally there was a short wait but never long enough to finish a drink... Found the service to be fine and we almost always loved our food. ...

karena1: I would not probably go to that extreme, but we are pretty much with you. We have done MTD, open dining, etc, since it was introduced. Love the flexibility of eating when we feel like it. We rarely, if ever, make reservations, always get the same wait staff, once in a blue moon do we wait for a table more than a few minutes, food/service is always great....

 

Since you've given us such positive reviews, can you recommend wait staff for us to specifically request? I'm hoping your Summit cruises were recent enough that the staff might still be onboard and assigned to Select dining.

 

Beach Ball- you mentioned that you were all over the dining room. Does this mean that the tables for select dining are not still in just one part of the MDR?

 

We are thinking about switching from Late Seating to Select once onboard the Summit (assuming they can accommodate us!). Thanks.

[kendon]

We were on the July 21st Summit sailing and had Select Dining. We made reservations for 6:45 each night online before we sailed. Never had to wait more than 5 minutes to be seated. Had a different table each night for 2 (all over the dining room). Service was good to great and food was delicious. Chose to eat at Normandie the last evening and it was fantastic and a perfect way to end a great cruise.

 

But without a reservation...you're sunk. Reservations at an anytime/select dining room irks me. Most don't know that you can reserve in a select DR, therefore wait up to an hour for a table in a poorly run dining room.

[Beach Ball]

karena1: I would not probably go to that extreme, but we are pretty much with you. We have done MTD, open dining, etc, since it was introduced. Love the flexibility of eating when we feel like it. We rarely, if ever, make reservations, always get the same wait staff, once in a blue moon do we wait for a table more than a few minutes, food/service is always great....

 

Since you've given us such positive reviews, can you recommend wait staff for us to specifically request? I'm hoping your Summit cruises were recent enough that the staff might still be onboard and assigned to Select dining.

 

Beach Ball- you mentioned that you were all over the dining room. Does this mean that the tables for select dining are not still in just one part of the MDR?

 

We are thinking about switching from Late Seating to Select once onboard the Summit (assuming they can accommodate us!). Thanks.

 

We made reservations online at home before we left for each night at 6:45. We were seated at different sections of the Select Dining which was on the upper floor of the MDR. We were very happy with our service and food. Chris and Carl

[CPT Trips]

Been on the Summit many times and always do select dining with no problems at all.

 

Occasionally there was a short wait but never long enough to finish a drink... :p

 

Found the service to be fine and we almost always loved our food.

 

I wouldn't cruise on a ship that DIDN'T have a form of select dining.

 

Do you just walk up, or do you make reservations? How recently did you cruise Summit?

[galleycook]

We did select dining on the Summit a few weeks ago. We only ate in the MDR a few times but had no problems. Every time we showed up, we had to wait. They just asked us to wait in the lounge and they came and got us when a table was ready. We had a suite and our butler told us not to worry about reservations. I think the longest we waited was 15 minutes. We did not have the same wait staff on any of the occasions.