First time sailing Royal Caribbean. Question about my time dining

[Mrbluray]

Hi

 

Ive done many cruises but all with NCL. This will be my first cruise with another line. My question is about my time dining.

 

Is this RCCLs version of NCLs freestyle dining, where you just show up and ask for a table whenever you feel like eating?

 

Or do you have to make reservations?

And will you be seated at a table with strangers?

 

Thanks

[Clarea]

Reservations are not mandatory, you can show up when you want.

 

They will not normally seat you with strangers :eek:, unless you request it.

[HusemanCruzer]

I just did MTD on Symphony, and although we were not sat with strangers, we were close enough to have a conversation. I would recommend MTD, as mentioned before, you can make a reservation if you are a planning kinda of person.

[JTBCruiser]

We normally book a specific time on the RCI cruise planner then reconfirm once we board the ship. We ask for a table for 2 and in some cases, you are close enough to the other tables, you can actually have a conversation with others. We find we can usually show within 20 minutes of the reservation and get in early or a little later, never been an issue. You still have the option to do a walk up and depending on the time, may get in right away or may have to wait a bit, depends on the ship.

[rukkian]

Hi

 

Ive done many cruises but all with NCL. This will be my first cruise with another line. My question is about my time dining.

 

Is this RCCLs version of NCLs freestyle dining, where you just show up and ask for a table whenever you feel like eating?

 

Or do you have to make reservations?

And will you be seated at a table with strangers?

 

Thanks

 

While you can just walk up, there may be a long wait on some ships. On Allure this year, they had a sign the first day that said they were no longer taking reservations, and the no reservations line was pretty long many times. We had reservations each day (I am somewhat of a planner), and never had a wait of more than 2 minutes, and that was just to get to one of the hosts, so they could pull up our room.

[LeeW]

Partly it depends on when you want to eat. The dining room typically opens at 5:30 (can vary by ship). Dining room will often fill by 6:30. So between 6:30 and 7:30 there won't be many seats available and they likely won't take reservations for this period either. After that there is seldom a line except maybe on formal nights. And demographics makes a difference - Europeans like to eat later. Late time in port also shifts the crowds later.

[taglovestocruise]

All of the above assumes you signed up for MTD and were not given traditional.