Making Dining Reservations?? (Newbie)

[Marie50]

Our first Oceania Cruise.  Tomorrow I am able to make dining reservations, but when I go to my "Manage this Reservation", I am not sure where I will have the information about the various restaurants and times available.  There is nothing there now when I click on "Dining".   Can someone advise me?

[warburg]

The information will be there for you when you are able to use it. Read the available descriptions. On R ships, there are two choices, and four on the Os, five if you include La Reserve. You can also make additional reservations on board. The more flexible you are, the easier that will be.  

Mary

[LHT28]

42 minutes ago, Marie50 said:

Our first Oceania Cruise.  Tomorrow I am able to make dining reservations, but when I go to my "Manage this Reservation", I am not sure where I will have the information about the various restaurants and times available.  There is nothing there now when I click on "Dining".   Can someone advise me?

after 12:01 dst  you will be able to see & book your reservations

click the dining tab & you will see the restaurants. times & dates available

just follow the directions

worse case  call Oceania  or your TA  & have them book them

[skiladyldp]

Someone posted the following instructions for making dining reservation a couple of years and I have followed them for the past 2 trips and had success.

 

Sign into your Account 
Go to "View All Booked Cruises" (There may be a shorter route, but this is what worked for me.)
Choose Dining Reservations (On the right hand side)
Choose "Dining" on Menu Bar in center of page.
"Book Specialty Restaurants" will appear in a blue tab on the right hand side.
"Step 1:Select Dining Preference" - this is where you can choose how you want to dine. There are 3 options across the page "Dine at Private Table;" "Dine with Another Booked Party;" or "Share My Table with Other Guest." Not sure if it will default to a 2 top as mentioned by Jim and Stan, but they certainly seem to know all the ins and outs! I've received a plethora of good advice and information from their posts 
"Step 2:Select Restaurant Preference"
Under Restaurant of Choice you will choose "Show Available Dates." A calendar appears.
On preferred date choose "Add Reservation." A drop down will appear with available times.

Once you have made your allowed number of reservations, you will NOT be able to make others (if you want to change a date and time) until you cancel one of the existing reservations

[Kingofcool1947]

Good info.  

On our first Oceania cruise, we didn’t know this, and ended up with 9 p.m. reservations.  Way to late ding for us.  We were not able to change our times.

[Classiccruiser777]

When you board the ship you can also speak with a waiter at the Cruise Ambassador’s desk about possible dining reservation changes.

[NanciEA]

We can book first in our group of eight. Do I select option 2 - "dine with another booked party", or 3 - share my table with other guests"? I have the other cabin's booking numbers.

[LHT28]

1 hour ago, NanciEA said:

We can book first in our group of eight. Do I select option 2 - "dine with another booked party", or 3 - share my table with other guests"? I have the other cabin's booking numbers.

option 2

you will need the booking numbers of the other guests  so you can add them to your reservation

[juliet]

I had reservations in Jacques for our anniversary on an upcoming trip.  My travel agent, who knew we were celebrating, emailed me and said Oceania had to change two of our reservations because of them booking large groups those nights.  Really?  Not Oceania's fault as they weren't advised by my TA that it was our special night.  Don't mind eating in the MDR I guess.  When I mentioned it to her she said "darn!  I forgot!". 

 

Who in particular would I speak with to see if it can be reinstated?

[LHT28]

3 minutes ago, juliet said:

I had reservations in Jacques for our anniversary on an upcoming trip.  My travel agent, who knew we were celebrating, emailed me and said Oceania had to change two of our reservations because of them booking large groups those nights.  Really?  Not Oceania's fault as they weren't advised by my TA that it was our special night.  Don't mind eating in the MDR I guess.  When I mentioned it to her she said "darn!  I forgot!". 

 

Who in particular would I speak with to see if it can be reinstated?

Maybe  the group is taking over the space  so you may not be able to get it reinstated

If you have a TA  they should be able to speak to Oceania & work something out for you

Would another restaurant work or does it have to be Jacques??

[Kingofcool1947]

5 minutes ago, LHT28 said:

Maybe  the group is taking over the space  so you may not be able to get it reinstated

If you have a TA  they should be able to speak to Oceania & work something out for you

Would another restaurant work or does it have to be Jacques??

 

Can you change your reservation for a different time or date?   Will that work for you?

Good luck.

King

Edited October 29, 2018 by Kingofcool1947

[Mura]

On our last B2B in May on Riviera, both legs of our cruise had large alumni groups on board.  It's possible that it's a group like this that indeed has taken over the entire restaurant.  Not nice for you!

 

These days I don't really care if my birthday or anniversary celebration dinner is really on THE date, but I know many people wouldn't agree with me!

 

If Jacques won't be available that night, how about one of the other specialties?

 

Hope it all works out to your satisfaction.

 

Mura

[juliet]

Thanks Mura.  The MDR will be fine.  Enjoy reading all your responses.  Very helpful.

[juliet]

3 hours ago, Kingofcool1947 said:

 

Can you change your reservation for a different time or date?   Will that work for you?

Good luck.

King

They changed two of my specialty restaurant reservations for this group and changed them for different days but same time.  Again, MDR will suffice I'm sure.

[juliet]

3 hours ago, LHT28 said:

Maybe  the group is taking over the space  so you may not be able to get it reinstated

If you have a TA  they should be able to speak to Oceania & work something out for you

Would another restaurant work or does it have to be Jacques??

LHT28,  didn't have to be Jacques, just thought it would be special that night.  No problem.

[Mura]

Juliet, it's great that you aren't devastated at these changes!

 

BUT ... I remain unhappy that priority seems to be given to these large groups.  They got that priority on our cruise when it came to using Horizons for Meet & Greets -- they were able to do so but the rest of us couldn't.

 

After all, we're paying the same fare -- and maybe more!  It seems unfair that some people get more consideration than others, especially when reservations had already been made.  What good is a reservation if they can change it at will?

 

Actually, that happened to us on our cruise as well ... our La Reserve reservation was changed to the following week (which wasn't a problem for us at all), but then the ship LOST its record of our reservation!  Fortunately, they made good on it.  I don't know if my having our invoice that showed the reservation was necessary but it sure didn't hurt.

 

Mura

[juliet]

Mura,  There's so much more to be devastated about than dinner reservations for our anniversary.  Do people really get that upset with things like that?  Will speak with our butler if there's anything he can do but will survive either way  .   I try to make lemonade out of lemons.  Life's too short.  This will be our first Oceania voyage and so looking forward to it.   

[LHT28]

4 minutes ago, juliet said:

Mura,  There's so much more to be devastated about than dinner reservations for our anniversary.  Do people really get that upset with things like that? 

YES

 

Hope you enjoy the cruise  & Happy Anniversary

[Paulchili]

Juliet - you are being very nice and understanding about this but you have definitely been “wronged” - particularly as one of your reservations was for a special occasion.

IMO they should compensate your inconvenience by an extra reservation in your favorite restaurant (Jacques?) as a good will gesture.

JMO.

Happy anniversary and enjoy the cruise

[Mura]

Juliet, delighted to hear your perspective.  On our first -- or was it fifth? -- anniversary, we were going to go to the Windows on the World for our dinner.  Unbeknownst to me, Howard arranged to have a private room with three other couples, our best friends.  Naomi was so upset when I said to her (not knowing the secret plans) that I didn't want to share our anniversary with anyone else ...

 

Of course I was thrilled with the real event when it took place!

 

I do agree that "devastated" was probably the wrong word to use!

 

Mura

[arima22]

On ‎10‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 1:04 PM, juliet said:

I had reservations in Jacques for our anniversary on an upcoming trip.  My travel agent, who knew we were celebrating, emailed me and said Oceania had to change two of our reservations because of them booking large groups those nights.  Really?  Not Oceania's fault as they weren't advised by my TA that it was our special night.  Don't mind eating in the MDR I guess.  When I mentioned it to her she said "darn!  I forgot!". 

 

Who in particular would I speak with to see if it can be reinstated?

The change may be a blessing, even though not for your anniversary date.  We have had occasions for land base restaurants which have called and said they had large groups for that night, would we accept a change in night due to noise and possible service delays, revised night was much better.  We have been in Jacques when large alumni groups were there as well, after their cocktail time in Horizons, it was very noisy. 

[BigNance]

On 10/29/2018 at 4:04 PM, juliet said:

I had reservations in Jacques for our anniversary on an upcoming trip.  My travel agent, who knew we were celebrating, emailed me and said Oceania had to change two of our reservations because of them booking large groups those nights.  Really?  Not Oceania's fault as they weren't advised by my TA that it was our special night.  Don't mind eating in the MDR I guess.  When I mentioned it to her she said "darn!  I forgot!". 

 

Who in particular would I speak with to see if it can be reinstated?

Call Oceania directly.  Perhaps they can help!

[ebslcc]

On 10/28/2018 at 3:30 PM, LHT28 said:

option 2

you will need the booking numbers of the other guests  so you can add them to your reservation

We were very excited to book right at 9 PM Pacific when our Specialty dining reservation window opened.  We got the days and the times we wanted.  Unfortunately I clicked on Option 3 first to book for a table to share under our reservation and then click option 2 to add the other parties with their reservation numbers then click "Save".  The system gave me confirmation that the changes were saved but NONE of the other parties actually got confirmed!!!  Apparently I should have started with Option 2 and then add the other parties.  We got this corrected with a phone call to Oceania the next morning.  Luckily we still got decent day and time but not as good as when the reservation window was first opened.

 

Laurence

[Two4Sea]

Just to add to Laurence's post, we used option 2 to add friends to our reservation last week. A few details we noticed:

-although we had reached opening day our friends had not. So we had to call in where they were readily added to our table, changing the size from 2 to 4.

-even though we were entitled to quite a few reservations on this cruise the computer would not let the agent let our friends exceed their entitlement.

-when I tried to change an existing reservation to a different available time on the same evening the computer let me place my request and once I confirmed that I was willing to give up the existing res it proceeded to change my time. I didn't have to cancel the old res before requesting the new one.

-making and adjusting 42 reservations took 90 minutes and resulted in 57 email confirmations

 

Bill

[LHT28]

7 minutes ago, Two4Sea said:

-even though we were entitled to quite a few reservations on this cruise the computer would not let the agent let our friends exceed their entitlement.

 

 

Bill

 

 

yes that is how the prebooking works

you are allotted x number of pre reserved reservations  no matter how they are booked

this is to give everyone a chance to prebook the Specialties

once onboard you can ask for extra slots depending on availability