Question about "My Time Dining"

[sbaker]

We haven't been on Royal Caribbean for awhile and have a cruise scheduled over Christmas on Navigator .  We like the flexibility that comes with "My Time Dining", but someone mentioned that with the "My Time Dining", the earliest that you can go to dinner is around 7:00.  They said that the only way to have an earlier dining time is to have the traditional dining with the early (5:15) timeslot.  Is that  true?  Although we like the flexibility that "My Time Dining" offers, there days that we like to go to an early dinner. 

[Ourusualbeach]

10 minutes ago, sbaker said:

We haven't been on Royal Caribbean for awhile and have a cruise scheduled over Christmas on Navigator .  We like the flexibility that comes with "My Time Dining", but someone mentioned that with the "My Time Dining", the earliest that you can go to dinner is around 7:00.  They said that the only way to have an earlier dining time is to have the traditional dining with the early (5:15) timeslot.  Is that  true?  Although we like the flexibility that "My Time Dining" offers, there days that we like to go to an early dinner. 

Yes it is true.

 

Royal is now using all levels of the dining room for early dining and then changes one over to MTD so you have to wait for the early guests to leave.

[crzndeb]

51 minutes ago, sbaker said:

We haven't been on Royal Caribbean for awhile and have a cruise scheduled over Christmas on Navigator .  We like the flexibility that comes with "My Time Dining", but someone mentioned that with the "My Time Dining", the earliest that you can go to dinner is around 7:00.  They said that the only way to have an earlier dining time is to have the traditional dining with the early (5:15) timeslot.  Is that  true?  Although we like the flexibility that "My Time Dining" offers, there days that we like to go to an early dinner. 

I’m on the New Years cruise after yours, and though I normally cruise solo, doing a family cruise with daughters and grandkids. We were originally scheduled for MTD, but moved over to Traditional at 5:30. A lot of people are moving over to TD, so if you want to switch, do it now. A couple of us were waitlisted, but got moved.

[RosieRoo]

Just experienced the new MTD schedule on Voyager. They don’t open now until 6:45 so the line was ridiculous when we arrived for our 7 pm reservation (reserved months in advance).  After waiting almost an hour we gave up and went to the Windjammer. Ended up switching to fixed seating at 8pm. 

[CamaCama]

I'd stick with either early or late seating. You can usually get there 30 minutes early or late if you just let them know.  We were on freedom last weekend and we tried to eat at izumi but there were no tables for sushi so we went to the MDR around 7:45.  The line for "reservations" was about 25 people deep.  The line for "no reservations" had zero people in line, we walked right up to the host and got seated in 30 seconds.

[jackiel3290]

On 10/3/2022 at 5:30 PM, crzndeb said:

I’m on the New Years cruise after yours, and though I normally cruise solo, doing a family cruise with daughters and grandkids. We were originally scheduled for MTD, but moved over to Traditional at 5:30. A lot of people are moving over to TD, so if you want to switch, do it now. A couple of us were waitlisted, but got moved.

You will be happier with a set dining time with a big group. Our family sailed on a Christmas cruise on Norwegian which is all MTD. Every evening we would send someone to make our reservation for 11 and generally had 30 minute or more waits. We would then call everyone to the dining room when our table was ready. It was not fun.

[ssbeard1]

We just returned from Allure 8 day cruise.   We had My Time.  They start seating (regardless of what  their  app  says) around 5 in the MTD dining room.  At 5:45 they will seat guests in the open tables in the other dining rooms where tables had no-shows.    We had “reservations “ at 7 but after the crazy first night asked the people working the check in for MTD.   This is when they told us they open at 5.  Maybe other ships are different but this is Allures policy.  That said, the MTD is a total mess - the other 2 dining room waiters were not happy to see us (one even told us so) and one it took 2 1/2 hrs - we were a party of 8 with 2 kids who grew hungry and  tired.   They were taken to the Windjammer for food.   This is our 8-9 cruise with Royal (20+cruises total) and they have went downhill on their food. We have done MTD on other cruise lines and it was perfect.   If you choose to do it on Royal go early otherwise the lines are horrible.   

[bluecruise456]

I booked my time and then bought package of 3 specialty restaurants,  when I get on ship to make the chops, wonderland, etc. reservations are the my time dining reservations deleted?

[ATSEAMYLIFE]

We booked a last minute cruise on Navigator in July with our two GD (7 & 9).  All we could get was Anytime which didn't start until 7 pm, much to late for the youngsters.  As soon as we got onboard I went to the main dining room and got us changed to early seating.  Most nights, except formal, they wanted to do the WJ and after snacking all day at Loco Fresh they weren't very hungry anyway.  

[linerode]

On 10/3/2022 at 5:35 PM, sbaker said:

We haven't been on Royal Caribbean for awhile and have a cruise scheduled over Christmas on Navigator .  We like the flexibility that comes with "My Time Dining", but someone mentioned that with the "My Time Dining", the earliest that you can go to dinner is around 7:00.  They said that the only way to have an earlier dining time is to have the traditional dining with the early (5:15) timeslot.  Is that  true?  Although we like the flexibility that "My Time Dining" offers, there days that we like to go to an early dinner. 

We did this on our most recent cruise and changed back to the early time after the first night. They told us we would have to wait until 7:15 to even get in line since all reservations were full for the week after the first day. We ended up switching to the early time and had the same table all week. We much preferred that.