MDR dinners -- long? or are expectations mismatched?

[DENIE]

We enjoy a well-paced 1.5 to 2- hour meal in the MDR when we are dining with friends.  Agree that this sort of thing is a hightlight for us. That said, we had some issues on our recent Koningsdam MX Riviera cruise Dec 3-10.  We were part of a group and there were a couple occasions where 8-10 of us were seated but forgotten about for 30 minutes. No water, no beverage order, no bread on the table.  It was not the staff's fault as we could see they were working hard. But at one point one of our group found the maître-de and explained that we had been seated 30 minutes ago. We also found that the beverage servers were also the wait-staff.  Just terribly short-staffed (yet the cruise was sold out).  Once the appetizers and entrees arrived, there was no pacing in between; they all arrived at the same time.

 

Granted, we are on vacation on a cruise ship, and it still doesn't get better than that.  I must say that we also dined at Pinnacle Grill, Nami Sushi and Tamarind, and had the same 2-hour experience, but was perfectly paced and service and quality were excellent!

[Seasick Sailor]

The sommeliers are making a comeback. Diego just boarded a few weeks ago. He's a spitfire!

[friendswithdave]

I overheard on our ship that the sommeliers were let go some time ago so the waiters were filling that role.

[kurtmi03]

We are on the Volendam now and the first night dinner in the MDR took an hour and a half. Two nights later was a Dressy night and we were in and out in 35 minutes. We sit at a table for 2, late seating. DW and I had a wonderful meal in the Canaletto on night 2 which took about an hour. 

[Mary229]

13 hours ago, kurtmi03 said:

We are on the Volendam now and the first night dinner in the MDR took an hour and a half. Two nights later was a Dressy night and we were in and out in 35 minutes. We sit at a table for 2, late seating. DW and I had a wonderful meal in the Canaletto on night 2 which took about an hour. 

35 minutes!  Holy moly. Did you ask for rush service?

[kurtmi03]

Didn’t ask for rush service. We just arrived at 8 and ordered right away and there was very little wait between courses. Excellent service. 

[cruisemom42]

1 hour ago, kurtmi03 said:

Didn’t ask for rush service. We just arrived at 8 and ordered right away and there was very little wait between courses. Excellent service. 

 

How many courses did you have?

 

That would be just too short for me, lol.