Dining reservations

[wcsdkqh]

1 hour ago, RELS said:

 

I think that Mike has heard us loud and clear. I am sure he'll bring our concerns to TPTB. If the change (we don't like) is already in the works, backing it out will be unlikely for now. Web development just don't work like that. We'll just have to live with things for now, and trust that a better solution is coming with a future revision. Mike knows our wishes, and he's proven that he's responsive to customer issues raised in in this forum.

 

Thanks, Mike 🙂!

In other words, quit whining.

[Mike Moore]

As evidence from the varying opinions, no time will ever be perfect. I'm thankful to those of you that shared your stories of making reservations hours after the opening time, while still being able to secure what you were looking for. The last thing we aim to do is have you start the planning of your cruise with us by having to set an alarm, so hopefully that puts some of our west coast US guests' minds at ease. 

 

Due to operational restraints that are unlikely to change in the next year, I'm afraid it'll be at least that long before we can pick a time that is more ideal for all of our guests in Europe, the UK, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and across the time zones of North and South America. Thank you for your understanding, as the next best option is reverting back to midnight ET, but we're trying not to go back to inconveniencing our guests on the east coast of the US. 

[pingpong1]

1 hour ago, Mike Moore said:

As evidence from the varying opinions, no time will ever be perfect. I'm thankful to those of you that shared your stories of making reservations hours after the opening time, while still being able to secure what you were looking for. The last thing we aim to do is have you start the planning of your cruise with us by having to set an alarm, so hopefully that puts some of our west coast US guests' minds at ease. 

 

Due to operational restraints that are unlikely to change in the next year, I'm afraid it'll be at least that long before we can pick a time that is more ideal for all of our guests in Europe, the UK, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and across the time zones of North and South America. Thank you for your understanding, as the next best option is reverting back to midnight ET, but we're trying not to go back to inconveniencing our guests on the east coast of the US. 

Hi Mike.  So, to confirm in my own mind...no matter what the current or future "reservation opening time" is...we will all individually be notified (in advance) of that time on each of respective account page/s for each cruise.  Correct?

[Mike Moore]

18 minutes ago, pingpong1 said:

Hi Mike.  So, to confirm in my own mind...no matter what the current or future "reservation opening time" is...we will all individually be notified (in advance) of that time on each of respective account page/s for each cruise.  Correct?

That is correct - the time listed on the "to-do" list within My Account will be updated as soon as this change goes live, which is currently scheduled to happen the evening of August 24th.

 

Meaning if any of your "to-do" dates are August 25th or beyond, after you log-in to the website after 8pm ET on August 24th, you'll see the times update to reflect 7am ET on those dates moving forward.

[1982CruzStart]

4 hours ago, Mike Moore said:

The last thing we aim to do is have you start the planning of your cruise with us by having to set an alarm, so hopefully that puts some of our west coast US guests' minds at ease. 

For me it doesn't eliminate my concern. I think i could find an equal number of people who couldn't get their desired excursions after waiting until the morning to do so.  Due to a problem with my account in the past i have had to wait to book the following morning and had issues getting everything i wanted. We cruise specifically for the ports and excursions.

 

Unlike what seems to be a large number of people on this forum we don't have the luxury of cruising multiple times a year and are not re-doing ports that we have been to before. Therefore our shore excursion choices are very important to us. 

 

So if i go with the 'everything should be okay theory' and wait until i get up in the morning and can't get the shore excursions i want it will be 1 more nail in the coffin of reconsidering Regent for the future.  We cruise with Regent for the all inclusiveness but the price is getting to be too much if we aren't getting what we want. After our less than stellar last cruise in Jan/Feb the value is getting questionable.  The only saving grace to that cruise was that we spent 3 days in Antartica. We still considered it our worse Regent cruise though we did not regret going. 

 

It is disappointing but i do understand that Mike is working with a lot of moving pieces and can only do the best he can. 

 

This timing sucks particularly bad because our 1 and only cruise next year has the booking window open the very next day after the switch over so we are stuck with 4 am. Maybe i can hope for a computer challenge and they have to delay a couple more days. 😉

 

PS In case some think i am being overly negative, I was up until 3 am packing and organizing our stuff because we are near a wildfire that is out of control and has jumped across a lake to our side,  Our city is under a state of emergency with numerous evacuation orders near us so maybe a bit on the cranky side.

Edited August 18, 2023 by 1982CruzStart
added a p.s.

[DaveFr]

4 hours ago, Mike Moore said:

. Thank you for your understanding, as the next best option is reverting back to midnight ET, but we're trying not to go back to inconveniencing our guests on the east coast of the US. 

🤐

 

Dave

[Mike Moore]

40 minutes ago, 1982CruzStart said:

PS In case some think i am being overly negative, I was up until 3 am packing and organizing our stuff because we are near a wildfire that is out of control and has jumped across a lake to our side,  Our city is under a state of emergency with numerous evacuation orders near us so maybe a bit on the cranky side.

Best wishes to you and your neighbors!

[czardas]

I have to laugh at everyone complaining about the new time. Set your alarms and get up for ONE time to make your holiday restaurant booking.  I’m in Australia and we usually cop everything at weird times, we just get on with it. When we go to Disneyland, I have to get up at 1am every day for the length of my what my trip will be, to make the dining bookings. After a week of doing that I’m zonked but happy I’m going on a wonderful holiday.
Making restaurant bookings with Regent is a one time thing for the cruise, so I can easily handle that without making an issue of it.
We are very privileged to be able to enjoy this wonderful cruise line………so throw any booking time at me and l’ll happily take it. 

Edited August 19, 2023 by czardas

[seasickphil]

No one really likes change especially when it changes for the worse, for us in the UK and Europe the times to make our reservations (1am and 2am respectively) are not good but if it really means so much to someone then staying up late for one night is the only option, I myself have always made reservations the next morning and have never had any problems in getting our desired excursions/dining times. While it might be so that Regent have many east coast customers, they also have many that do not live there. So if this change means so much to anyone living there then they might have to put themselves out once in a while (so hopefully getting what they want) just like people not living on the east coast have had do in the past.

[cruiseluv]

😂😂 I think this thread has outlived its usefulness, hope someone can put it to sleep soon! 

[papaflamingo]

I'm on the East Coast and I actually liked the original Midnight.  I tend to stay up late anyway, and 8 pm cuts into my social life.  Although I must admit that making a reservation  AFTER the party has led to an occasional "why the heck did you reserve THAT for?" comments by my wife! 😱

Maybe 7 am will prevent that problem. 😜

 

[Mike Moore]

Update for everyone following along - we're going to be sticking with 8pm ET for the time being. Apologies for the miscommunication. 

[pingpong1]

4 hours ago, Mike Moore said:

Update for everyone following along - we're going to be sticking with 8pm ET for the time being. Apologies for the miscommunication. 

Hi Mike (and all others).   I just got through reserving my 3 specialty dining reservations (on Splendor) at 5PM "Arizona Time".  This is for our Nov 20th/23 TA from Barcelona to Miami.  I also "THINK" I was able to add our two friends to those 3 dining bookings, who are travelling with us.  I use "Think" in quotes because that had to undoubtedly be one of the "Clunkiest" online booking experiences I've had in a long time (actually...since our last Regent cruise when we also had traveling companions with us)!  🙄

 

I received Email confirmation for the reservations about 10 minutes later...but there was/is no confirmation that the reservations where for the 4 of us.  The confirmation Email just said "Dining party of 2" even though our 2 friends were listed as having been added on our website account (under our "dining customization tab") as being part of the reservation.  So "fingers crossed".

 

I'm not going to worry about this too much because in the end...I always know that Regent "comes through" for us.  I've don the "dining reservations thing" many times...but every time is like "the first time".  It's hard to get the "feel" for how this all works.  Best Regards to all.  (By the Way - I sure like being able to do it at 5PM in Arizona 😜).

[pappy1022]

Pingpong1, I had a similar adventure with trying to make dining reservations for 6 people (3 couples). We thought we had it because we got email confirmations but things didn’t look right or feel right in our online account. The next morning I asked our TA to validate our reservations and lo and behold they were all messed up and we didn’t have any of the 3 reservations correctly. Our TA & Regent got things straightened out but we didn’t get all of our dates and times we thought we selected the night before. It might be worth a call to your TA or directly to Regent to see what is really in the reservation system. The official explanation we received from Regent was that the system can be quirky at times. 

[Mike Moore]

Apologies to you both that you had a hard time inviting guests. The dining reservations portion of My Account is the first area that will be going through a redesign, which is slated to go live in Q1 or Q2 of next year, and we're doing our best to make sure the new solution provides a superior experience. @pingpong1 if you'll send me an email with your booking details, and those of your guests, along with the reservations you were attempting to make, I'll be happy to have a look at it for you: mmoore@rssc.com. 

[pappy1022]

Thanks Mike, appreciate your efforts to get things corrected. In our case, the 3 couples each did 1 specialty restaurant reservation for all 6 of us and it appears we somehow stepped on each other’s work. Databases should be able to handle that conflict of updating records but somehow it failed. The real strange thing is that we each got an email saying that our reservation was booked for all 6 people but when we looked at our individual accounts, it didn’t always show all 6 people in the reservation. At the end of the day, we didn’t get all the dates and times we started out to reserve but we are fine with what we ended up with after human help.

[pingpong1]

27 minutes ago, Mike Moore said:

Apologies to you both that you had a hard time inviting guests. The dining reservations portion of My Account is the first area that will be going through a redesign, which is slated to go live in Q1 or Q2 of next year, and we're doing our best to make sure the new solution provides a superior experience. @pingpong1 if you'll send me an email with your booking details, and those of your guests, along with the reservations you were attempting to make, I'll be happy to have a look at it for you: mmoore@rssc.com. 

Thanks a lot Mike! That will be very helpful and will certainly relieve my "mild concern" about this.  I can always count on Regent to "make things right"!  I'll get that email (with relevant guest details) off to you this morning.  Best Regards.

[rcandkc]

Mike, Regent is very fortunate to have you “onboard”.  Thank you for all your patience in listening to us. 

[Mike Moore]

24 minutes ago, rcandkc said:

Mike, Regent is very fortunate to have you “onboard”.  Thank you for all your patience in listening to us. 

It's my pleasure to assist wherever I can. 🙂

[bookbabe]

After reading all of this, I’m kind of glad we booked a suite that included unlimited specialty dining reservations and I’m not planning to make any in advance.  Hopefully onboard it will go as smoothly as I’ve read.

 

My only dining worry is room service.  When we booked, room service from the specialty restaurants was a listed benefit, and one of the reasons we booked that suite for both our test cruise this fall and the 2026 WC.  That benefit has now disappeared from the cabin description, and my PCC assures me that it’s just an IT glitch, that nothing has changed.  Here’s hoping he’s correct.  From the sounds of it, the IT situation is chaotic enough that it wouldn’t be surprising.

 

Good luck to all of you making reservations!  Hope it goes as planned and not as expected. 😉

 

[The Med]

First time on Regent for us and I stayed up late (1.00am UK time) specifically to make the dinner reservations.

Even so, there were no slots left for 7.00pm in any of the restaurants on any of the days, but we managed to book in for a little later than we would usually eat.

Eating at a different time than usual isn’t the be all and end all for us, we’ve got our reservations booked, we don’t mind being flexible, we just count our blessings that in these times we are lucky enough to be able to take lovely vacations that some people can only dream of.

 

[janecambridge]

We are on Explorer now. 
We stayed up until 1am to make restaurant bookings. 
Our first evening on board we had booked a specialist restaurant for 7.30pm. Our table had been given to others. We sat down eventually at 8.15, appetisers at 8.45pm. Not happy. Thought it may be because of everyone being advised on here to not book first night and just ask on embarkation . We were told by a maitre de that it was because “old people” can’t use  booking system properly and they press ‘share’ when booking. When they arrive at restaurant they don’t want to share. 

[rcandkc]

17 minutes ago, janecambridge said:

We are on Explorer now. 
We stayed up until 1am to make restaurant bookings. 
Our first evening on board we had booked a specialist restaurant for 7.30pm. Our table had been given to others. We sat down eventually at 8.15, appetisers at 8.45pm. Not happy. Thought it may be because of everyone being advised on here to not book first night and just ask on embarkation . We were told by a maitre de that it was because “old people” can’t use  booking system properly and they press ‘share’ when booking. When they arrive at restaurant they don’t want to share. 

Did you have the reservation email to show them?  That kind of comment is totally out of line. 

[cwn]

11 minutes ago, janecambridge said:

We are on Explorer now. 
We stayed up until 1am to make restaurant bookings. 
Our first evening on board we had booked a specialist restaurant for 7.30pm. Our table had been given to others. We sat down eventually at 8.15, appetisers at 8.45pm. Not happy. Thought it may be because of everyone being advised on here to not book first night and just ask on embarkation . We were told by a maitre de that it was because “old people” can’t use  booking system properly and they press ‘share’ when booking. When they arrive at restaurant they don’t want to share. 

WOW! Very unprofessional if he said that  and doesn’t need to be working on aa Regent ship.
I am old almost 80 and I booked 8 reservations this past Dec for a table for two….and got a table for two when we showed up no questions asked, it was noted in the hostess book. The computer  form is easy to use, you choose shared or not, just that people don’t bother to read, not just older people many  younger ones don’t bother to read the instructions either.

[TheShag]

Set my timer for our Explorer Overnights and Asian Wonders @20:00 EDT. Although it appears that the system times out due to simultaneous traffic, once you keep at it - viola! 3 out of 3 booked at requested times and dates. Another great experience with RSSC!