Fixed dining on Celebrity Ascent

[mitchtech]

Hi

How come they still offer fixed dining on the Edge class ships? In my experience  on both the Beyond and the Ascent everyone has anytime dining once they board. I am trying  to add a room to our reservation  and I can only get fixed dining for the 2nd room while we have anytime  dining. Should I be concerned  or once we get on the ship it won't  matter anyway. And if that's  the case then why don't  they change the dining up front when you book instead of saying anytime  is closed out? Any insights would be appreciated 

Thanks

[Kamfish642]

We are on the Ascent in September 24, and our TA already assigned us early dining.  However, it is unclear whether we have been assigned to a specific dining room.  Will we be assigned a specific dining room prior to cruise or upon boarding, or can we choose which restaurant we want to go to within late dining time frame?

[cruisestitch]

14 minutes ago, mitchtech said:

Hi

How come they still offer fixed dining on the Edge class ships? In my experience  on both the Beyond and the Ascent everyone has anytime dining once they board. I am trying  to add a room to our reservation  and I can only get fixed dining for the 2nd room while we have anytime  dining. Should I be concerned  or once we get on the ship it won't  matter anyway. And if that's  the case then why don't  they change the dining up front when you book instead of saying anytime  is closed out? Any insights would be appreciated 

Thanks

Any reference to fixed dining is an artifact of the Celebrity IT booking system, which has never been updated since they started the edge class ships. It’s annoying and inexplicable. No one knows why they don’t change it.

[mitchtech]

3 minutes ago, cruisestitch said:

Any reference to fixed dining is an artifact of the Celebrity IT booking system, which has never been updated since they started the edge class ships. It’s annoying and inexplicable. No one knows why they don’t change it.

So will I be able to add him to our dinner reservations?

[kwokpot]

11 minutes ago, mitchtech said:

Hi

How come they still offer fixed dining on the Edge class ships? In my experience  on both the Beyond and the Ascent everyone has anytime dining once they board. I am trying  to add a room to our reservation  and I can only get fixed dining for the 2nd room while we have anytime  dining. Should I be concerned  or once we get on the ship it won't  matter anyway. And if that's  the case then why don't  they change the dining up front when you book instead of saying anytime  is closed out? Any insights would be appreciated 

Thanks

The Ascent seems to have done MDR dining slightly differently. You should be able to switch to anytime dining once on board but there will be no reservations possible, so you just go when you want to dine and if they can seat you immediately they will, otherwise you'll get a buzzer. Even with a buzzer the longest we waited in January was 20 minutes at the beginning and it slowly declined to 10 and by the last half of the cruise we were seated immediately without a buzzer. This was around 7:00pm every night.

The Ascent will allow reservations either early or late, but not prime dining hours. For example the screenshot below is what showed up on the app when we were onboard.  I advise when you first board to go see if you can get the dining situation all setup. It will be one of the reception desks of one of the four MDRs. They explained to us we can have either have reservations for the whole cruise for either early at 5:30, 5:45 or late at 8:30 or later. From 6:00 to 8:00 there are no reservations, it's first come first seated. 

[Arizona Wildcat]

4 minutes ago, mitchtech said:

So will I be able to add him to our dinner reservations?

Yes. We simply don't bother till on board.  The app is deeadful

[kwokpot]

7 minutes ago, mitchtech said:

So will I be able to add him to our dinner reservations?

Yes, all of you should go to the one of the MDRS on embarkation where you will see a line to make dinner arrangement changes. See my other post for more details. 

[lv2cruisgrl]

We just got off Ascent. First night we went to Normandy.  We had 6 people and every evening we asked to be booked for the next night at same table.  Worked out great.  We had same table and waiters for entire cruise at 5:30. 

[keesar]

18 hours ago, Kamfish642 said:

We are on the Ascent in September 24, and our TA already assigned us early dining.  However, it is unclear whether we have been assigned to a specific dining room.  Will we be assigned a specific dining room prior to cruise or upon boarding, or can we choose which restaurant we want to go to within late dining time frame?

For the first night, you will be "assigned" to a dining room and a suggested time.  Just show up each night to whatever dining room and the time of your choosing.  If you happen to have a preference after the first night or so, just mention it.  We like to try the different dining venues even though all the dishes are available in each MDR.  It truly was Anytime Dining.  (I had made reservations but was told on board that it was Anytime)

[cruise47]

23 hours ago, keesar said:

For the first night, you will be "assigned" to a dining room and a suggested time.  Just show up each night to whatever dining room and the time of your choosing.  If you happen to have a preference after the first night or so, just mention it.  We like to try the different dining venues even though all the dishes are available in each MDR.  It truly was Anytime Dining.  (I had made reservations but was told on board that it was Anytime)

We just got off the Amazing Ascent Sunday morning to my knowledge my son and his spouse never experienced any problems with their dining options.

 

We were in an aqua stateroom and we were after to dine with my son in the Cypress Restaurant one evening without making any advance reservations .

[JHUNTGOLF]

You can definitely make reservations on the Ascent if you do it far enough in advance to get the times you want.  We’re on the 12-night Ascent Med cruise leaving Barcelona on September 2, 2024.  We booked this cruise in late June 2023.  Within a couple days of booking, we made 6:30pm reservations at three of the four MDRs (left out Cyprus) for 6:30pm for each of the 12 nights.  
 

John

[mitchtech]

Thanks everyone for your responses. My issue was that they say there is fixed dining and once on board there is any time. If you are assigned fixed dining at the time of booking you can't  make reservations beforehand which we like to do and have to arrange everything  once on board. They should just change Edge class ships to any time at the time of booking 

[keesar]

23 hours ago, JHUNTGOLF said:

You can definitely make reservations on the Ascent if you do it far enough in advance to get the times you want.  We’re on the 12-night Ascent Med cruise leaving Barcelona on September 2, 2024.  We booked this cruise in late June 2023.  Within a couple days of booking, we made 6:30pm reservations at three of the four MDRs (left out Cyprus) for 6:30pm for each of the 12 nights.  
 

John

Yes, you can make dining reservations early in advance.  But it was a different story when actually on the ship.  Once on the ship, it was Anytime Dining for us despite having reservations for all nights.

[JHUNTGOLF]

1 hour ago, keesar said:

Yes, you can make dining reservations early in advance.  But it was a different story when actually on the ship.  Once on the ship, it was Anytime Dining for us despite having reservations for all nights.

We were on the Ascent in late January and made reservations for 6:30pm for 3 of the 4 MDRs for the four of us. There were no problems with the host honoring our reservations each night. We had people in line ahead of us getting beepers while we were immediately seated at a table for four. 
 

John

[vjmatty]

On 4/15/2024 at 10:13 AM, JHUNTGOLF said:

You can definitely make reservations on the Ascent if you do it far enough in advance to get the times you want.  We’re on the 12-night Ascent Med cruise leaving Barcelona on September 2, 2024.  We booked this cruise in late June 2023.  Within a couple days of booking, we made 6:30pm reservations at three of the four MDRs (left out Cyprus) for 6:30pm for each of the 12 nights.  
 

John

Any particular reason leaving out Cyprus? I am on Ascent next year and trying to decide which MDRs to book. 

[JHUNTGOLF]

6 hours ago, vjmatty said:

Any particular reason leaving out Cyprus? I am on Ascent next year and trying to decide which MDRs to book. 

We just never cared for the specialties that are served only in the Cyprus restaurant.  That’s the only reason.  We liked the specialties served in the Normandie, Tuscan, and Cosmopolitan restaurants so we just made our reservations at those three restaurants.

 

John

 

[vjmatty]

1 hour ago, JHUNTGOLF said:

We just never cared for the specialties that are served only in the Cyprus restaurant.  That’s the only reason.  We liked the specialties served in the Normandie, Tuscan, and Cosmopolitan restaurants so we just made our reservations at those three restaurants.

 

John

 

Thanks….where would I find a list of those specialties?

 

ETA: Never mind, found it!

 

 

Edited April 17 by vjmatty
ETA