Has X gone App-Happy like Carnival?

[Travelling2Some]

4 minutes ago, Mark_K said:

If I’m at a table for 6/8 I feel somewhat obligated to be sociable and engage with the table mates.  If I’m at a table for two, even if it’s inches away from the next one, I don’t feel the same obligation.

Here's a weird story from our Carnival Mardi Gras cruise:  We went to lunch at the Italian specialty restaurant one afternoon.  The place was almost empty.  Maybe 8 other people there.  We were seated at a two-top that was (I am not kidding) less than 6 inches from the next table.  The weird thing is that in the middle of our meal in an empty restaurant they seated a single woman at the table right next to us.  She was a nice person, luckily.  (Yes, we felt obligated to say hello to someone practically seated in our laps, lol.)  The three of us actually discussed how odd it was that they sat her there with all the open space.  We were in the middle of our meal so it was kind of "on her" to object to being seated there but I guess the waiter took her by surprise.  Very strange though.

[NutsAboutGolf]

We cruise on Carnival, the most recent was in December.  With Carnival you do not need your phone/app, phones can break or be stolen on a ship or while in a port.  You did have the ability to walk to the host stand to check in but you may get told 50 minutes and you have no idea how accurate that is.  At least with using the phone, it notifies you when your table is ready so you can be anywhere on the ship

 

With X, if they're busy you MAY get a pager (they can run out) but the range of the thing only allows you to go to one bar, I wish they could send a notification to your phone

[jean87510]

3 hours ago, Moonarino said:

Several days after returning from a cruise on the "fabulous" Mardi Gras, I'm still cringing at how much of a let-down it was. Too much too explain (too many things wrong), but after defending Carnival for many years I just might be done with them.

 

One Big Reason was having to depend 100% on CCL's Hub App for dining. We could not get seated without using the app. So whatever personal touches Carnival might've had left was banished to the dungeons because of that.

 

Specifically, getting an actual Table For 2 was pretty much impossible. Both nights, after a long-to-very-long wait (about 90 minutes the second night, after the app had told us 40-50 minutes), we were led to a "table-for-2" that was lined up so closely (inches apart) with other 2-seaters that it was really a table for TWELVE - and after waiting so long for uncharacteristally lousy food (and very limited choices) - the two of us are still reeling.

 

So... what problem does an app actually solve, beyond reducing staff by a handful of people? If we'd had the luxury of talking to a real person when we checked in for dining, we could've specified that we wanted an actual table for 2. Instead it was far more like herding a few hundred mindless sheep. And there were a lot of people complaining about it. We talked to quite a few, while we were waiting... waiting... waiting.......

 

TMI maybe. Just needed to clarify the major point of my concerns. So, in recent experience, have others experienced this kind of meltdown on Celebrity because of an App?

 

 

 

No.

 

90 minutes seems a tad bit unbelievable with the app.  I've been on a couple of busy ships on Carnival and maybe 10 minute wait?  90 minutes is a bit exaggerated.

 

I thought it was extremely easy and much more efficient to book your time on the app then your phone buzzes when table is ready.  Similar to many restaurants on land.  I liked it much better than standing in a line with coughing grouchy people.

 

It appears you don't like using your phone onboard.  A lot of us do and prefer the app rather than paper.  

 

The 2 top tables on every cruise ship I have been on (Carnival, MSC, Royal, Celebrity, Norwegian) in the MDR all are too close.  We don't like it at all as we prefer to be loners and antisocial when we eat.  Good luck in finding an out of the way 2 top.  Only place you might is the back of the buffet or your room.

[Moonarino]

48 minutes ago, jean87510 said:

No.

 

90 minutes seems a tad bit unbelievable with the app.  I've been on a couple of busy ships on Carnival and maybe 10 minute wait?  90 minutes is a bit exaggerated.

 

It appears you don't like using your phone onboard.  A lot of us do and prefer the app rather than paper.  

 

90 minutes is NOT exaggerated at all. We started out with about a 50-minute wait (according to the app), which changed to 30-40 minutes and then stayed there for more than 30-40 minutes, and we ended up being seated an hour and a half later. We talked to a guy using a walker for most of that time. He'd gotten on the waitlist a little earlier. (This was for Cucino del Capitano.)

 

And a 120-minute wait for the Palm dining room (our assigned DR) is no exaggeration either. You weren't there. I guess I should've taken a couple of screenshots.

 

Again part of the problem is no human interaction at all until we're notified of a table. Then if we didn't lilke that table, we had to cancel and go back to the bottom of the waitlist. Literally. NO options, no consideration at all on that level.

 

I do not mind using my phone when it's worth something. I'm forced to use it all the time in daily life. The first time we used an app for dining was on Conquest several years ago and that worked fine, maybe 15 minutes waiting, cute little pop-up and we could speak to a hostess before being led into the DR. There was no hostess or maitre'd on Mardi Gras, for all practical purposes, no welcome desk/podium, zero. There was a cluster of 3-4 people in the entrance doing essentially nothing except helping people with the app, early in the cruise. I don't know about days later because we gave up after the second night.

 

 

Edited April 18 by Moonarino