Requested dinner reservations

[Woofbite]

Booking wasn't nearly as bad as a few people on here made it sound.  Booking opened June 21 but we arrived back in town June 26 and I was able to book a two-top at 6:30 in two restaurants and 8:00 in the other two.  Granted we didn't have any specific days in mind so reservations were made according to times available.

 

[Harters]

24 minutes ago, Woofbite said:

we didn't have any specific days in mind

It's good to be flexible with this. We have days in mind that we want to avoid for specialities - mainly if we've planned a long lazy lunch ashore, then we don't want a big dinner. But that's pretty much as far as the planning goes. 

[Techno123]

Our dining opened yesterday but we were camping - fortunately the campsite had good Wi-Fi so so at 8am 4 bookings made for a table for two at 8pm - Im so happy others like to eat (much) earlier 😁

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

53 minutes ago, Woofbite said:

Booking wasn't nearly as bad as a few people on here made it sound.  Booking opened June 21 but we arrived back in town June 26 and I was able to book a two-top at 6:30 in two restaurants and 8:00 in the other two.  Granted we didn't have any specific days in mind so reservations were made according to times available.

 

 

23 minutes ago, Techno123 said:

Our dining opened yesterday but we were camping - fortunately the campsite had good Wi-Fi so so at 8am 4 bookings made for a table for two at 8pm - Im so happy others like to eat (much) earlier 😁

It just depends upon a number of factors - probably sharing or non-sharing requests most often, plus booking category (suite or lower, etc.), how full ship is, how many Europeans are on board, whether people care about sailaways, whether they might go to Tea at 4, or whether they want to stay off the ship one night for dinner, etc.  But overall, I've been on quite a few Oceania cruises and I've always gotten good nights and times. 

 

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

On 6/23/2024 at 5:12 PM, MEFIowa said:

A big issue is whether and when G-B cabin passengers can actually book reservations in them on their cruise, since they have to WAIT and book them after the A and higher-level cabins have supposedly had their first cracks at booking.

 

So for the G-B passengers, tends to mean 8:30 and 9 pm reservations, if any, on a given day. And if O forced you into a 9 pm reservation slot, they'll reserve the right to then back you to a 8:30 slot because there are so few passengers with these late reservations.

 

Seems like many of the PH and higher passengers claim they could just make daily reservations in them at "good times" when the G-B passengers had already been told, "No reservation available at that time."

 

Learned the fascinating ins and outs from our B2B on Riviera that started off in an A3 for 10 nights but we then moved to a B3 for the 2nd 10 nights. We had nothing but undesired reservation times for the B3. No problems with the A3.

 

Hard to tell how "fair" the system is actually being applied to the various classes of cabins.

We've never had a problem getting good reservations even at 45 days out, and we've never eaten at 8:30 or later.  But we're fine sharing OR non-sharing, which definitely makes a difference. So does having experience with Oceania procedures.  Many of the newbies don't know to book early and/or don't realize that flexibility goes a long way in getting their number one choices. Is the system fair? I think so.  

Edited Thursday at 02:11 PM by IWantToLiveOverTheSea

[IWantToLiveOverTheSea]

12 minutes ago, IWantToLiveOverTheSea said:

 

 

Edited Thursday at 02:22 PM by IWantToLiveOverTheSea