Specialty restaurant booking

[2blueyam]

Free if you show up. Free if you cancel. Charge $10 pp if you no show. At a minimum you would have to go to guest services and explain why you didn’t show up in order to get the charge removed. That should greatly reduce the no shows. 

[longterm]

17 hours ago, HUNKY said:

I truly wish Viking would charge for dining at Manfredi’s and the Chef Table.  A reasonable charge would raise the food quality and eliminate no shows.

While I'm glad they don't charge for the 2 specialty restaurants, I do agree that it would eliminate the no-shows. On our recent cruise, on July 15th in fact, we had dinner in Manfredi's, got seated at a 6-top (we had reserved a 4-top), when easily a third of the restaurant was empty. 

As it turned out it was surf & turf night in the World Cafe, so I suspect a lot of people went there for lobster, and abandoned their reservations.

[Baron Barracuda]

16 hours ago, 2blueyam said:

Free if you show up. Free if you cancel. Charge $10 pp if you no show. At a minimum you would have to go to guest services and explain why you didn’t show up in order to get the charge removed. That should greatly reduce the no shows. 

Correct me if I'm wrong but part of no show problem might be that I don't believe you can cancel or modify reservations on the app or stateroom tv.  Need to pick up the phone, speak with host / hostess at restaurant or person taking reservations in World Cafe.  

[Baron Barracuda]

As far as adding capacity perhaps Viking is comfortable with the way things are.  Yes, some folks would like to dine more at the specialties but others prefer the Restaurant and a sizeable number enjoy casual dining at the World Cafe.   There are also the frequent specialty nights on the pool deck and Aquavit.  Staffing and provisions need to be allocated to each venue.  Even at full capacity of 930 each specialty can accommodate at least 1/8 of the passengers nightly.  With some guests not fans of Chef's Table everyone should be able to dine in each specialty at least once per week.  They just can't all be seated by 7pm.  Finally, I'm sure some Chef's Table menus are much more possible than others, that's why some nights may be full and others not so much.  At least the good menus are repeated at least three times giving more folks an opportunity to experience them.

[2blueyam]

2 hours ago, Baron Barracuda said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but part of no show problem might be that I don't believe you can cancel or modify reservations on the app or stateroom tv.  Need to pick up the phone, speak with host / hostess at restaurant or person taking reservations in World Cafe.  

Sorry if I didn't clarify. That is what I think the policy should be in order to cut down on the no-shows. It isn't the current policy.

[formernuke]

Yes I’m pretty sure that you can cancel reservations on the app. Someone on board now can confirm or deny. 

[NightShayde]

48 minutes ago, formernuke said:

Yes I’m pretty sure that you can cancel reservations on the app. Someone on board now can confirm or deny. 

I tried when I was on the Neptune earlier this month, and there was no way to cancel in the app. I did not think to try the TV interface. We just went down to Chef's Table to cancel the one we didn't want.

[Mich3554]

2 hours ago, NightShayde said:

I tried when I was on the Neptune earlier this month, and there was no way to cancel in the app. I did not think to try the TV interface. We just went down to Chef's Table to cancel the one we didn't want.

Unless things have changed since the Orion in May, you couldn’t cancel on the TV interface either.  I had to call.