Help with dining & beverages / Freedom of the Seas!

Our first cruise is on 8th February 2015 with Freedom of the Seas and I'm more than confused with the dining and beverage options!

We have My Time Dining. We make the reservations in advance for every night we want to do the MTD, right? Can we just not to go if we onboard decide to eat somewhere else that night? MTD is at the main dining room - what other restaurants are there but the specialty restaurants? We will be cruising with two kids and want the dining to be as easy as possible so some kind of a buffet style dinner would also be ok for us. I don't want to do the formal dinners at all - are there any with the MTD? If there are, how do I find out which nights are formal so I know to make other dinner plans for that night?

Then about those beverage packages. We won't be drinking enough alcohol to make it any sense to pay for the packages with alcohol drinks. We don't drink coke etc. Are there some drinks included with MTD and breakfast (juice, coffee)? I was thinking about buying the Evian Bottled Water Package(s) as we won't be drinking the tap water but do we in that case end up drinking water (or nothing at all?) at the breakfast and MTD as the drinks must be quite expensive when buying without any packages? We aren't on a budget, I just don't want to pay extra for packages with drinks we won't be drinking anyway but on the other hand drinking nothing but water for a week isn't what I want either.

You do not have to make reservations for MTD, it's up to you. Your other choices for food with no extra charges are Windjammer (buffet), Cafe Promenade, and Sorrento's. For an extra charge you can choose Chops, Portofino, or Johnny Rocket's.

The Cruise Conpass (daily schedule) will list the suggested dinner attire.

Drinks included in the cruise fare: tap water, coffee, hot tea, iced tea, lemonade, milk, juices with breakfast.

The ship's water is fine to drink...it's available everywhere, in every bar and eating venue. The food, drinks and ice is all made from the same water, so you'll be ingesting it, whether you "drink" it, or not.

Hi there,

We just got off the Freedom of the Seas and it was our first cruise and it was amazing!! You are going to love this ship...

We had My time dining as well and we made reservations for each evening at the same time (5:45pm) and we had the same table and the same waiters each evening and it was wonderful.

You can just make a reservation on the ship but be prepared to wait outside the dining room a bit. We just walked right in and sat down because we had made resos before hand.

You can still eat in the dining room on formal nights (there are two, one on Monday and one on Thursday) you don't need to dress up and no one is going to kick you out. We saw lots of people not dressed up these nights still eating in the main dining room.

There is also a buffet restaurant that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as snacks in the afternoon. You can also order room service.

There is a café where you can get snacks and sweets and coffee/ tea etc all day long as well as a pizza place.

There is fresh filtered water all over the ship for free as well as iced tea, juice and milk in the buffet for free at all meals. The ships water is the best we have ever tasted and that includes bottled water! There is no need to purchase bottled water at all in my opinion. The coffee served was very good too and they have multiple choices for hot tea.

We did not have any beverage packages nor did we purchase the soda card option and we were just fine all week. We purchase a few alcoholic drinks through the week and they were between $6.00 and $7.50 and they were all amazing.

Have a great time!

Thank you all for your help and tips!

We have now reserved MTD for every night and decided not to buy any of the beverage packages as we will survive without.

70+ days to go, can't wait!

Thank you all for your help and tips!

 

We have now reserved MTD for every night and decided not to buy any of the beverage packages as we will survive without.

 

70+ days to go, can't wait!

Please come back and report your experience with having MTD reservations. Curious if the reservations result in minimal waiting as Erica posted above.

Please come back and report your experience with having MTD reservations. Curious if the reservations result in minimal waiting as Erica posted above.

We always do MTD with advance reservations. We have never had to wait!

Pennie

I talked with RCCL agent yesterday morning about MTD advanced reservation since we were cross referenced with two other bookings. The computer only allowed me to book 4 people total for a time. If I added the other two from another stateroom it would remove the additional other to trying to make the reservation for 6. I explained this to the VP, and he said just show up at the time reserved and they would sit all 6 of us. He then informed me that the advance reservations for MTD would be going away due to people never showing and people wanting to be seated and tables sitting empty but being held. According to him MTD will be a first come first serve like a restaurant.

We always do MTD with advance reservations. We have never had to wait!

 

Pennie

I talked with RCCL agent yesterday morning about MTD advanced reservation since we were cross referenced with two other bookings. The computer only allowed me to book 4 people total for a time. If I added the other two from another stateroom it would remove the additional other to trying to make the reservation for 6. I explained this to the VP, and he said just show up at the time reserved and they would sit all 6 of us. He then informed me that the advance reservations for MTD would be going away due to people never showing and people wanting to be seated and tables sitting empty but being held. According to him MTD will be a first come first serve like a restaurant.

I can believe that. We see people not showing up all the time. That is one reason, there is always a line for walk-up. If people would just cancel there reservation, they could give the table to a walk-up.:confused: I will miss not being able to make a reservation and have the same wait staff.:(

If it is true that MTD reservations are going away I am going to be very frustrated if my party of 7 has to wait for a table every night since WE would have actually shown up for our reservation time... :(

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If it is true that MTD reservations are going away I am going to be very frustrated if my party of 7 has to wait for a table every night since WE would have actually shown up for our reservation time... :(

Not to worry. I'm sure they will still be taking reservations at specialty restaurants.:rolleyes:

I was able to book all 6 people across 2 reservations. There was a button to click to add people from another reservation, and it does now show on the other person's (my mom and dad's) cruise planner. If I look at the plain view of the calendar

It looks like only 4, but if I open up the full reservation it shows all of them AND it shows in her cruise planner. They only thing that was a (minor) pain is that we had to add them by looking up/entering their reservation number and name each time, 7 reservations in a row. Silly me to think the system would be smart enough to pull up the people on the linked reservation as an option to add without having to re-search for it.

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We did MTD in February on Legends of the Seas and made reservations but noticed that it was usually pretty empty, like you could have had archery practice and not hit anyone. It also could have been that there was a large number of older cruisers on the ship that usually dine very early.

In contrast to just getting of Navigator and doing MDT with was pretty crowded and did not have a lot of options for times when trying to make reservations.

We do like MTD and even when we finally set the same time, they sat us different tables for a total of 3 during the week but we met some really nice wait staff that remembered us even when we were at another table.

I was interested in Erica's response about making the MTD reservation ahead of time. Her experience was hands down a huge success. Ours not so much.

The attached photo is me at the MTD reservation desk on our BOS repositioning cruise. No one there to take my reservation and the telephone ringing off the hook. The Cruise Compass posted the hours for the MTD Desk as 8-11:30AM and 2-4:30PM. We called the Desk X3333 no answer and then went there in person. No one at the desk! AGHHH being on vacation who wants to spend your time in line waiting to get seated. I also don't think it enjoyable to have to stop what I'm doing to call over and over again hoping that my call will be answered. This was our first experience with MTD and hoping it is our last.

We tried to get assigned early seating but there was no availability.After a few evenings of misery, we talked to Burnhan Sanli, Head Waiter and he did his best to set things right. He gave us a reservation for 6pm, but he could not give us the same table and waiters for the remainder of the cruise. We ended up eating at Giovanni's 2X and once at Chops. Also we dined at the Chef's Table to avoid the MTD.

Yep, I never could get anyone to answer at MTD during those times or anytime. We had asked to dine at 5:45 on the third night, they automatically set our time for the rest of the week for 5:45, found this out the next day...

We are pretty laid back people and don't get stressed out over stuff, it's a Texas thing. I did tease the Matradee by saying "what if I tipped you, my name might be on the list, you know Washington? Lincoln?... :D" Made her laugh.

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I was interested in Erica's response about making the MTD reservation ahead of time. Her experience was hands down a huge success. Ours not so much.

 

The attached photo is me at the MTD reservation desk on our BOS repositioning cruise. No one there to take my reservation and the telephone ringing off the hook. The Cruise Compass posted the hours for the MTD Desk as 8-11:30AM and 2-4:30PM. We called the Desk X3333 no answer and then went there in person. No one at the desk! AGHHH being on vacation who wants to spend your time in line waiting to get seated. I also don't think it enjoyable to have to stop what I'm doing to call over and over again hoping that my call will be answered. This was our first experience with MTD and hoping it is our last.

 

We tried to get assigned early seating but there was no availability.After a few evenings of misery, we talked to Burnhan Sanli, Head Waiter and he did his best to set things right. He gave us a reservation for 6pm, but he could not give us the same table and waiters for the remainder of the cruise. We ended up eating at Giovanni's 2X and once at Chops. Also we dined at the Chef's Table to avoid the MTD.