My experience with waitlisting for dining preference

We are sailing on the Solstice on Dec 10 Auckland-Sydney (12 nights) and I just want to share my experience with the above issue. Some weeks ago I wanted to change my dining time from late to select and found I could only WL which I did. I then booked the 2 speciality dining evenings which were included with our suite + a 5-night speciality restaurant package.

Yesterday I decided it was time to do the whole online check-in thing. Upon printing out all relevant doco I noticed we were confirmed in Select Dining much to my surprise. So I guess that you don't always need to wait until you board to find out if your wait-list comes through. I was also able to go online and book the first evening's time in the MDR (it seemed you could book multiple evenings if you wanted, which I did not due to not being able to book 4 of the 5 speciality nights until on board).

This suits us perfectly as we will probably only end up dining at the MDR a few evenings all up - as we have 7 nights speciality, plan to try Blu once or twice (of course subject to availability), maybe the buffet once, maybe room service once.

We were waitlisted for Traditional Late for our Dec 14th cruise and found out that we got it back in September. I could have corrected my TA and not prepaid my gratuities since it happened before final payment, but I decided to just leave it be and then our bill will be less at the end of the cruise.

I would imagine that they clear out as many of the waitlist as the can before the actual cruise.

Hope you have a great cruise!