Dining with an Early Saver

The Main Dining Room food quality and service is so bad you would be better taking the saving and dine in the fee paying restaurants.

What tosh! I have rarely had a meal in the main dining room that I have not enjoyed.

Some people do not seem to go on the same cruises as me.

No, we have never had a bad meal either in the MDR and on occasion where we have used the buffet (on the last morning or late at night) we have found it acceptable but we prefer to be served our meal. It is funny because you see a completely different set of people in the buffet.

I once spoke to an elderly lady in the lift, she said she had never been "up top" on a cruise and always stayed on the lower floors and had never been to the buffet or knew what it was or where it was.

We prefer freedom dining and a table to ourselves and have found that if you go around the same time in the evening you will get put on the same table as you have previously, so you do get to know your waiters and the surrounding people. When we asked how they know where we sat, we were told "we know everything about you".

We were on Oceana last year and went for lunch one day in the Main Dining Room - open seating - and got chatting to a couple who said what did we think of the meals in the MDR in the evening. We said we thought they were good, we were really enjoying them. They were very surprised and asked us which dining we were on. We said Club Dining, as we always are. The woman said they were on Freedom Dining and were usually on Club Dining but they thought they would try Freedom to see what it was like. They said the food was often cold, the waiters seem rushed and they didn't get to know the waiters as they usually did when on Club Dining. This was towards the beginning of the cruise and the couple said they were going to see if there was any chance of switching back to Club Dining, don't know if they were able to do that. So we'll stick to Club Dining - we met some lovely people over the years and can honestly say we've never had a 'bad' table. For us the evening meal is a real social occasion.

We'll be on our first "real" cruise with P&O this December after sailing on several with Princess and 1 a piece with Royal Caribbean and Carnival.

When we booked our 1st Cruise our TA suggested we had set dinning and requested a table of 8. M&D have done a few and always rave on about sitting with the same people so thought that would be good for us to.

However on the 1st night we went down and were shown to a table of 4 and they never turned up to join us. Later that night we got talking to a couple who had been on our flight out and said how good "anytime dinning" was and maybe it would be better than what we had been allocated. The next day we went and had us swapped over and we loved it. For us as newbies to the cruising lark yes it might have been nice to sit at the same table with the same people, but we found it was nicer to ask for a large sharing table where we got to meet a lot more of the other guests each night. It gave us a lot more faces to say hello to around the ship and as we missed the meet and mingle we also ended up on table with other Cruise Critics by accident.

Some like to sit as my M&D do with the same people and the same waiters. But there are also positives to sitting with different people to. As someone else mentioned if you strike up a friendship with others you have dinned with you can always meet them 1st and go down as a group. Done that to on one cruise.

I'm on a early saver and have requested the freedom option which I am "really" hoping we get. If not i'll be trying to get us moved to it.

We now only ever ask for the freedom style dinning option and when asked by friends what option to suggest if they cruised that is what I suggest they ask for to.

We find it works best for us, not only for a change of faces and things to talk about but also it gives us that flexibility on when to eat to. We normally will work dinning around the evening shows / entertainment or just what we feel like that night.

When we have booked an early saver before I am sure we had a box to tick to say what dining we preferred which hopefully we would get (although didn't on Aurora last year)

 

I can't remeber how it worked but think we got an e-mail with a link. Am I right on that and if so how long before the cruise do we get it?

Hi

It sounds like you regularly book early saver.

Would like to find out the benefits v downsides to this.

Hope to hear from you