Dynamic Dining

Now that we are close to launch I am wondering if people who booked more recently for the upcoming cruises could tell us their experience with dynamic dining.

Were you able to get early seating with a show afterwards, such as dinner at 6 and show at 9? To get 6 o'clock seating did you have to go to a pay restaurant.

Or did you have to take a different seating and no show.

What is your overall feeling about what will happen if you do not make reservations ahead of time.

Dynamic dining is an active topic on the RCCL boards and I am curious about your more recent experience with the website.

We are family of 8 on Quantum 12/27/14 New Years cruise. I made all our dining and entertainment reservations about 2 months ago on the Cruise Planner with very little difficulty. It takes a lot of thought and trial end error to coordinate everything, but not that difficult.

We are on 2nd November sailing and have booked a mixture of comp and fee paying which we wanted. Some nights we have entertainment booked with no food reservation as we will just wing it as the entertainment was more important. We booked easy enough and loved the freedom of choosing what and where. Of the 8 nights we have 4 restaurant nights booked. Other days we might prefer a heavier lunch instead. We certainly cant do big lunches and a full dinner so depending on the day it gives us choice with no port days to chop and change. Dynamic dining winner for us so far. Show bookings were also simple too shame some have had problems but there were only 2 of us.

Cant wait to try everything techy. Leaving our 16 year old behind with relatives for the first time so knowing we will be able to Skype with him will be very reassuring for us. The wristbands sound like an easy route not to carry a bag? Although for a woman old habits die hard haha

New things need trying. They are opening to a new market. People like me. They have me hooked. Go with the flow guys. This is awesome and they seem to have something for everyone.

Let us newbies in????

We are family of 8 on Quantum 12/27/14 New Years cruise. I made all our dining and entertainment reservations about 2 months ago on the Cruise Planner with very little difficulty. It takes a lot of thought and trial end error to coordinate everything, but not that difficult.

My DH and I are on Quantum 11/23/14 Inaugural Cruise. I, too, made our dining and entertainment reservations about 2 months ago on the Cruise Planner with no problems. I made myself a 'calendar' before making reservations to map everything out so there would be no conflicts. We have reservations in Chops, American Icon Grill (twice), The Grande Restaurant (twice), Jamie's Italian, Silk, and Chic. We also are booked for Mama Mia, Guest Entertainer (twice), and Dream Works Breakfast.

Sailing on 2nd November - Transatlantic from Southampton.

Booked cruise in November 2013 before the dynamic dining options were announced. Was going to leave booking the shows and dining options until we boarded but after reading other cc forums thought it best to start booking things now.

A bit disappointed in the dining times we were offered on-line tonight - and still 2 months before cruise. Booked what shows we could then tried to book dining times around them. Not sure if I should have done it the other way around.

Couldn't book the Wonderland for any night or the waterstar show.

The only day The Grande is available is on the last night - so could only get booking for 9.30pm on 9th November!!!! Haven't found a dining venu yet for 5th November -looks like we'll be ending up in the windjammer that evening.

Has anyone have better luck asking their TA to sort out their dining/show bookings instead of doing it on line?

I am booked on the 11/23 sailing and unfortunately just booked the cruise a week or so ago. I immediately logged on to select dining and shows and am extremely dissapointed.

I have a 9 year old son who is use to eating dinner no later than 6 pm and is in bed most nights during the week by 8 and on the weekends by 9:30.

It took a great deal of effort to make reservations for each night at a somewhat reasonable time. 4 of the nights we are eating after 6:45 which is late for us. One of the nights I can't even make a reservation because there is nothing available except very late times. This is annoying because the reason I book a cruise is to get pampered, so I like a sit down dinner with a waitor/waitress as opposed to the buffet line.

I am going to try to change all of my reservations to earlier times as soon as I am onboard....but for now its frustrating not knowing if that is even an option.

I don't want my son falling asleep at dinner or eating snacks because he is hungry and having to wait until 7:15 or later to eat.

While the idea of being able to try different food venues is appealing, not having a set dinner time or being able to confirm early dinner is disappointing.

~Julie

We are sailing on Quantum of Seas in January of 2015 and Anthem of Seas in January 2016. We made our Dynamic Dining (DD) and entertainment reservations for Quantum in May and just booked our Anthem dining a few weeks ago-entertainment for that sailing is not yet open.

We found the online cruise planner to be a bit buggy. Timeouts and shopping cart errors abound. There was also discrepancies in what was available online and what we were able to book over the phone. We blogged about our experiences using the systems a few weeks ago here!

All in all, we like being able to book ahead of time and believe that if DD is going to be successful that the technology could use a bit of an upgrade.

Hopefully, RCI will get things in order with this program expanding to other ships, like Oasis of the Seas.