How Does Select Dining Seating Work?

Hi, all!

Our upcoming Solstice cruise will be our second on Celebrity but first in "Select Dining", as the traditional early/late seatings were full when we booked. In the various threads I've been reading, I've seen mention of reservations, pagers, and waiting in line...so I'm not quite sure what to expect.

I tend to be a night owl and don't mind dining later, but my husband prefers an earlier dinner...which means we generally book the first seating when we have the option. So I'm just wondering what we can do to ensure earlier seating in the Select Dining Room. Thanks in advance for any advice you can share!

~ Shay

Show up when you are ready to eat. We've never had to wait longer than 5 minutes on any of our Celebrity cruises. We've seen people being given pagers and/or having to wait if they were looking for a certain table size or in a specific area. Other than that, we haven't seen any long lines or long waits, in our experience anyway.

You can make reservations for each night. This can be done on-line although rather cumbersome as you can only do 1 day at a time; or you can call Celebrity and make reservations over the phone.

If you enjoy dining with others you can be seated at a shared table. Often tables of 6 and generally a short, if any, wait even if you don't have a reservation.

We normally only make a reservation for the first night or two then decide on a day by day basis when we want to dine and if we want company or to dine by ourselves.

If you prefer traditional fixed seating dining you can ask Celebrity or your TA to waitlist you for early seating.

Show up when the restaurant opens. Usually you will get a window table and it's lovely. When you leave the restaurant, speak to the hostess and make your reservation for the next night. by the time you're on there for 3 or 4 days, she will already have it done for you. Enjoy your cruise.

In our experience we never made a reservation. When asked we always asked for a shared table, we usually were immediately seated. The exception was the first evening when there was a bit of a line, but we did not wait more than 15 mins and were always seated before people with a reservation. No idea why that was.

Standard disclaimers. YMMV. :D

In our experience we never made a reservation. When asked we always asked for a shared table, we usually were immediately seated. The exception was the first evening when there was a bit of a line, but we did not wait more than 15 mins and were always seated before people with a reservation. No idea why that was.

 

Standard disclaimers. YMMV. :D

My guess as to why you never had to wait is because you request a shared table and they try to get them filled quickly so as not to make the others at the table wait. The others having to wait may have requested a tables for two, one by a window or other requirements. We also love select and always ask to share, lovely wait to meet fellow cruisers!

We love select dining and can't imagine ever having a set dining time again. Sure you can make a reservation but the beauty is to just show up when you feel you want to dine. Worried that you might have to wait - then show up 10 minutes earlier. :D

We rarely ask to share a table because to us that defeats a good part of our goal with select - eating on our timeline. I love a table for 2 - want to have a leisurely meal - want to move it along faster - all done to your pleasure. Nothing is worse than being at a table of "new cruise" friends and you want to just eat and leave while they are intent on a port by port replay of their last 8 cruises. ;)

We also like a table for two; however, I usually make our reservations prior to the cruise. First stop at the Martini Bar, then dinner around 7 or 7:30. Never a wait. Finished with dinner in time for the show, if we choose to go.

Thank you all very much for your prompt replies! :)

My hubby is a bit wary of flex dining because we did that once on a Royal Caribbean cruise, and they required timed reservations each night...they didn't have any tables for walk-ins for the earlier seatings. And apparently people booked up all of the early reservations online, so we weren't able to get a table until later in the evening.

Someone on our roll call mentioned that our Solstice cruise is 94% sold out, so I was concerned about potentially long waits. But I love having the opportunity to dine with different people each night; so if we can walk up and request a larger table without much of a wait, that works well for us!

Thanks again for the info and advice! Happy travels to you all... :cool:

~ Shay

If you request a table for two, sometimes they will seat you near other two-tops and treat all of them as if they were an eight-top or six-top. Kind of defeats the idea of a table for two.

We always get Select dining if available and rarely have a wait of more than a couple of minutes. We don't like eating early, so I can't help there, but we almost always ask for a table for two (don't really care where it is) and are usually seated quickly. I've only been given a pager once, and not on Celebrity. It does help to avoid the busiest times.

It will be interesting to see if the the new suite dining room affects Select dining. Hopefully not.

Thanks again to all who have shared your experiences/advice with Select Dining. :) And thanks for confirming that you could book reservations online, Jelayne...it took a bit of poking around for me to discover how to do this, but I finally figured it out! I went ahead and booked reservations for embarkation day and our two sea days; I want to keep things more flexible on the days we're in port.

In case anyone else reads this thread looking for info on how to book reservations online, I've outlined the steps below since it's not exactly intuitive. (Based on the featured promos on the "Dining" page of the Cruise Planner, I had assumed that they only sold dining packages and booked reservations for the specialty restaurants...I hadn't realized you could book Select Dining reservations from there.) Here are the steps:

• Log into "My Celebrity" and click "View Reservation".
  
• On the reservation page, click the button/tab that will either say "Pre-Cruise Planner" or "Shop Excursions, Beverage and Dining" (same button; the text changes after a minute or so).
  
• From the "Cruise Planner" section, you can either hover over "Dining & Beverage" and select "See All Dining" from the dropdown, or scroll down the page and click on the "Dining" banner/button.
  
• From the dining page, click the "Make a Reservation" button.
  
• Click on names to select, then select a date and time, and then scroll down the restaurants page -- "Select Dining" will be the last option and will show available reservation times.
  
• Choose a reservation time and click to add it to your cart; it will show up in your "shopping cart" with a $0.00 charge.
  
• You can either check out to complete the reservation, or go back to the "See All Dining" page to add another reservation. (Oddly, they don't have a link on the shopping cart page that allows you to go directly to the reservation page.)
  
• Once you have all of your reservations in your shopping cart, you can check out and you will be emailed a confirmation with your dates and times.
  

I hope this info helps for anyone else who may be looking to reserve online! And thanks again to all of you for your feedback!

~ Shay

Just to note, there's an even faster way to do it. If you follow the above process but click on "Plan all cruise dining" instead of "Make a reservation," you get a page with all the days of your cruise listed and can make all your reservations at once. I stumbled upon this once by accident, and now I know to dig around for it every time. It's so much easier than putting each day into your cart one by one!

Just to note, there's an even faster way to do it. If you follow the above process but click on "Plan all cruise dining" instead of "Make a reservation," you get a page with all the days of your cruise listed and can make all your reservations at once. I stumbled upon this once by accident, and now I know to dig around for it every time. It's so much easier than putting each day into your cart one by one!

That is great information, and something else I learned here at CC :D

Just to note, there's an even faster way to do it. If you follow the above process but click on "Plan all cruise dining" instead of "Make a reservation," you get a page with all the days of your cruise listed and can make all your reservations at once. I stumbled upon this once by accident, and now I know to dig around for it every time. It's so much easier than putting each day into your cart one by one!

Thanks so much for the tip, snowmaiden...that certainly would have made the process much faster and easier! I'll be sure to follow that advice the next time we make dining reservations. :)

~ Shay

How far in advance can you make reservations for select dinning?

We always have select dining as a group of 8 and every time we tried to ring to make a booking there was never a table available, but if we just turned up when we were ready we went straight in. Strange:confused:

How far in advance can you make reservations for select dinning?

I'm honestly not sure about that. I made ours within two months of sailing. I don't know if the system allows you to do it anytime, or once the final payment is made.

~ Shay

I was able to input dining times all at once for my December cruise, now 8 months out.

Just to note, there's an even faster way to do it. If you follow the above process but click on "Plan all cruise dining" instead of "Make a reservation," you get a page with all the days of your cruise listed and can make all your reservations at once. I stumbled upon this once by accident, and now I know to dig around for it every time. It's so much easier than putting each day into your cart one by one!

Many thanks for the tip, I will try it .

On an aside, we were sailing with some Canadian friends in March 2013, on Eclipse. I couldn't pre book them with us. I got the message to say that I couldn't pay in a different currency.

I rang Celebrity, as I knew I had no need to pay anyway, it was a MDR booking, not a Speciality restaurant.

It referred to the booking of the cruise being in a different currency.

I was told to 'Link the Booking.'

We went to check with the Hostess on embarkation afternoon and it had worked, the table booking was for 4.

How easy is it to request a party of two by reserving online, on board, or showing up at say 7?

Pat (and Paul)

We almost always get a table for two, if we want it, with little to no wait. However, we usually eat later than 7. The earlier times seem to have more waits.

We don't make reservations normally, just show up, unless we need a specific time for some reason, due to entertainment options we don't want to miss.

We reserved online for a party of 2 at 7pm or 7:30pm for a 14 night cruise on the Equinox. We just returned from the cruise.

We were seated promptly every night-even when there was a line of people waiting.

We were seated in the same general location every night. Our waiters names were Jesus and Moses.

Have fun on your cruise.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I pre booked on- line for 7.15 every night. Friends from Canada that we were sailing with liked to eat early and my husband liked to eat a little later, so we booked a 'mid time' to suit us all.

We ate in the same section of the dining room and had the same Maitre'D, which was useful, as I have a Lactose Intolerance. He even checked from the top of the balcony, when we were eating at the Captain's Table, that my food was as chosen the previous evening.

I've done extensive searches to find this answer without luck, so hopefully someone can help answer this question about Select Dining...

My husband and I are on the Equinox March 3, 2017 and will be using Select Dining. We don't want to do reservations in advance and plan to show up for dinner whenever we are ready. We don't need a table for two and are ok at a shared group table. My question is regarding timing of service for the whole table. Will we be seated at a table where some people are already eating, they are at various stages of the meal? Or will they seat the entire table prior to any dinner service starting, like traditional dining?

I don't want to get into a situation where we are seated for quite a while before service begins because they are waiting to fill the table. This info will help me plan our dining appropriately. Thank you!