My Time Dining Question.

We signed up for My Time Dinning so we could be flexible about when we eat. Now Royal Caribbean emailed me that I can reserve my "My Time Dining" times now. I didn't want to schedule it because I don't know the entertainment schedule. Which you don find out the schedule until you are on ship. Should i schedule my dinners or ignore the email? Benefits? Cons?

You don't need to schedule time unless you want to. I have for my next cruise because I have all of my excursions set and know what time I will want to eat each night. Plenty of people just walk up and get their table. I would schedule if you have a very large party wanting to dine together though.

My husband and I use MTD and just walk up and get a table. We do tend to go fairly early and it is just the two of us.

We usually book 630/645 but most nights can go earlier or later if we choose. Just returned from 4 night Majesty on Friday and we had the same table with same waiter each evening and they told us to come to dinner anytime between 6 and 7 and table would be waiting.

Cool, thank you. This is our first cruise. My wife and I.

I make my reservations ahead for two reasons.

1 - I do like to be on an approximate same time eating schedule, but not stupid early or crazy late if I can help it (I always go late on DCL as there is only the 2 times and if I have to pick I'll go crazy late rather than stupid early). I book my reservations for 6:30 every night. Because of that, I'm able to meet with the maitre'd when I board and request to have the same table and service team, and I've always been told as long as my reservation is for the same time, it should not be a problem. That is important to me because...

2 - I am gluten-free and am just more comfortable with having the same service team. I've had different servers every night (fathom before they ceased to exist) and it was pretty much an unmitigated disaster with dishes coming out obviously with gluten-items on them (salads with croutons, etc) or them not even being able to find my order and me being relegated to plain chicken or steak with baked potato and veggies. So I'm most comfortable with the same team. BUT I don't want to do fixed dining because a) it's stupid early or crazy late and b) I travel solo and that just makes seating at fixed dining awkward as it's either a solo dump or I'm the weird/poor little thing traveling all by myself. No thank you.

If I wasn't gluten-free I might skip the "May I please have the same table every night?" thing and just make the reservation for the time I want anyway. On Brilliance a couple of years ago, there was a whole little collection of tables that had the same idea I did - a nice time in between. And after 12 nights we'd started checking in with each other every night. But there was no pressure to continue talking or it would just be awkward.

Ignore those emails...the whole idea of MTD is flexibility.