Silhouette Dining Room

[4thgrade]

Do very many passengers still participate in the fixed dinner seatings?  i recently cruised in Aqua and enjoyed Blu.  My next cruise will be with my husband, and he really enjoys the fixed seating arrangement.  i would love to hear some feedback!  Thank you in advance.

[Toftwood]

I noticed on my my upcoming Celebrity Silhouette sailing the early sitting was closed out so there is clearly a strong demand.  On my last Celebrity cruise there really weren’t any vacant tables in the MDR.

[m8zenblue]

Fixed seating is nice, but...

We had Select dining initially but met some wonderful people the first night sitting at the next table so we made a standing reservation each night at a set time to dine with our new friends.

Now, my advice is if you have Select dining and want change to a nightly set time I would do it very early in the cruise, 1st or 2nd day.

If you already have a set time and discover that you do not like your arrangements you should know early.

We have spoken with others who have set time dining that were no satisfied with their arrangements and suffered the rest of the cruise because they did not act early.

[cltnccruisers]

With one exception we've always had fixed sittings. 

[gerelmx]

We always choose 2nd (late, 8:30) seating, no rush to dress and at the end of the dinner waiters are not pushing to leave the MDR.  Past summit cruise 2nd seating, the MDR was not full maybe 40 to 50% empty.

 

[Baron Barracuda]

We also prefer late traditional.  Prefer to visit the early show which is usually less crowded.  Also avoids my bad tendency to fall asleep in theater on a full stomach.  Agree late traditional is much less crowded.  We're usually able to request and receive a 2 top by a window.

[4thgrade]

So, I now have an additional question.  With the fixed dinner seating, are there still the set table groups?  My husband really enjoyed this several years ago.  

 

Once again, thank you in advance!

 

[panoramaofthepast]

If by set table groups you mean eating with the same folks every night, then yes. that's traditional dining. We definitely prefer it; it's fun to meet up with the same folks every night and swap stories.

[GoodScout]

We prefer anytime seating. Right now we're waitlisted for it for our April cruise, and it will be a disappointing 11 days if we have to eat at 8:30 every night. 

[grandgeezer]

We’d stay home before we did the second seating for dinner. We got stuck with it once and it threw our normal nightly routine all out of whack.

[dateacher]

We've never done fixed dinner and have no intention of doing it. However, if you have it and don't like it, why can't you just show up for anytime dining and get a pager and eat when there is an availability?  Do they not allow it?

[Turtles06]

1 hour ago, dateacher said:

We've never done fixed dinner and have no intention of doing it. However, if you have it and don't like it, why can't you just show up for anytime dining and get a pager and eat when there is an availability?  Do they not allow it?

 

You can’t just unilaterally change from fixed seating to select or vice versa, because only so many people can be accommodated in each. But if you are not happy with your assignment, see the Maitre d’ and ask if you can be switched.  

[The77thrunner]

I’ve only cruised twice / once on my honeymoon and once with all seven of our collective kids. We had the late seating fixed for our honeymoon and really found it suited us well. We did anytime in Royal Caribbean with the kids and got screwed the last night was a crappy waiter and crappy table. I was not a fan. 

 

For the 2020 cruise we just booked we are doing the late seating fixed again. 

[Baron Barracuda]

If you're unhappy with your dining assignment have your ta pester X to get it changed. If they can't just visit mdr at embarkation.  There's always a hw on duty to handle change requests.  They have always been able to accommodate us.

[shofer]

On our November TA cruise was the first time DH experienced Select dining and he was very happy with it.  I had already done it several times while cruising with friends.  We chose a time, 6:30 PM and I reserved the time online.  It worked like a charm and we had the same table and servers most of the time.    

Gave us enough time to return from port activities and relax before getting cleaned up for dinner.  There was about an hour after dinner before the second show but we had an after dinner drink or visited the casino.  

We really liked the flexibility it gave us.

[irishgal1970]

Have done fixed dining on all previous Celebrity sailings. We had the early seating and switched to the late seating after the first night on our last X cruise. Both the time and the company suited us much better. Sailed last two years with Norwegian, which doesn't have fixed seating. So we're going with select dining this time on X. Some nights 8:30pm is just too late, and 6pm is almost always way too early.