Loyal My Time Diner changed to late dining

[motheroftwocats814]

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

[saridien]

We always do late seating and love it. No rush to get back from a port day and still have time to get ready for dinner, no wait for a table, and it gives us an excuse to have a heavy snack around 4 PM to tide us over 🙂

[2chiefs]

4 minutes ago, motheroftwocats814 said:

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

We love Late Seating. Tried MTD twice. Didn't like it either time.

 

[2chiefs]

3 minutes ago, saridien said:

We always do late seating and love it. No rush to get back from a port day and still have time to get ready for dinner, no wait for a table, and it gives us an excuse to have a heavy snack around 4 PM to tide us over 🙂

Agree. Our sentiments exactly. Another bonus for us: Less kids.

Sleep in for a late breakfast, late lunch, afternoon snack!!

[Norwich Cruiser]

8 minutes ago, motheroftwocats814 said:

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

You’ve made the right choice l

[motheroftwocats814]

26 minutes ago, 2chiefs said:

Agree. Our sentiments exactly. Another bonus for us: Less kids.

Sleep in for a late breakfast, late lunch, afternoon snack!!

Plus, this is a Canada/New England cruise in Sept. So probably not a lot of kids.

[craig01020]

I recently switched from MTD to early dining on my next cruise because of all the recent horror stories about MTD.

[BirdTravels]

1 hour ago, motheroftwocats814 said:

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

We always do MTD and would never change. We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems". We would never get stuck/constrained by early or late dining. Royal needs to give up on early/late dining like other cruise lines. 

[GTO-Girl]

1 hour ago, motheroftwocats814 said:

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

We were long time MTD diners too, but switched back to Traditional about 3yrs ago because of all the problems…

[craig01020]

51 minutes ago, BirdTravels said:

We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems".

Which ships were you on?

[taglovestocruise]

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

We always do MTD and would never change. We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems". We would never get stuck/constrained by early or late dining. Royal needs to give up on early/late dining like other cruise lines. 

They need to give up on MTD, that is what is not working.  Early or late TD is a breeze.  

[craig01020]

11 minutes ago, taglovestocruise said:

They need to give up on MTD, that is what is not working.  Early or late TD is a breeze.  

I liked the way Carnival handles it. One dining room for fixed dining times and another for MTD.

[la_croisiere_s'amuse]

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

We always do MTD and would never change. We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems". We would never get stuck/constrained by early or late dining. Royal needs to give up on early/late dining like other cruise lines. 

 

15 minutes ago, taglovestocruise said:

They need to give up on MTD, that is what is not working.  Early or late TD is a breeze.  

Respectfully disagree with both of these positions. 😉 Both systems have hard-core fans, and I think the option to choose is something that sets Royal apart.

 

3 minutes ago, craig01020 said:

I liked the way Carnival handles it. One dining room for fixed dining times and another for MTD.

Or even just different floors of the dining room, as Royal has been known to do. I'm hoping that this is one more thing that will smooth itself out as the labor situation improves and things gradually get closer to normal.

[renza]

1 hour ago, BirdTravels said:

We always do MTD and would never change. We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems". We would never get stuck/constrained by early or late dining. Royal needs to give up on early/late dining like other cruise lines. 

Not sure what ships you have been on but it’s a disaster on the oasis class ships. We have been on 4 oasis class ships since the start up and had to get off MTD it was crazy. 

[Luckynana]

After reading all of the posts on the horrors of MTD, I guess we were just lucky on our Allure cruise this past April.  Were there lines?  Sure there were...after getting on line, we were seated at our requested time, with the exception of just one evening, where we had to wait 10 minutes for our table to be cleared.  On our February cruise on the Silhouette, we wound up at a different table for the first 4 nights, but we were seated at our requested time.  😀

[happy cruzer]

Staying with MTD with 6:45 reservation for now.  If it is a problem onboard, then plan to switch to late Traditional or show up very late at MTD.  Hopefully on sailings out of the US, late dining will be an option onboard if MTD is a problem.  But at least want to see if my preferred time will work.

 

Last time did early TD on Liberty, and they had that moved to start at 5:00, very early...

 

Good luck.

[island lady]

12 hours ago, craig01020 said:

I liked the way Carnival handles it. One dining room for fixed dining times and another for MTD.

 

When MTD first came out on Royal, that is exactly what they did.  Worked well for us with MTD then....now, not a fan of new system.  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 20, 2022 by island lady

[island lady]

After many years of also being a loyal MTD diner....it just doesn't work for us any longer.  Not since they intermixed the traditional dining with MTD later in the same dining room.  And a lot of the MTD dining time is much later than we usually like now, making it tough to get to some shows.  

 

Have since switched to early dining...set table, no waiting.  Just walk right in...no lines.  

 

After we finish a 5:30 dinner around 6:30-6:45...the lines for MTD with a lot of very grouchy, unhappy pax are lined up way past the door as we leave.  

[poocher]

On my cruise, the MTD line was very long at 6:30 also.  But that was because it opened at 6:30.  Once it did, the lines diminished very quickly and, as I’ve said, we never waited more than 10 minutes after opening to be seated. IMHO, the problem is everyone who had MTD wanted their time to be 6:30.  

[Sea Viewer]

16 hours ago, motheroftwocats814 said:

We ALWAYS do my time dining. Not this time, I decided to change to 8pm dining. 

With all the issues I have been seeing on these boards about long waits (even with reservations) and the MTD issues, it was a no brainer to change it to 8pm.

I will deal with eating that late.

Happy cruising everyone.

Just did the same for our cruise on Allure next month. MTD was impossible last month crowded lobby for booked dining times and long waits. Of course no mask wearing or social distancing while waiting,

Hopefully this will be better but we did enjoy several dinners in WJ on the last cruise so that is an option again.

[davekathy]

12 minutes ago, poocher said:

On my cruise, the MTD line was very long at 6:30 also.  But that was because it opened at 6:30.  Once it did, the lines diminished very quickly and, as I’ve said, we never waited more than 10 minutes after opening to be seated. IMHO, the problem is everyone who had MTD wanted their time to be 6:30.  

And that's why when we first book our cruises I always make reservations as soon as MTD opens in the CP for 67:00 PM.

 

The reason we switch back to TD on our recent Explorer cruise is I selected MTD, 6:PM  when we first booked the cruise (about 13 months early). Approximately 45 days prior to the sail date we were notified by RC that our MTD reservations were changed from 6:PM to 7:15 PM. No way. I called RC and requested early (6:PM) TD and got it. According to RC rep. and the app 7:15 was when MTD started for both legs of the cruise. Going forward, we'll always select early TD. I (we) agree with Pat, "After many years of also being a loyal MTD diner....it just doesn't work for us any longer". Hopefully Celebrity doesn't screw up their SD (Select Dining) like RC has with MTD. If they do we will change back to early TD. 

[island lady]

1 minute ago, davekathy said:

And that's why when we first book our cruises I always make reservations as soon as MTD opens in the CP for 67:00 PM.

 

The reason we switch back to TD on our recent Explorer cruise is I selected MTD, 6:PM  when we first booked the cruise (about 13 months early). Approximately 45 days prior to the sail date we were notified by RC that our MTD reservations were changed from 6:PM to 7:15 PM. No way. I called RC and requested early (6:PM) TD and got it. According to RC rep. and the app 7:15 was when MTD started for both legs of the cruise. Going forward, we'll always select early TD. I (we) agree with Pat, "After many years of also being a loyal MTD diner....it just doesn't work for us any longer". Hopefully Celebrity doesn't screw up their SD (Select Dining) like RC has with MTD. If they do we will change back to early TD. 

 

I went in and changed all my future cruises to early traditional dining since it worked so well on our cruise with you.   

 

Funny thing is, used to be a waitlist for MTD....but now seems a wait list on some cruises for traditional dining.   I don't think we are alone.  😉 

[davekathy]

5 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

I went in and changed all my future cruises to early traditional dining since it worked so well on our cruise with you.   

 

Funny thing is, used to be a waitlist for MTD....but now seems a wait list on some cruises for traditional dining.   I don't think we are alone.  😉 

Totally agree. 

 

Wish we could have taking you up on your offer to have diner with you and Bucky that one evening. I can only imagine the conversations the four of us would have had concerning that cruise. The Head Waiter would have had to escort the four of us out as we would have been considered homesteaders at the table or charged us for the table.  😉

[karena1]

15 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

We always do MTD and would never change. We've done 4 post-restart cruises and have not had an "problems". We would never get stuck/constrained by early or late dining. Royal needs to give up on early/late dining like other cruise lines. 

Totally agree with you.  We have one MTD since it started and would never go back to traditional.  I would rather have to wait a little bit (on Explorer, I think we waited 20 minutes one night), than to be stuck at a huge table and be forced to sit through a 3 hour dinner.  With MTD, once we are seated at a 2 top (which we love) we are done and out of there in 1 to 1.5 hours max.  Works perfect for us.

[karena1]

56 minutes ago, poocher said:

On my cruise, the MTD line was very long at 6:30 also.  But that was because it opened at 6:30.  Once it did, the lines diminished very quickly and, as I’ve said, we never waited more than 10 minutes after opening to be seated. IMHO, the problem is everyone who had MTD wanted their time to be 6:30.  

I agree, we usually go around 7:30 or so.  A lot depends on show times.  We plan our dinner around the show if there is something we want to see.  We also could care less if we have the same waitstaff every night or the same table.  That makes it much easier to get seated.