Arvia dining, does it have enough places

[terrierjohn]

5 hours ago, 9265359 said:

 

Bookable tables are not an issue when they are offered for early or late slots - which P&O has on occasion done in the past. Let someone book at 6.00pm and it is not an issue as they will certainly be gone by the time the main rush comes at around 7.30 to 8pm. Let someone book at 9pm, and again you can be certain that tables will become free.

 

The issue is when you allow tables to be booked in that peak 'hump' period when an awful lot of people want to eat. That's when you run into the issue of - do you hope the previous occupants of the table have finished and if they haven't do you hurry them along, delay the booked guests, or simply keep the table free because you can't be certain.

 

How would people feel if they were being sat at 6pm but were told "you need to be gone by 7pm as we need the table back by then"? I doubt many would be too happy with it.

 

Now if you have a large MDR with lots of tables AND lots of other places on the ship where people will eat regularly, then it is easier to juggle and allow a number of those peak time bookings. But with the pile it high and sell it cheap P&O megaships running 'overcapacity' during the summer when all the families are on board and the pull down berths and bed sofas are used - well things are rather more difficult.

I don't think that a specific table is allocated to the Dine my way  bookings, so I assume they HOPE that a table will be available, which for 2 tops will be fairly easy, however 4 tops are likely to be a problem as there are less of them. 

However I do agree with you that any pre booking does prevent the MDR  from maximising the throughput when offering freedom dining. Which is why I firmly believe that the virtual queue system is the best way to offer freedom dining and maximise throughput, 

HOWEVER this will never be achieved while P&O continue to allow ad hoc variations to operate.

[terrierjohn]

5 hours ago, Megabear2 said:

As I said, I'm not intending in getting bogged down on the dining issues on Arvia - I've been shot down on that one far too many times and have absolutely no intention of revisiting the topic in detail! However see below.

 

My reply was by way of an opinion on how Princess are managing their reservation system and are allowing bookings throught their entire four hour dining period for dinner.  Of course Princess are not yet sailing their new vessels in Arvia's class so we are currently unable to judge how their dining system will cope with the 5,000+ passengers, however we can say with out doubt Regal, Sky etc are not experiencing the problems and confusion that Britannia for instance has developed in recent times and she is the same class and design.

 

Better organisation and understanding of your customer combined with a more "fixed" bookable time clearly help.  The P&O app system gives absolutely no idea how long your wait may be when you join the virtual queue whereas the Princess "timed" appointment offers that comfort even if when you arrive at the desk your table isn't immediately available.  Giving a time means if you keep the customer hanging around for a long time after his arrival he rightly will complain. Offering a vague promise you'll get to eat some time will only cause anxiety and raise anger levels, especially when you shut up shop really early after the virtual queue opens.  It's absolutely pointless saying keep looking to join the queue as there's no indication at what point it may reopen, you're turning it into a lottery.

 

Whilst on our cruise Sky was not visibly suffering from long MDR queues, it was certainly failing to meet passengers booked times regularly enough, and as I gave up on the bookings after the first day we found that the non booked queue was always shorter and moved faster than the booked one. We also noticed that the tables were not being turned around very rapidly, and the wait staff seemed quite harassed, and the experience was certainly far less slick than pre covid.

[9265359]

20 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

HOWEVER this will never be achieved while P&O continue to allow ad hoc variations to operate.

Exactly.
 

Although I have used the app in the past and am more than happy to deal with technology (just spent an enjoyable morning getting Windows 11 running in a virtual machine on an Apple Mac that doesn’t have Intel silicon), on my upcoming cruise in December where I have Freedom dining, I will not be using it but will go back to the old ‘turn up and seat me or give me a pager’ approach.