My Time Dining

[Tree_skier]

Our TD coming up on Harmony is 5:00 - 5:15. That is really early.  We'll live with it but it is not optimum.  

[shof515]

5 hours ago, island lady said:

 

Was extremely bad on Jewel last year.  A huge line of very upset pax almost every night.  Happy we had early TD!

the line for MTD is always ridiculous slow and huge on my past cruises on adventure and oasis. royal really needs to improve on this. other cruise lines have a much better and quicker MTD process then waiting forever in a line to get a table

[Donsyb]

12 hours ago, doghog said:

I've seen those long non reservation lines for MTD. No way. 

Not on my last cruise on oasis, no massive lines and what was there moved quickly. Will see what it’s like on my upcoming wonder cruise this Sunday.

 

not that it matters to us - we have reserved MTD for 7/7.30 every night which is our preferred time to eat 

[RFerrington]

5 hours ago, Donsyb said:

Not on my last cruise on oasis, no massive lines and what was there moved quickly.

This has been our experience as well.  We get the earliest available MTD rez which is usually 7:00 PM these days....but we go down to the "MTD with reservations" line around 6:30 and we have never had to wait.  If my experience is just "luck" I wish that luck would transfer over to the casino !

[doghog]

6 hours ago, Donsyb said:

Not on my last cruise on oasis, no massive lines and what was there moved quickly. Will see what it’s like on my upcoming wonder cruise this Sunday.

 

not that it matters to us - we have reserved MTD for 7/7.30 every night which is our preferred time to eat 

All I know it was a cluster... on our March 2022 Explorer cruise. Both legs. Maybe they were still working out the bugs at that time due to the shutdown (?). Glad we had early TD. Possibly a ship to ship issue based on how the staff is handling the MTD (?).  Hopefully the MTD issues have improved since then, fleetwide. Others have posted the same experiences. Not sure when (no date), when someone posts my last cruise on the...

Edited November 30, 2023 by doghog

[island lady]

16 hours ago, doghog said:

I remember it was that bad on our March 2022 B2B cruise on the Explorer.

 

Yes, very bad.  That was the first time we finally gave up using MTD and switched to early TD.  

[island lady]

13 hours ago, shof515 said:

the line for MTD is always ridiculous slow and huge on my past cruises on adventure and oasis. royal really needs to improve on this. other cruise lines have a much better and quicker MTD process then waiting forever in a line to get a table

 

RCI used to have a dedicated dining deck for MTD.  It worked quite well.  Now they are integrating the MTD into the main dining deck, subject to the whim of when the early TD pax actually leave their table, or not show up.  This has also pushed up dining time for first TD, to try to get tables finished up earlier. 

 

 IMHO...it's a totally failed program.  

[loman]

We had 645 MTD on Harmony. 

We would show up at around 6 and the gatekeeper would check for empty tables on any of the 3 floors. No other pax were around and no lines.

We needed a two top and were seated within 5 minutes.

You will get different waiters every time , but we dont mind as they were all great.

[doghog]

3 hours ago, island lady said:

 

Yes, very bad.  That was the first time we finally gave up using MTD and switched to early TD.  

That was the cruise that we switched back to early TD on both legs also. 

[doghog]

3 hours ago, loman said:

We had 645 MTD on Harmony. 

We would show up at around 6 and the gatekeeper would check for empty tables on any of the 3 floors. No other pax were around and no lines.

We needed a two top and were seated within 5 minutes.

You will get different waiters every time , but we dont mind as they were all great.

RCI = Royal Consistently Inconsistent.

 

Sounds like everyone's experiences can vary from ship to ship at the staffs discretion. 

[Donsyb]

11 hours ago, doghog said:

All I know it was a cluster... on our March 2022 Explorer cruise. Both legs. Maybe they were still working out the bugs at that time due to the shutdown (?). Glad we had early TD. Possibly a ship to ship issue based on how the staff is handling the MTD (?).  Hopefully the MTD issues have improved since then, fleetwide. Others have posted the same experiences. Not sure when (no date), when someone posts my last cruise on the...

Last cruise was oasis in November 2022. Longest wait with reservations was 10mins on lobster night, other nights no more than 5 mins. The lines without reservations was moving steadily.

Will report back after this weeks cruise on wonder whether it is any better/ worse.

[RFerrington]

After several recent experiences, I have come to the conclusion that they have abandoned the spirit of MTD as a reserved event.  Over the last several cruises, I have seen MTD evolve from true reservations, resulting in a long initial line (which always moved fairly quickly, TBF) at ~6:30 to an event where you basically just show up whenever you want to eat and reservations-be-damned.  Last night (Indy) we had 6:45 reservations....which we always do....and around 6:15 we sauntered down to the podium (it doesn't matter which one you go to, apparently....reservations or no reservations seem to work the same these days) and were seated immediately.

 

IMO they realized that if they stuck to the 6:45 time that they were going to have a never-ending problem so they seem to be sequencing the MTD in with whatever open fixed dining tables they have at any given moment.  For us, it works VERY well... I think this makes it particularly difficult for the servers as they no longer have a "routine" of apps, mains, desserts for all diners at the same time.  It's basically ALL MTD now....a hodge-podge of everyone eating at a different stage of their meal unless you are dining at a big table with a big group.

 

This new scheme works well for us b/c we don't care about having the same servers night-after-night.  For those that want to stick with the same servers I think they try and accommodate that but this is when you may have to do a bit of waiting.

 

Going earlier rather than later to MTD seems to be key.  The later you choose to eat the more likely it seems to be that you will collide with the late traditional diners and end up waiting.  It's all a big experiment, it would seem.

[moposh]

On 11/29/2023 at 3:10 PM, cellfree said:

Sounds like a lot of craziness.
So now my question is, can I change dining request prior to cruise or is it easier to try and do so once on board?

Contact RC and see it you can change beforehand.  I did that for one of my cruises when I found out MTD had changed and was later than I wanted.

[xyzcruiser]

Going on my first post covid royal cruise in 2 weeks. I have been reading all these mtd threads with dismay.  have always done mtd ( Carnival, NCL, and Royal) back to when only available with freestyle NCL, and loved it. Last 3 years 10 times on carnival where they have it down to a science with their app. I go to specialty restaurants at least half the time, I never know when I will want to eat (depends on time back from ports, how I'm doing in the casino, if I'm just chillin' on the deck and don't want to move, etc) so I don't want to change to set dining for sure. I am however on a smaller ship, Vision of the Seas. Wondering if the ship size affects all the problems reported. Any comments or advice?

[travelberlin]

Apparently the chaos is in all ships. I am trying to change my MTD for early dining or my next cruise. Late dining not possible because of health reasons. It is disappointing. I used to enjoy MTD.

 

[cellfree]

1 hour ago, moposh said:

Contact RC and see it you can change beforehand.  I did that for one of my cruises when I found out MTD had changed and was later than I wanted.

I did call, was put on Wait List, might be spending a lot of dining time in Windjammer. 

[doghog]

8 minutes ago, xyzcruiser said:

Going on my first post covid royal cruise in 2 weeks. I have been reading all these mtd threads with dismay.  have always done mtd ( Carnival, NCL, and Royal) back to when only available with freestyle NCL, and loved it. Last 3 years 10 times on carnival where they have it down to a science with their app. I go to specialty restaurants at least half the time, I never know when I will want to eat (depends on time back from ports, how I'm doing in the casino, if I'm just chillin' on the deck and don't want to move, etc) so I don't want to change to set dining for sure. I am however on a smaller ship, Vision of the Seas. Wondering if the ship size affects all the problems reported. Any comments or advice?

Based on what you said just showing up for MTD will work for you as you never know when you want to eat. You may or may not encounter long lines and wait times. My Magic 8 Ball says, "cannot predict now". For us the MTD change sucks. We use to always reserve MTD for 6:PM. Now we are back to early TD as we don't like the start time of 6:45 for MTD.  

[doghog]

1 minute ago, cellfree said:

I did call, was put on Wait List, might be spending a lot of dining time in Windjammer. 

You are to close to your sail date to get a guaranteed slot now. When you first board the ship go to the MDR and speak with the staff member that will be taking dining requests. 

[island lady]

1 hour ago, doghog said:

Based on what you said just showing up for MTD will work for you as you never know when you want to eat. You may or may not encounter long lines and wait times. My Magic 8 Ball says, "cannot predict now". For us the MTD change sucks. We use to always reserve MTD for 6:PM. Now we are back to early TD as we don't like the start time of 6:45 for MTD.  

 

What he said  ^.   

[island lady]

1 hour ago, travelberlin said:

Apparently the chaos is in all ships. I am trying to change my MTD for early dining or my next cruise. Late dining not possible because of health reasons. It is disappointing. I used to enjoy MTD.

 

 

You would not believe the hassle I had trying to change off MTD to go on 1st traditional for the WC.  Was told from the beginning that all WC pax were put on MTD...if doing the whole cruise or quarters...all MTD,

 

Then the 17 mini legs came out and heard from other CC members doing the mini legs that they were getting TD choices.  Huh?

 

Finally was able to change it out to 1st traditional for the 1st quarter after a lot of phone calls.  Don't even want to think what I will have to go through again for the 4th quarter to change it.  😕

[doghog]

5 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

You would not believe the hassle I had trying to change off MTD to go on 1st traditional for the WC.  Was told from the beginning that all WC pax were put on MTD...if doing the whole cruise or quarters...all MTD,

 

Then the 17 mini legs came out and heard from other CC members doing the mini legs that they were getting TD choices.  Huh?

 

Finally was able to change it out to 1st traditional for the 1st quarter after a lot of phone calls.  Don't even want to think what I will have to go through again for the 4th quarter to change it.  😕

Pat, hopefully your dining works out for you. For us dining accommodations are very important. Why we always book early. As you do. You guys or anyone else shouldn't have to be going thru this crap. IMO, the last 3 years no matter what we are doing in our lives, costumer service sucks! Give us your money...

[cellfree]

On 11/29/2023 at 2:14 PM, cellfree said:

Well, live and learn for me!
Upcoming cruise Sunday, four days out, first Royal cruise in a long time.

Chose (or were given it as reservation was made so long ago I forget) My Time Dining. What I did not know was that you can go on the App and reserve your dining time early, I discovered this today. As a result what is now left are times later than 7:30/7:45, too late for us. I suppose we will be experiencing the Buffet for dinner more often than not.

Well this is interesting, couple days ago started this post after it appeared I could make reservations on the App for My Time Dining, sort of annoyed as it appeared all of the earlier times already booked, so I booked 730/745 times, not my favorite but oh well. Just now I received separate emails for each of those reservations saying they were cancelled and when I go to the App it now says I need to make reservations once on board. Yikes, what’s with that?

[RFerrington]

15 minutes ago, island lady said:

 

You would not believe the hassle I had trying to change off MTD to go on 1st traditional for the WC.  Was told from the beginning that all WC pax were put on MTD...if doing the whole cruise or quarters...all MTD,

 

Then the 17 mini legs came out and heard from other CC members doing the mini legs that they were getting TD choices.  Huh?

 

Finally was able to change it out to 1st traditional for the 1st quarter after a lot of phone calls.  Don't even want to think what I will have to go through again for the 4th quarter to change it.  😕

Super glad to hear that you were able to get at least half of it fixed.  Fingers crossed for you to get the rest of it changed over.  It shouldn’t be that hard to do….

[island lady]

1 minute ago, doghog said:

Pat, hopefully your dining works out for you. For us dining accommodations are very important. Why we always book early. As you do. You guys or anyone else shouldn't have to be going thru this crap. IMO, the last 3 years no matter what we are doing in our lives, costumer service sucks! Give us your money...

 

It was even worse when I changed cabin locations.  Got all the docs for the new cabin, then they changed it back...and would not give me a reason!!   One rep recommended I email the WC desk.  Got an answer back in 2 hours...all fixed.  

 

I don't think the regular CS reps should be handling the WC logistics....that thing has become a monster to deal with.  Growing pains for RCI with this new venture.  😣 

[travelberlin]

My TA was able to change me from MTD to early seating. However when I look at the cruise planner, I still have my time dining reservations, which I did before requesting the change and before knowing that MTD was not anymore a good option. 
 

How can I see on the cruise planner which dining option I finally have? What do I do with those MTD reservations? Do I cancel them one by one? Or will they be get automatically removed now that I have early dining?