Edge Main Dining Room Questions

[sonoma03]

My husband and I are booked on the Celebrity Edge in February and we have Celebrity Select Early Dining at 6 pm.  I saw that there are 4 main dining rooms on the Edge and each of them have their specialty starters, entrees, and desserts in addition to serving what's on the daily menu.  Since we have the set 6 pm dining time, will we be assigned to one of the 4 restaurants at the same table for the entire cruise like in the old days of traditional dining?  If so, can we still order specialty items from the other 3 restaurants so that we can try them, or will we need to do anytime dining at one of the other restaurants if we want to try their specialty items?  This is the first time we've been on this class of Celebrity ship so I'm not familiar with how the main dining works.  Thanks!

[1025cruise]

There is no set dining on E class ships. You are free to go when/where you wish.

[jelayne]

No set dining even though your reservation shows that.  The specialty items for each MDR can be ordered in any MDR.  No need to switch between them to try all of them. 

[sonoma03]

If Celebrity doesn't honor the set dining time, is there any way for me to reserve a time in advance?  I don't see a way to do it in the app.  When I go to the Web site and try to reserve, it says "Dining time already set" and won't let me make a reservation.  Do I have to switch to anytime dining?

[fshagan]

38 minutes ago, sonoma03 said:

If Celebrity doesn't honor the set dining time, is there any way for me to reserve a time in advance?  I don't see a way to do it in the app.  When I go to the Web site and try to reserve, it says "Dining time already set" and won't let me make a reservation.  Do I have to switch to anytime dining?

 

Because of earlier issues with the anytime style dining on the Infinity before the pandemic, we were hesitant to try Celebrity again. But we just took a cruise on the Apex, sister ship to the Edge, last month and we were pleasantly surprised. We never had to wait longer than 5 minutes to be seated, no matter when we went to dinner. That was typically around 8 after the first show, but twice we went earlier with the same fast service.

 

The four dining rooms are close to each other; two on one deck and two right below. You can peak over the rail of the nice staircase leading down the lower two to see if they have a line. We just picked the one with the smallest line (and once or twice 3 of them didn't have any lines).

[cruisestitch]

1 hour ago, sonoma03 said:

If Celebrity doesn't honor the set dining time, is there any way for me to reserve a time in advance?  I don't see a way to do it in the app.  When I go to the Web site and try to reserve, it says "Dining time already set" and won't let me make a reservation.  Do I have to switch to anytime dining?

There is no way to reserve times on E class ships. That would be if you were on an M or S class ship but not on an E. You can switch to any time dining and it looks like you are making reservations but once you are on board, you will find that this was Just an artifact of their booking system and in fact you do not have reservations. It’s a very frustrating thing that Celebrity has not been able to figure out how to fix their program so that those who are booked an E class ships all have open seating and no reservations can be booked.

[Banjo]

5 hours ago, cruisestitch said:

There is no way to reserve times on E class ships. That would be if you were on an M or S class ship but not on an E. You can switch to any time dining and it looks like you are making reservations but once you are on board, you will find that this was Just an artifact of their booking system and in fact you do not have reservations. It’s a very frustrating thing that Celebrity has not been able to figure out how to fix their program so that those who are booked an E class ships all have open seating and no reservations can be booked.

 

You sure? In the last year I did 2 Edge cruises, both long (a Suez Canal cruise and a trans-Atlantic). I like the idea of rotating my restaurants so I make, by calling, 2 or 3 days of reservations at a time. Many times when calling for a reservation the staff member doing the reservation would say this time is booked & suggest another time is available or an alternative restaurant for the time I wanted.

 

Other than waiting in line to get to the hostess telling her we are here & the hostess checking us off, I never had any wait. 

[cruisestitch]

Sorry, I should’ve been more clear. There is no way to pre-book reservations online for the main dining rooms on edge class trips. Once you are on the ships, that’s a different story.

[daydreamer16]

Are all of the restaurants the same size? We usually book aqua class but this time around we're in a SV so MDR for us. We like the smaller room of Blu so we'd like to eat in a small MDR if possible.

[Jumping Cruiser]

We have chosen select 6pm on Apex for our cruise in June. Is this now disregarded and all freedom dining?

[cruisestitch]

Apparently so.  That is what has been reported from all e class ships.