How does dining work with the complimentary restaurants and fixed early dining?

[lovesthebeach2]

We’re new to Celebrity, always cruised Royal.
We have cruises booked on 3 different ships, Apex, Silhouette and Ascent.

I see they have more than one complimentary restaurant included. How does that work if you have early dining on the reservation?

I’m totally confused, because Royal only had 1 Main Dining Room and with early seating I never had to make any reservation.

Do we need to book regular dining meals in each venue for each day or just decide to move around at our choice each day and show up at our 6pm time?

[fliprcruiser]

Our last trip we had a regular table assigned, in dining room A. We Asked for menus from restaurants B,C,D, and could order from those. This was during our assigned early time.

 

Or, we could choose to go to restaurant C, as example, at anytime, and be seated in open dining time, only wait based on available open tables.

 

Your choice, do what suits your style best. Want the same dining team? Go to same place every night. Want variety? Mix it up.

[RTShaker]

6 minutes ago, lovesthebeach2 said:

We’re new to Celebrity, always cruised Royal.
We have cruises booked on 3 different ships, Apex, Silhouette and Ascent.

I see they have more than one complimentary restaurant included. How does that work if you have early dining on the reservation?

I’m totally confused, because Royal only had 1 Main Dining Room and with early seating I never had to make any reservation.

Do we need to book regular dining meals in each venue for each day or just decide to move around at our choice each day and show up at our 6pm time?

Apex and Ascent have 4 dining rooms that are anytime dining, no fixed seatings. go to whichever one you want at the time you want. On the Silhouette there is only one dining room and it has a section for anytime and a section for fixed seating

[39august]

I understand from many prior entries here about E-class dining, that all 4 dining rooms operate on come as you wish basis. No reservations required. 

[jelayne]

1 hour ago, 39august said:

I understand from many prior entries here about E-class dining, that all 4 dining rooms operate on come as you wish basis. No reservations required. 

That’s right, although it didn’t start out that way when Edge was launched.  
There were early & late fixed dining times and each restaurant had its own exclusives that you could only order in that dining room.

That was a hot mess for quite awhile as fixed seating guests wanted to switch restaurants to try all 4 and on one cruise the wait to be seated was a hour

 Mid cruise they eliminated any fixed seating, everyone was anytime and any menu item could be ordered in any of the 4  MDRs.  The lines evaporated to short waits at peak times, most times no wait. 

[carlmm]

1 hour ago, jelayne said:

 

 Mid cruise they eliminated any fixed seating, everyone was anytime 

Good to know.

I will make a note never to sail any of these ships!

[jelayne]

1 hour ago, carlmm said:

Good to know.

I will make a note never to sail any of these ships!

You can still go every night at a time if you choosing and have the same table and wait staff.  On day 2 f our last cruise we had a wait team and sommelier we really liked.  As we were leaving we asked the hostess if we could be seating in the same wait teams area every night around 8, we were.

[KansasK]

Do we need to make a reservation daily to have the same table each night?  We signed up for early dining, but this apparently no longer exists?

 

[Arizona Wildcat]

5 minutes ago, KansasK said:

Do we need to make a reservation daily to have the same table each night?  We signed up for early dining, but this apparently no longer exists?

 

We always just go the first night then decide. We have always been accommodated as jelayne said by being seated with the same wait staff.  Sometimes they would coordinate same table for us. Easy once on board.

 

[KansasK]

14 minutes ago, Arizona Wildcat said:

We always just go the first night then decide. We have always been accommodated as jelayne said by being seated with the same wait staff.  Sometimes they would coordinate same table for us. Easy once on board.

 

 

Thanks for this information.  I would never have known this unless I was on Cruise Critic!  

[keesar]

I had spent a good deal of time making reservations at the various MDRs on E class.  When we arrived, we were told it was Anytime Dining.  It was good to know but frustrating that I had spent all that time trying to plan when it was not needed.  Just show up where and when you want to.