Early Dining Time?

[ah2539]

On the RC App for my upcoming cruise (Harmony) it shows that the early dining in the American Icon Grill is 5:00-6:30. The other main dining room levels show 5:00-5:30. Does this mean that we can arrive to be seated anytime during this window, or will it be set once we are on the ship? Is there a way to request the American Icon Grill to have the wider time window for seating?

 

[KathyC]

My best guess - to be honest it's been two years since we were on Harmony so I'm not 100% - but I think that American Icon is used for one early seating meal, then is used for My Time Dining after that.  Early seating would be 5pm, and you are out of there by 6:30 to make room at the tables for the My Time Dining folks. 

[twangster]

Welcome to the message boards!

There are three dining options.  Main Seating, Second Seating and My Time.

The first two are often referred to as traditional or fixed time dining.   With traditional dining you are expected to be seated on time and service for the whole dining room proceeds in unison.  The concept is that the whole area of the dining room used for fixed time dining is at the same stage of the dinner service.  You don't have people working on dessert while some others are on their appetizer while others are just arriving - that's My Time Dining.

With My Time dining guests are seated at tables by themselves or they are seated at shared tables in groups as they arrive.   The idea being that all guests at one table with be at the same stage of dinner service while all guests at another table would be at a different stage of dinner service. If eight guests at table 1 all arrive very close to 6:30pm they all as a group would be at one stage of the dinner service while three tables over at table 3 those guests may have all arrived around 7:15pm and that table might just starting their dinner service.    Perhaps table 1 is all having dessert while table 3 is all having appetizers.  

The actual dining room and deck can change over time.  When I was on Harmony My Time was deck 5 - Silk.  Currently My Time Dining is on deck 3.  The names are irrelevant and are left over from the days when they planned to offer rotational dining that was once featured on Quantum class ships.  That concept didn't last and never made it to Harmony but they had named each deck of the Harmony dining room in preparation for it.  These days all decks of the dining rooms are the same but have different names.

In the cruise compass section of this site there is a cruise compass from a few weeks ago. 

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/cruise-compasses/harmony-of-the-seas/sun-2019-09-15-0000

The cruise compass from on board shows the dinner times as follows:

It appears they have grown "Main Seating" to accommodate more guests while "Second Seating" is smaller so it requires somewhat less space.  Perhaps that is the trend that guests have been requesting these days.

For early or "Main" seating you are expected to arrive between 5pm and 5:30pm.  Arriving at 5:45pm or 6pm won't work.  If you desire that sort of flexibility you should inquire about switching to My Time dining.  

The app is a work in progress with some minor inaccuracies or nuances.  I suspect that is what you are seeing in the app.  

[WannaCruise]

@twangster is that new with "expected to arrive between 5pm and 5:30pm"?  For traditional, I thought you were to arrive at the specific time vs a range.  Or maybe that's new?

As an aside, we opted for My Time on Harmony as we noticed that the early traditional time was creeping back way too early (think ours had 5:15pm)

[twangster]

7 minutes ago, WannaCruise said:

@twangster is that new with "expected to arrive between 5pm and 5:30pm"?  For traditional, I thought you were to arrive at the specific time vs a range.  Or maybe that's new?

As an aside, we opted for My Time on Harmony as we noticed that the early traditional time was creeping back way too early (think ours had 5:15pm)

In reality you can't expect several thousand guests to all arrive precisely at the same time.  The difference is how they stated it.  

Old Verbiage: 

Main 5pm (Doors will close at 5:30pm)

Second: 7:45pm (Doors will close at 8:30pm)

New Verbiage:

Main: 5pm - 5:30pm

Second: 7:45pm - 8:15pm

It's just a less threatening way of phrasing it.  

I've never realized how the sisters varied from each other but if you back into 2017 (or as back as we can for Symphony once in America) they do vary a bit. 

Harmony:  "Main"  6pm and "Second"  8:30pm.  

Allure: "Main" 5:30pm and "Second"  8:00pm.  

Oasis: "Main"  5:30pm and "Second"  8:15pm.  

Symphony:  "Main"  6pm and "Second"  8:30pm.  

In all cases My Time had a dedicated deck from 5:30pm to 9:30pm (or 5:15pm to 9pm on Oasis.)

Around mid-May it was observed that Allure and Harmony had altered My Time Dining to start at 6:30pm.  There were no MTD reservation available prior to that.  At the same time Main seating expanded to all three decks and in so doing consuming part of MTD and reducing it's hours to start later. 

It seems on this new approach to minimize impact to MTD "Main" has shifted earlier otherwise MTD would not be able to start until 7:30pm.    

Oasis and Symphony remained on the old approach with MTD starting 5:15pm or 5:30pm.

This all has the appearance of an experiment using Allure and Harmony to test a new dining methodology.

It will be telling to see what they do with Oasis when she comes out of dry dock.  So far it appears she is using the legacy approach.  

[twangster]

One final point I neglected to offer.

Your dining venue and deck will be printed on your SeaPass card.  If you have Main seating, you must use the restaurant and deck printed on your Seapass card.  You can't choose one of the three decks and randomly appear at different decks of the MDR each night.