Reservations with Unlimited Dining Package

[cruiserccl]

Hello...new to Royal so I apologize if this is a silly question.

Since we cannot book reservations under the UDP, do they hold reservations for people who do purchased the package?

I'm concerned that when we board, there isn't any reservations left for the restaurants we want at a reasonable time.

With those who have purchased UDP, did you feel that you were able to get reservations you wanted or did you regret purchasing the package because it was more of a hassle getting the reservations at a good time?

Also, was it easy to "walk up" for lunch reservations since I read somewhere we couldn't make more than one reservation per day?

Any suggestions and information would be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

 

 

 

[CruisingOz]

The best way is to have a plan of when and where you would like to eat prior to boarding and when you get on board, go to a specialty restaurant and make all the bookings. This way you have something booked each night and you should be able to change your mind should your tastes change. We normally never booked lunch, but have done on occasions and it never seemed an issue. In the main we would normally get the reservations we wanted, but there have been occasions when I may have had to pick a different day and time, they were rare and I have called them and made changes as well.

Another strategy is, if you are celebrating a special occasion or have a large group, you can pay for that specialty resturant via the cruise planner, securing the day and time, and when at the restuarant tell the staff you have an UDP and they will credit you the cost of what you paid separately. Do not leave telling them until the end, do this as you walk in so they can do the backend stuff.      

[cruiserccl]

15 hours ago, CruisingOz said:

The best way is to have a plan of when and where you would like to eat prior to boarding and when you get on board, go to a specialty restaurant and make all the bookings. This way you have something booked each night and you should be able to change your mind should your tastes change. We normally never booked lunch, but have done on occasions and it never seemed an issue. In the main we would normally get the reservations we wanted, but there have been occasions when I may have had to pick a different day and time, they were rare and I have called them and made changes as well.

Another strategy is, if you are celebrating a special occasion or have a large group, you can pay for that specialty resturant via the cruise planner, securing the day and time, and when at the restuarant tell the staff you have an UDP and they will credit you the cost of what you paid separately. Do not leave telling them until the end, do this as you walk in so they can do the backend stuff.      

Thank you. We are, absolutely, booking as soon as we board. It sounds like we won't have a problem booking something each night. This was my biggest concern. I didn't want to get onboard and find out there isn't any specialty reservations available between 6-8pm each night...and we would then choose it's not worth it if we have to eat at 5pm or 9pm because we purchased the UDP.

Thanks for posting about lunch. I've read some previous posts pre-pandemic, that it's not a problem walking in or making lunch reservations. I even read that you can only book one reservation per day. Perhaps I misunderstood that.

Thanks again!

 

[AshleyDillo]

As soon as you connect to the ship's wifi you can start making the reservations through the app. It has let me make multiple reservations on the same day and I have even gone back later and seen new times open up day of when I was checking availability. People cancel and change reservations a lot so it is fluid.

[cruiserccl]

17 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

As soon as you connect to the ship's wifi you can start making the reservations through the app. It has let me make multiple reservations on the same day and I have even gone back later and seen new times open up day of when I was checking availability. People cancel and change reservations a lot so it is fluid.

Sounds good. Thanks so much!

[ChrisK2793]

19 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

As soon as you connect to the ship's wifi you can start making the reservations through the app. It has let me make multiple reservations on the same day and I have even gone back later and seen new times open up day of when I was checking availability. People cancel and change reservations a lot so it is fluid.

2 hours ago, cruiserccl said:

Sounds good. Thanks so much!

This works SOMETIMES ……. last week on Odyssey it kept telling me I wasn’t connected to their Wi-Fi ….. I was, we had the Surf & Stream Package …. … after trying everything including a hard restart of my phone and the Royal app, I finally just went to a restaurant to make the reservations.  Even the next day while at sea, the app still wouldn’t let me make show reservations because it said I wasn’t on their Wi-Fi and I had to call the reservation desk to get those made as well.  
 

[cruiserccl]

20 hours ago, ChrisK2793 said:

This works SOMETIMES ……. last week on Odyssey it kept telling me I wasn’t connected to their Wi-Fi ….. I was, we had the Surf & Stream Package …. … after trying everything including a hard restart of my phone and the Royal app, I finally just went to a restaurant to make the reservations.  Even the next day while at sea, the app still wouldn’t let me make show reservations because it said I wasn’t on their Wi-Fi and I had to call the reservation desk to get those made as well.  
 

Thanks for the heads up. We also will have the internet package, but I guess that doesn't really help.

I will have all of us try to get into the app...and if it doesn't work, I'll make my way to one of the restaurants. 

Hopefully, it works for at least one of us. I'm just concerned that there'll be little availability if I have to line up to get it done.

 

 

[Atlantix2000]

1 hour ago, cruiserccl said:

I'm just concerned that there'll be little availability if I have to line up to get it done.

Making reservations onboard has always been the trade off for getting a lower cost by buying the dining package.  That said, it is extremely popular with the regular cruisers on this forum which wouldn't be the case if they were unable to get good reservations.  Really the only common "complaint" is that you can get too much food when you always dine specialty.

This is a case where it's important to remember that the average forum poster knows and plans a LOT more than the average cruiser.  Many people don't even know specialty dining exists until they get on the ship.  That's partly why it's generally easy to make reservations on board on the first day.  If you wait until day 4 of 7, then you can't be surprised that good reservations are hard to find but that's true with or without a package.

[cruiserccl]

38 minutes ago, Atlantix2000 said:

Making reservations onboard has always been the trade off for getting a lower cost by buying the dining package.  That said, it is extremely popular with the regular cruisers on this forum which wouldn't be the case if they were unable to get good reservations.  Really the only common "complaint" is that you can get too much food when you always dine specialty.

This is a case where it's important to remember that the average forum poster knows and plans a LOT more than the average cruiser.  Many people don't even know specialty dining exists until they get on the ship.  That's partly why it's generally easy to make reservations on board on the first day.  If you wait until day 4 of 7, then you can't be surprised that good reservations are hard to find but that's true with or without a package.

Thank you. I do forget that a lot of cruiser don't frequent boards. I'm just so used to DCL/WDW/DVC planning that I get anxious if I have to wait to reserve anything.

I think I can understand about getting too much food. Fortunately, we're light eaters so it's just the idea of trying each specialty dining. I'm excited about Wonderland, but I know my daughter won't be eating much so, having the UDP, somewhat lowers the per dinner cost, I guess.

 

[ChrisK2793]

9 hours ago, cruiserccl said:

Thanks for the heads up. We also will have the internet package, but I guess that doesn't really help.

I will have all of us try to get into the app...and if it doesn't work, I'll make my way to one of the restaurants. 

Hopefully, it works for at least one of us. I'm just concerned that there'll be little availability if I have to line up to get it done.

 

 

We got completely on the ship at by 1140,  had the key lunch at noon, it was about 1pm by the time I went in person to make reservations and we got the times we wanted between 545 and 630 at latest …… we just had to swap the days we planned to eat at 2 restaurants because they were each full at our time the original day choice, but we didn’t mind the day swap of the 2.  I’m sure if I had gone earlier instead of messing with the app, we wouldn’t have even had to do the swap, but again didn’t mind.

 

[cruiserccl]

14 hours ago, ChrisK2793 said:

We got completely on the ship at by 1140,  had the key lunch at noon, it was about 1pm by the time I went in person to make reservations and we got the times we wanted between 545 and 630 at latest …… we just had to swap the days we planned to eat at 2 restaurants because they were each full at our time the original day choice, but we didn’t mind the day swap of the 2.  I’m sure if I had gone earlier instead of messing with the app, we wouldn’t have even had to do the swap, but again didn’t mind.

 

Thanks so much!

Sounds like we'll be able to make it work for us.