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Changed early dining on my ship to 5pm from 5:30pm


jbrinkm

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I'm irritated. When we booked, we chose early dining at 5:30pm. Now they just changed it to 5:00pm. With 5:30pm start, you're eating a main course around 6pm which isn't bad for dinnertime. Also it looks like all aboard is at 5pm for our three ports which made 5:30pm dinner really nice - get back on the ship between 4-4:30pm, shower and get ready for dinner, head down to eat with plenty of time. Now if we want to eat in MDR we have to cut our port time shorter by 30 minutes (not going to dinner with all that salt, sand and sunscreen on me). Not the end of the world, I know, but just really wish they had the time correct from the beginning. Why did they change it? I know we can switch to MTD but I want to steer clear of all that mess. I thought that the new menus were supposed to speed up dining? Shouldn't a benefit of a shorter dining time mean that a 5:30pm early dining time would still work?

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Is it a smaller ship?  I had the early seating on Adventure (New England/Canada) and the dining time was 5:00 (or 5:15?).....and I think it was as early on another of theoldr ships, different itinerary.
Also, dont anticipate just showing up when you want to.  On our Symphony sailing last week there was a 15 minute window from dining room open until they gave away your seat.  Someone at a shared table -steady people- had no shows and they sat 2 other people with them.  
You can try speaking with the head waiter to let them know you will be later on those port days and see if they can save your table for you.

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21 minutes ago, Pattycruise said:

 
You can try speaking with the head waiter to let them know you will be later on those port days and see if they can save your table for you.

I concur. The head waiter can make it happen. Check in with him/her on embarkation day. They have always bent over backwards to help us with that stuff. 

Enjoy your cruise.

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It's on Allure, so not one of the smaller ships!

I'm a rule follower, so I would be very uncomfortable showing up more than 15 minutes after the scheduled time (I do think I saw in the app that the "time" is 5:00-5:15 so perhaps we do have a tiny bit of a grace period, although TA confirmed that technically it was shifted to 5pm. We also have one night of specialty dining courtesy of our TA so I'll look into booking that slightly later on one of the port nights, whichever new menu least appeals out of those three days. 

The other thing that is just a bit annoying is that on sea days, activities that we enjoy sometimes run from 4-5pm. So instead of being able to finish the activity and then go change for dinner and head down, we now have to leave whatever we're doing early. Again, not a HUGE deal, just somewhat annoying.

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Maybe I am just showing my age, but I like the 5pm start for dinner.  We usually are back to the ship by 3:00 or 3:30 anyway -- even with excursions.  We have missed show times in the past or had to rush to get to them after dinner because service was slow, having that extra 30 minute buffer on our last trip really helped in that area and we felt less rushed getting to the shows afterwards.  Our typical evening routine is usually watching drunk Pier Runners - Early Dinner - Early Show - Casino until about Midnight - Midnight Pizza / Snack - Bed.

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