RCCL and Princess dinner seating

jacketwatch · December 1, 2007

Hi guys. We booked the AOS a few weeks ago and noticed something far different from Princess inre to dinner requests. Last June on the Star and even though we had booked well in advance, more than 6 mos. really, we had to wait months to get our preference confirmed. Our freinds who accompanied us had to practically threaten to cancel before they got confirmation of their seating with us. Conversely our AOS preference is already confirmed. No muss, no fuss. I must say that this issue w/ Princess has to do with their reservations office. On board service was excellent. So why does one take so long and the other so short?

JohnG · December 2, 2007

I believe it is becaus RCCL has only early and late seating. You are going to get one or the other. But Princess has more Personal Choice dining capacity on its ships than traditional dining. (2 PC dining rooms and one traditional on its Golden class ships).

rogue · December 2, 2007

When we booked our Caribbean Princess cruise, we had our dinner request confirmed from day one of the booking. We always take the late traditional seating, and it was no problem. We did book it over a year in advance of the cruise, if that makes any difference.

JoeyandDavid · December 2, 2007

We did book it over a year in advance of the cruise, if that makes any difference.

i must agree.. when ever we book that far out we get almost everything we ask for..... :biggrin:

jacketwatch · December 2, 2007

Thanks for the replies. I later found out what John said so its no surprise we got a confirmation so quickly. I am a bit surprised to hear about what rogue said in that the wait I have had for booking > 6 mos. in advance has been considerable vs. nothing for a yr. Oh well we always end up getting what we want but it takes more time. Someone at the TA I use said that Princess allocated spots much later in the process so being on a waitlist with a high number really isn't at bad as it sounds. :smile:

zebra · December 3, 2007

I must say we have always had our dining preference confirmed immediately with Princess in the past, we also tend to book more than 6 months in advance of the cruise. Sorry we haven't had the same experience, so I can't really answer your question.

Dan · December 3, 2007

We only booked 4 months in advance for the Caribbean Princess and have moved up the waitlist from 357 to 308 today for first seating. I expected this to happen, with that short of an advanced booking time. We did find last time on the Sapphire that they had such a demand for traditional that they took one of the 4 anytime dining rooms and made it traditional.

I find it interesting that they say how popular anytime dining is, and then you look at waiting lists hundreds of people long for traditional LOL. We aren't concerned with anytime dining though. The first day, I'll go down and make a reservation for 6pm everynight.