Anytime dining

That is true, but making reservations is one step more than I care to make!

I have been eating dinner at the same time for the past 20 years, so it is not bad for me to continue it on the ship.

In the rare case that I am ashore during that time, I would probably have already planned to experience the local cuisine anyway.

There seems to be a few misconceptions about Anytime Dining. If you make your reservations, there is no waiting, any more than with traditional. You can almost always reserve your same table and you can definitely keep your same servers. The advantage is, if you don't want to do any of that, you don't need to.

We have always had anytime dining and love it. Would not want it any other way. We prefer to eat when it is convenient for us. This allows us to stay late in port if the ship is there or eat early if we book a show or just want an earlier meal 1 night.

I prefer the traditional dining with no wait, guaranteed table and same servers.

The any-time dining is great if your schedule is topsy-turvy and you can't have dinner at the set time.

The only time I've had anytime dining was when I was forced to, on our Norwegian cruise and our Viking cruise because they don't have set times. But we ended up making reservations every night on NCL so we had our own "set time" anyway. I love a set seating because you know there won't be a wait, you already know where your table is after the first night, and everything feels quick and easy.

Looking good!

We also prefer Anytime Dining whether we are cruising as a couple, with another couple or as a group of 10 like last year. We had no trouble getting the same table each evening with the same wait staff because we requested it for the next evening, as we finished dinner each night. The staff were very accommodating and were tipped well at the end of the week, to show our appreciation.

We have only had one instance where MTD was a disadvantage. That was on HAL last May. On a 14 day cruise, we only ate in the dining room 3 times because the service was so bad. It should not take almost 3 hours to complete a meal. Plus, you know how the waiters all go around doing a calypso dance on one of the formal nights? Only Traditional dining got that.

Do it every cruise now.

It also works well when traveling solo. Just ask to share a table and you get to meet new people each night.