my time dining

I don't think you can prior to embarkation day. However, I've always requested a table for two or one when I cruised solo on my first day when I arrive in the dining room and the same server and they've never said no to me. I do make it a habit to arrive late on my first day.

Happy cruising to you.

You can ask for a table for two each evening as you go to dinner. Often, after the first evening, they will know your preference as soon as you give them your cabin number. It is possible that you will have to wait if all the tables for two are filled, if you are not willing to eat with others. In that case, they will give you an approximate time and a beeper. Prior reservations are not available for your time dining.

With anytime dining the answer is no to 2 person table or any table for that matter prior to cruising. Depending on the line you can make reservations once onboard. Or when you show up and a two top is not available they will give you a pager and call you when one is ready.

We arrange that soon after we embark. If you like the servers and know what time you want to done, you can book for subsequent nights. You may not get the same table, but should be able to get the same wait staff.

Yes that is what we do with Anytime dining. Ask for a table for two, if they don't have one you might have to wait a bit. Normally they seat you anywhere in the MDR. It is nice to have the same waiters but that is not guaranteed, unless you go the "traditional" route with an assigned table and tablemates for the duration of the voyage, you have to be lucky with traditional to get a table for two, or book very early.

One cruise, I believe it was on HAL, in "anytime" or I think they called it "as you wish" dining on HAL, early on in the voyage and by coincidence we were usually seated in the same area under the same head waiter. His tables were not in the middle but along side the windows or fairly close to them. One evening when we showed up they put us in the same section but the head waiter and waiters had been moved to the middle of the MDR. I guess he might have got into trouble or something as that location wasn't the most desirable. Didn't make any difference to us, it was dark outside and the curtains were mostly pulled anyway. When they started to seat us, I said we would like to be remain with the head waiter and staff we had before. So they moved us to the middle. That little act did not go unnoticed. From then on we were very popular with that staff and head waiter. Treated like royalty even.

We did a 14 day cruise to Alaska on Zaandam last Spring. We ate n the MDR 3 times. The service was atrocious.

Sorry to hear that!

Too bad, but that's good to learn. Last time we sailed with them was in February 2014. We had almost 200 days sailing with them then and had two more cruises booked for almost two month’s worth of cruising. I can't remember all the details other than they started playing games with us, reneging on credits etc. Anyway, I was on the phone with them discussing some of this and their obstinacy exhausted my patience, I said to them, "cancel all our cruises right now" and refund our payments, which they did.

As years have rolled by, at least twice, I have tried order their brochures in order to check out what was new with them. They refuse to send them to us. Guess we are on their blacklist. That would not be a concern, if not that, about five years ago, Carnival merged Princess and HAL and their Alaska land operations holdings and some other Carnival subsidiaries like Seabourn and P&O Australia, into their "Holland America Group". Stein Kruse became the CEO of the new affiliate, Kruse ran HAL for years as CEO. We use Princess a lot, over 300 days cruising with them now.

Oh, it was a great cruise and there were plenty of places to eat. The ship was good as were all other services. I can't remember the last time we didn't tip the wait staff extra at the end of the cruise.

Our only other HAL cruise was in 2005, also an Alaskan cruise. We did a Princess Alaska land/cruise in 2009 and their land portion was much better. We have an RCI and NCL booked for next year.