Cruises - Celebrity Select Seating vs. confirmed 6:00pm or 8:30pm seating

You pay the exact same gratuity, right?

So why would anyone not pick the Celebrity Select Seating?

You pay the exact same gratuity, right?

So why would anyone not pick the Celebrity Select Seating?

Because

1) it's nice to have the same waiter and assistant waiter every night who know your likes and dislikes and will have your favorite beverage ready for you, or will know what "that orangey thing we had two nights ago that I liked so much" is

2) it's fun to eat with the same people (ok, not always) and really get to know your fellow passengers, instead of meeting new folks every night and not getting to know anyone

3) it's no fun to have to wait for a table with Select Seating when everyone shows up at 7PM and they tell you "30 minutes or so" when there's a show you want to see at 9PM.

I have two cabins on the Celebrity Infinity, one cabin could confirm 6pm dining, the other cabin was number 16 on the wait list for the 6pm dining.

Needless to say, on the two reservations, my name with two kids is on one reservation, while my wife with two kids are on the other reservation. One room is an Aqua room, hence the 6pm dining confirmation, the other room is right next to the Aqua room but is a inboard room, so we could not get 6pm dining confirmed. I find this ridiculous that I could not get both rooms confirmed for 6pm dining, but that is the way it goes on these cruises.

When I found out I could choose the 'Celebrity Select Dining', I went ahead and chose that for the both cabins and confirmed all of our dinners at 6pm together.

The thing that really gets me is that the bottom line as far as expense are concerned are exactly the same. With 'Celebrity Select Dining' you pre-pay your gratuity, with your confirmed 6pm/8:30pm dining time you pay your gratuity at the end of the cruise.

I do not feel good about paying the gratuity before we dine, but the bottom line is that I wanted my family to eat at the exact same time and we all end up paying the exact same amount for gratuity.


Because

1) it's nice to have the same waiter and assistant waiter every night who know your likes and dislikes and will have your favorite beverage ready for you, or will know what "that orangey thing we had two nights ago that I liked so much" is

2) it's fun to eat with the same people (ok, not always) and really get to know your fellow passengers, instead of meeting new folks every night and not getting to know anyone

3) it's no fun to have to wait for a table with Select Seating when everyone shows up at 7PM and they tell you "30 minutes or so" when there's a show you want to see at 9PM.

Celebrity says they don't book kids into Aqua - are yours over 18?

I've done Select dining on five Celebrity cruises. Never had a wait of more than 5 minutes for a table. I can't see going back to traditional dining, although I understand the appeal.

If you like a table for two most of the time, your chances for such a far greater with Celebrity Select than a traditional 1st or 2nd sitting where generally the tables for two are assigned to the top suite passengers.

Unless you arrive at the dining room between 715pm and 8pm, you are unlikely to ever encounter a delay.

Worldspan
131 cruises strong

Comments and questions...

The comments about select dining vs traditional dining pretty much sums it up. My spin/description is that traditional 6pm / 8:30pm dining is about simple consistency. Same time, same table, same wait staff, etc.
Select dining affords you the flexibility (time, tablesize, etc) but at the potential sacrifice of the positives of that consistency (ie. Wait team familiarity, potential waits for a table, etc). There are ways to get the best of both worlds in Select dining, namely, asking for the same wait team (potential wait for them though but quite doable if you work with the hostess), making reservations to limit your wait, avoiding peak periods, etc.

The purpose of the pre-paid gratuity for Select dining is that because you will be served by different wait teams, it's an easy way to pool and distribute the gratuities equally among the wait staff.
What's the concern about pre-paying the gratuity? If it's about potential lack of service, I doubt that would be an issue because it's a perk for wait staff to work in Select dining.

If you are in Aqua class, you have the option of dining in Blu (I think there's a Blu on Infinity). I don't think Blu has Select dining tho; only the MDR. So, I'm guessing you'll be forgoing eating in Blu to eat together in the MDR?

nice information to share thanks for sharing

The purpose of the pre-paid gratuity for Select dining is that because you will be served by different wait teams, it's an easy way to pool and distribute the gratuities equally among the wait staff.


Pre-paying the gratuities is nice because you don't have to worry about it on the ship. They are paid for and that's it. However, I think requiring them to be pre-paid is just so RCI and Celebrity can get that money in advance. The Carnival lines all have anytime dining as well, and you don't have to pre-pay, they just charge you the gratuities either on a daily or weekly basis, and distribute them into the tipping pool for the various staff you see each week.

We generally prefer fixed seating, and always had good luck with table mates (hopefully those table mates also felt like they had good luck LOL). The one time we had anytime dining, on Princess, we were something like 400 on the first seating waiting list, which struck me as funny that there would be such a wait list when they kept trying to tell us that anytime dining was so popular. However, we found that on the nights we showed up at the dining room at the same time as first seating, we got seated right away. The couple nights we went later, say 7pm, we ended up with quite a wait.

You can adjust your dining times based on port times.

For example, if you chose the early dining, but the ship stays in port late, then you either skip eating in the dining room or have to hurry back to the ship and get ready for dinner.

We were able to make reservations for each night (pre-cruise) so we never had to wait for a table. We also tried just showing up to see how long of a wait it would be and never waited more than "Let me see what I have. Would you like the same servers?"

I prefer the set time for dining when it's offered. I like having the same wait staff every night, they get to know you, you get to know them, and it's nice to have the same people at your table. It's been ages since we have cruised alone, usually it's with a group of friends or as part of a wine club or something, so we have always been going traditional dining so we can all dine together at the same tables every night.

I have nothing against the select dining option, it's just not our choice in dining options. It's nice that some ships and lines still give you the option of either method to keep everybody happy.

I prefer the set time for dining when it's offered. I like having the same wait staff every night, they get to know you, you get to know them, and it's nice to have the same people at your table.

We're the same. I mean, it's nice meeting new people if we end up at a large table each night with anytime dining, but the same old "where are you from, what do you do, how many cruises have you been on" night after night gets tiring.

We've kept in touch with people we have met at dinner when we had the assigned seating. We never got to know anyone well enough at anytime dining to bother.

We're the same. I mean, it's nice meeting new people if we end up at a large table each night with anytime dining, but the same old "where are you from, what do you do, how many cruises have you been on" night after night gets tiring.

It can go the other way as well and you can dislike you're assigned seating tablemates but are stuck with 'em the whole cruise, that's is you want to eat in the MDR (main dining room).

FWIW I've done both on HAL & CEL and have opted for the anytime dining the last 3-4 cruises as I like to have the choice of when to dine, especially depending upon shore ex. times. I also cruise solo so like to mix it up between MDR, buffet and specialty restaurants so I'm not eating at the same time in the same place the whole cruise. To each their own...

Note that not all cruise lines do as RCI/CEL do and require prepayment of the gratuities when opting for the flexible dining as HAL doesn't.

Whether it has been the advent of candles, oil or electric lighting or having stood too many Second Dog Watches (1800-2000, every third day, with a traditional navy 3 section watchbill) at sea, I choose not to dine early. The 830PM sitting allows extended splicing of the main brace, allows for leisurely return aboard after Shore Leave, draws a better sort of dining companions (or at least a lesser number wearing "Gimme'" caps), few if any rug-rats, ankle-biters and crumb-snatchers, or worse, the teens and pre-teens drug to the dining salon unwillingly by their parents, and just maybe, the opportunity for stimulating conversation.

Certainly, one can draw the occasional "loser" among assigned table mates, but in retrospect I've met some interesting folks.

I've done the Select dining previously on Celebrity and on RCI I signed up for it again. You can pretty much get the same waiter each time if you want, so it's not a big deal. Especially, if you are like the extra things that a familar waiter does, like bringing you your favorite drink, etc.

As for complaining about tipping beforehand, I can understand that maybe if you booked the cruise months or years in advance, you don't want to have your money tied up with them.

But tip the damn people, they are working their butts off, serving your sloppy selves. I've cruised many, many times and never had issues with service on a cruise. Even if it's just okay service and not something above and beyond, it's still good service.

Let me guess, the food is late one meal and then at the end of the cruise you deduct that days tip... I know I'm going to extremes but the least you should tip is the recommended gratuity but I've seen plenty of people who the last day remove the gratuity from their accounts because they are just plain cheap and mean. Not because they got bad service or anything close to it.

Whether it has been the advent of candles, oil or electric lighting or having stood too many Second Dog Watches (1800-2000, every third day, with a traditional navy 3 section watchbill) at sea, I choose not to dine early. The 830PM sitting allows extended splicing of the main brace, allows for leisurely return aboard after Shore Leave, draws a better sort of dining companions (or at least a lesser number wearing "Gimme'" caps), few if any rug-rats, ankle-biters and crumb-snatchers, or worse, the teens and pre-teens drug to the dining salon unwillingly by their parents, and just maybe, the opportunity for stimulating conversation.

Certainly, one can draw the occasional "loser" among assigned table mates, but in retrospect I've met some interesting folks.


Our first Carnival cruise was in Jan 2001, on a smaller older ship (it was actually leaving the Carnival fleet after the cruise following ours). We found the night time entertainment to be such that we found ourselves spending a lot of time in the casino. We were thinking "late dinner would have at least killed some time" LOL.

When my wife became pregnant that year, we decided to take one last cruise before kids, and settled on Carnival again, out of New York, up the east coast to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In looking at our port schedule, and not sure if the entertainment would be similar to our prior Carnival cruise, we decided to go for late seating. As it happened, our cruise was scheduled to depart 4 days after 9-11, departure was moved to Boston, and 75% of the passengers cancelled, so we ended up with the entire ship in one seating at 6pm in one dining room.

Now we have our kids, so as you say, first seating is best for us.



Note that not all cruise lines do as RCI/CEL do and require prepayment of the gratuities when opting for the flexible dining as HAL doesn't.

I don't beleive any of the Carnival brands require pre-paying, although you can if you want to. I did notice on our only RCI cruise last year that they don't push the charging of gratuities to your account though. We actually had to go request that to happen, and then they gave us vouchers to put in the envelopes, presumably so the staffer knows we tipped them. On Princess and Carnival, they charge your account unless you request them not to, and then the only thing you use the envelopes for is extra tips, or tipping certain people who aren't part of the tipping pool (kids program staff, favourite bartender etc.)

We've had some amazing tablemates during fixed time dining. Only during our first cruise where we sat at a big table with a lot of the couples showing up inconsistently was it a bit off. And I love the consistency of having the same wait team.

During our most recent cruise (on Celebrity this past December), we hit it off with our first night's wait team and asked the hostess to seat us in his section nightly. That was generally not a problem but on occasion they even worked it so that we could get seated just outside their section but still get served by them [yes, we showed "additional appreciation" for that effort by everyone].

Surprisingly, there were a lot of repeat groups eating around the same time. So, even though we were sitting alone at our deuce, the tables are so close it was easy to strike up a conversation with the people beside you. But being at your own table, it was also pretty easy to limit/withdraw from the conversation if you needed to. However, there were a lot of "regulars" in our wait team's section so again, we were able to enjoy the best of both worlds.