Celebrity open up dining for everyone

Whenever we make a booking, one of the questions we ask is with regards to the dining preference on board. Since the introduction of Freedom Dining aka Anytime Dining, My time dining, Celebrity Select, open dining etc – it seems that this is now the more preferred preference for dinner as it gives the flexibility of dining as and when you want to, and also more chance on some ships for a table of 2.

P&o had recently changed on their bigger ships (Britannia, Azura and Ventura) that out of the 3 main dining rooms you could be allocated that 2 of them would now be for the freedom dining. P&O don’t make any charges or specify that you must prepay your gratuities to have the priviledge of receiving the freedom dining. Other cruise lines which don’t make you prepay your gratuities is Princess Cruises, the 6*star cruise lines such as Silversea, Oceania, and Regent Seven Seas.

There were two cruise lines who stipulated to receive the My time/Celebrity Select, then you had to pay your gratuities up front and these were Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises. Some people who were used to cruising with Royal or Celebrity understood these were the rules, but new to cruise or new to these cruise lines and who were used to getting it “free” found it difficult to understand. The other frustrating thing was when Royal or Celebrity only had the freedom dining option available despite it being 9 months until embarkation.

Well I am pleased to announce that Royal Caribbean relaxed their rules a couple of months ago and we were able to book guests on freedom dining without prepaying the gratuities, and this week we have heard from Celebrity Cruises that they have also changed to this.

I think this is a great move by Celebrity Cruises,  and now their guests can have their preferred dining time, and still have the option to choose to prepay their gratuities or have them added to their on board accounts.