Earlier today, we (Mr. Makarma) were again reminded of why it's so important to provide the best possible information when customers trust us with their hard earned travel dollars. We were reading a daily travel blog for a major newspaper. Someone made the comment that, even though she's requested an early dinner seating on five cruises, the request was only granted once.
Various pieces of advice were given to this person; two were good, one was questionable and one was downright ridiculous. In our humble opinion......
GOOD - Use a cruise-oriented travel agent.
GOOD - Book early.
QUESTIONABLE - Book a cruise line that has an open seating policy. (This is not always practical. Some open seating arrangements are on smaller high-end cruise lines that may not be sailing where/when you want to sail. Other lines may not have as good a reputation for food, or could be very busy during the early part of the "open seating" period.)
DOWNRIGHT RIDICULOUS - The author of a famous series of cruise guides mentioned that one might want to withhold final payment until the desired seating was confirmed. Oh...brother. The one thing withholding final payment might bring about is a cancellation of your booking, and the very possible loss of your deposit. (We do, by the way, question a lot of what this particular author writes.)
A third GOOD recommendation the Q&A neglected to mention? Speak to the Maitre D' as soon as possible on the day of sailing. In every case we're aware of, the Maitre D' has posted hours (check the daily onboard schedule) where dining-related issues can be addressed. It's quite likely that the person above could have had her wish for early seating granted, possibly five out of five times, by talking to the wonderful wizards in charge of the dining room.
As one Maitre D' told us after we made what we thought was a complicated request...Nothing is impossible.
Something else that's questionable? Makarma Travel is now on Twitter. It wasn't enough that we were one of the travel industry's earliest adopters of this internet thing, we followed that with this uber-sexy TravelBlog. Now, we throw up random notes throughout the day. Recent topics we've opined about include our favorite of the new Carnival ads ("New Ship Smell") and our thoughts about the exterior design of another company's under-construction ship. Join us, or miss out on all the action:
http://twitter.com/MakarmaTravel
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