Royal Caribbean pulls the plug on Dynamic Dining – USA Today
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One of the bigger experiments in changing the main dining room concept at sea is over.
Royal Caribbean International will pull the plug on Dynamic Dining, which split the main dining room on several of its ships into three or four themed restaurants, each with a different menu.
Starting Nov. 27, diners on Anthem of the Seas will now have the same menu in all four of the restaurants. The menu will change each night to provide variety.
Two of the restaurants, American Icon and Silk, will follow Royal Caribbean’s My Time Dining format, in which passengers pick their own dining times and tables. The other two, Grande and Chic, will operate like traditional main dining rooms with an early and late seating.
When it debuted on Quantum of the Seas in 2014, Dynamic Dining was expected to be the future of complimentary dining on Royal Caribbean. Plans were laid to expand it to the line’s biggest ships, Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas. But tradition-bound cruisers didn’t like it, and glitches with the reservations system led to a rough debut.
Royal Caribbean tweaked the concept with the arrival of Anthem by creating Dynamic Dining Classic, an option for fixed seatings and wait staff that rotated through the restaurants with guests.
Meanwhile, the huge dining room on Oasis was split into three new restaurants, but the full program was never implemented.
The biggest drawback was that Dynamic Dining forced diners to make reservations every night, either before or during the cruise. “The general feeling was that added a complexity to the cruise vacation, and they really preferred it just to be easy,” said Mark Tamis, senior vice president of hotel operations at Royal Caribbean.
In addition to Anthem, a version of the concept survived on Royal’s Ovation of the Seas in China, where it was called Cosmopolitan Dining. Tamis said it will be scrapped when the ship moves to Australia for the winter on Nov. 23.
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Tom Stieghorst covers cruises for Travel Weekly magazine.
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