Table mates on cruises

[phoenixleigh]

Originally Posted by Debers17

We've only been on the 1 cruise, but after meeting some great people on our meet thread and talking with them for months before our trip, we decided to link reservations with 2 other groups. We had a table of 10 and it was the BEST experience ever. The first night we just started chatting it up like we had known each other for ages. I'm afraid the next cruise we take, our table mates won't be as wonderful as these group of people that I may just have to try to book a cruise with them again

I know exactly how you feel. That happened to us on our first cruise. We made some great friends that we still keep in contact with them. My DH and her DH had so much in common it was like they always knew each other. They probably would be going with us but they are expecting a baby around Christmas so they cannot go on our next cruise but there is always some other time

[Crittsmom]

On our second DCL cruise we knew the head waiter's name and recognized him by sight because we had chronic complainers at our table. We had 4 couples at the table. One of the couples did ask to be moved, and it was very quickly and graciously taken care of. Dh and I had considered it, but we actually didn't go to the dining room 3 of the 7 nights that we there, because we were in port for 2 days and the 3rd night we ate in the buffet, and the complainers didn't show for one meal.

It was actually kind of funny, this was the 7th time we had cruised, and before I never saw the head waiter until the last night. This cruise, he was almost grilling us about why we didn't come to dinner and what time we got back on the ship ( what the heck ? I haven't had a curfew in over 35 years ),

Overall though, we usually get really great table mates .

[Princess Sleepy]

Originally Posted by jpeka65844

My one and only cruise was a DisUnplugged Podcast Cruise. We were all Dis-ers so had that in common!

Also turned out that 4 of the 7 of us were teachers. We all keep in touch through FB and I'm sure will see each other again at other Dis functions.

I like to think that there's someone at Disney who does this as their job.

"What do you do for a living?"

"I make seating arrangements for dinners on Disney Cruise Line."

How fun would that be. Only downside would be never getting to see the results of your work.

[Funky Chicken]

I have a great table mate story from our RCI cruise last January.

We are a group of 3, and were seated on our first night with two older couples
From Russia. They were clearly appalled to have to sit with a 6 year old despite
the fact that my daughter was very well behaved. One of the ladies asked me to
guess where they were from based on their very heavy accents-I had no idea, so I said
"Bulgaria?" which for reasons unknown to me made them very mad.

Just then the head waiter, a very tall and striking blonde woman with a similar accent to
our new friends, stopped by to say hello. The Russian lady immediately said to the head waiter
"I need to talk to you privately after dinner, but NOT ABOUT SVITCH! NOT ABOUT SVITCH!"
if you haven't figured it out yet, she meant "switch".

The next day they were gone, replaced with two couples from Canada who were absolutely
fantastic dinner companions, and very kind to our daughter.

For some reason, the entire cruise I kept bumping into the "SVITCH" lady everywhere I went.
Bingo, buffet line, you name it. I always gave her an ENORMOUS wave and a big HELLO!
We still laugh about it.

We have made some very nice friends at dinner. We always look forward to meeting our table mates,
and we figure that if they don't want to stay with us they have the option to move. We could move too, but we have never
had to do it. Disney seems to pair up families pretty well, so we will take our chances. If there is a real problem I am confident
that it will get straightened out.

[Imaginationsetfree]

If there are other DISers going on your cruise, you can post in your cruise meet forum to see if anyone is interested in doing linked dining reservations. We did that on the first cruise I took, and it was a blast! We had a huge group of DISers in one area, and those of us who had tablemates had tablemates from the boards. It was awesome!

[Namsupak]

Originally Posted by Princess Sleepy

How fun would that be. Only downside would be never getting to see the results of your work.

I believe that they heads of the dining staff on the ship meet to go over seating arrangements, requests, allergies, etc.

[owensamo]

Originally Posted by Namsupak

I believe that they heads of the dining staff on the ship meet to go over seating arrangements, requests, allergies, etc.

As far as I know, this is true. One our previous B2B cruise, our head server came over the night before our last night to ask if we had any preferences or anything for the next cruise as he would be drawing up seating arrangements (he made it sound like it was for the entire ship and all rotations!) and he'd see what he could do. We kept him and our server for the second cruise, because they were so awesome.