Being seated with others in Dining Room?

[Love2Cruz]

I am living in Montreal (province of Quebec) ... Where did she come from?

People living around Montreal are generally more comfortable with english but I can tell you that with the exception of the region of Montreal and Outaouais (Outaouais is sharing borders with Ontario) and regions sharing borders with the United States, people from the province of Quebec are pretty much only exposed to english at school. When I was a teenager, there was only one class of english (very basic) per week unless we were selected to pick a bilingual program... And in most schools, there was none!) Internet arrived in our houses around 1998 but many will chose to navigate on french websites only because this is the language they are familiar with. They won't learn english because it is simply not necessary.

I can tell you that my english is what it is because I was really interested in learning the language and as a teenager I was --the only girl in the whole school-- watching Boy Meets World... with my dictionary. Also I had subscriptions to Tiger Beat! This is how I got exposed to the language. Otherwise, just like my high school friends, the only vocabulary I would know would be: "Hi, yes, no, toaster, hot dog, hamburger, goodbye".

I don't know, we didn't get into any in depth conversations, other than your son is cute and she was meeting family in Ft. Lauderdale after the cruise. As I said, her English was very poor, most of our communication was non verbal, smiles and "have a nice day/evening"....I wish I spoke French as it would have been a good time to practice...She was very nice and also a single mom.

 

[85glht]

We are a family of 4 and have never requested our own table and always found it great to be seated with and meet others. We have made great FB friends along the way! However, last summer we were seated with another family of 4. On the first night we sat down at the table first and when the other family saw us they raised a great deal of commotion. They eventually sat down with us and it was the worst dinner experience I have ever had! No one spoke and it was quite uncomfortable! The other family had a ton of food requests and we were simply ignored by our servers that night as all of their attention went to the complaining family. We told our head waited on the way out of the dining room that we would not be returning to the dining room for the rest of the cruise because of the uncomfortable seating arrangement. They told us that they would make changes and asked us to please come back the next day. The tables were pulled apart and quite a distance was placed between them as well. It did make the dining experience better but we certainly felt awkward seeing this family for the rest of the cruise.

We love meeting new people at the dinner table on our cruises but I will ALWAYS request our own table on all future cruises thanks to the way this family made us feel! They were horribly rude!

All it takes is one bad experience and everything is ruined. Sorry you had to go through that. I wouldn't let that experience deter you from sharing a table again....... But I can understand why you wouldn't.

 

[Shanti]

And honestly, for the price we have to pay for this cruise, everyone should be able to dine at a private table!

This.

I'm a single mom of a socially-anxious a child on the autism spectrum who is also on a restricted diet, and the one thing I really dislike about DCL is the stress of trying to get a private table/worrying that we won't get one. We are a party of two, so it doesn't happen as a matter of course.

The right to choose private dining ought to be included in our already-high cruise fare, but since it isn't, I'd gladly pay $250 - $500 extra to be guaranteed a private table, and actually wish that would be something that smaller parties could just pay extra for upfront and be done with it.

 

[Maddysdaddy]

My family and I shared a table on our first cruise, and the daughter of the other family was the same age as mine, so it was a positive experience for us to interact with another 'similar' family.

On our last cruise, we were placed at a 4-top. As I've previously posted on these types of threads, we spent 7 nights sitting across from each other going, "So... how was your day?", to which the only response was "Pretty much exactly the same as yours - you were laying on the lounger next to me". I found that as a result of being cut off from work, school, friends and the news, topics of conversation were pretty much exhausted by dessert on the first night.

 

[SuperLuckyMamaBear]

We're a family of 5 and sailed the Magic last October, we had to sit with another family. We did request our own table but didn't get it. I wasn't too bad, they were at one end and we were at the other so everyone just talked to their own family. One or two nights they weren't even in the dining room.

 

[wide awake]

As two PP have stated, having a child...well, my son is 26 so not a child anymore...on the spectrum is difficult w/ shared tables. I've always called ahead and explained that we're fine sitting with others...we are..but that my son is very picky about the conversation topics, and he'll shut down anyone who talks about something he doesn't want to hear about. That list is LONG... anyway, we've never had a problem. I'm quite sure if we weren't given our own table on the first night we would be by the second. That said, we've always tipped for the number of seats at the table, for example if it is a four top, and we've requested a family table, we don't tip for three, but for four. Not fair for staff to lose out on their share of tips because of our family dynamics.