Royal Caribbean Now Lets You Change Your Dinner Time Online – No Phone Calls Needed
Quick Answer
Royal Caribbean updated their website – you can now change your dinner time directly in your account. No phone calls, no travel agents, no being put on hold. Takes about 2 minutes.
Here’s how it used to go.
You book your cruise, pick a dinner time – 6:30 PM sounds reasonable. Then you remember what happened last time. You’re on a shore excursion, having a great time, and suddenly you’re watching the clock. The tour is running late, you still need to get back to the ship, change clothes, and somehow make it to the dining room on time. That’s not a vacation – that’s a sprint.
So you decide to switch to a later time. You call your travel agent. They transfer you to someone “more qualified to help.” You explain the whole thing again. They transfer you again. You explain it a third time. Eventually you just hang up, board the ship as planned, and on the first day you walk up to the maitre d’ at the Main Dining Room and sort it out in five minutes.
Sound familiar?
Royal Caribbean quietly rolled out an update in March 2026 that should have existed a long time ago – you can now change your dinner time directly on their website, in your own account. No middlemen, no hold music.
How To Do It – Step by Step
- Go to the Royal Caribbean website and log into your account
- Find your upcoming cruise and click Manage Reservation
- Click on Room and Guests
- Look for Preferred dining time – click Edit
- Pick your preferred time and save
If your preferred time is full, there’s a checkbox to join the waitlist. In my experience, even if the waitlist doesn’t come through before the cruise, you can walk up to the Main Dining Room on embarkation day and ask to switch. That usually works.
What Are Your Options
Traditional Dining – a fixed dinner time every night. Three options: Early, Middle, and Late. (Royal Caribbean added the middle seating back in 2024.) Same table, same wait staff for the whole cruise. No waiting, no reservations – you just show up.
My Time Dining – flexible seating roughly between 6:00 and 9:30 PM. You can reserve a specific time each evening in advance or just walk in and wait for a table. Works well if you want to plan dinner around shows or shore excursions.
| Traditional | My Time Dining | |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Fixed each night | Flexible (6:00 – 9:30 PM) |
| Reservations | Set for the whole cruise | Each evening separately |
| Wait times | None once seating starts | Possible without a reservation |
| Wait staff | Same team every night | Varies |
| Best for | People who like routine | People who plan around excursions |
If you tend to do longer shore excursions or just don’t want to watch the clock on the beach – early dining at 6:30 PM puts real pressure on your day. I know this firsthand.
Bonus – Add a Special Occasion Note
On the same screen, at the bottom of the Room and Guests section, you can now add a note about a special occasion – birthday, anniversary, honeymoon, retirement.
One thing to be clear about: this is not an automatic gift or upgrade. It’s a note that crew members can see when they pull up your account at a restaurant. If your waiter or the dining room manager notices it, they might bring out a cake or wish you well. No guarantees – but it’s a nice touch. And before this update, you had to request this over the phone too.
My Take
Small update, but one of those that actually makes a difference. Less time on hold, less repeating yourself to three different people.
I try to keep an eye on changes like this – to the Royal Caribbean website and app – because useful features often show up quietly, with no announcement. I’ll keep writing about them here as they come.
Ever rushed back to the ship just to make an early dinner time? Or found your own way to handle the dining situation on board? Drop it in the comments.
Last updated: March 2026
Disclaimer: Features and details are accurate as of the publication date and may change.
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