Reply To: Dining question
@chicazul is correct: we’re all in the late (8 pm) dinner seating, since the concerts will all overlap the early dinner seating. So no need to make “reservations” (unless you mean making reservations for dinner some night in the Pinnacle Grill, in which case you shouldn’t schedule them before 7:30)
@stitchinthyme We’re still putting the finishing touches on the system to make it happen, but here’s how it’ll work: like last year, it will generally be open seating (mostly). We’ll have all our tables with JCCC tent cards, indicating which tables Sea Monkeys can sit at. (And we’re doing our best to make our areas contiguous, i.e. not scattered all across the room.
Also note: we’ll be both upstairs and downstairs this year, because there’s too many of us to all fit on one floor. Over 1/3 of our seats will be in the downstairs room this year, so it’s not like a small handful will be exiled to the lower floor or anything.
Two things (and here’s where the “mostly” above comes in):
1) As with last year, there will be a section in one corner reserved for performers, staff, and their families. We know there were complaints from some folks in last year’s post-cruise surveys that the Famous People should have been dispersed among the Regular People, giving more chances for face time. There’s simply no way to do that that isn’t ridiculously complicated, and/or unfair to many of the attendees. (e.g., only 7 random tables over the course of the week get to sit with Jonathan for dinner; tough luck for everyone else, you get stuck with people like Paul and Storm) And there will be plentiful opportunities over the course of the week for people to interact with their favorite Famous People.
2) There were also some survey responses expressing some folks’ preference for fixed seating–not wanting to have to scramble each night to find a seat, or they’re just comfortable with their own group of friends, or whatever. We can understand this; as such, we’re shortly going to give everyone the opportunity to choose fixed seating–tell us the people in their party, and we’ll assign specific table numbers to those groups (doing our best accomodate everyone’s requests), and they’ll be at the same table all week.
Full details on this plan are coming soon via email.
Hope this helps,
P