Sorry you are late!

Carnival are testing new dining rules at two of their ships. These rules will only apply for the traditional meal sitting passengers who have booked early or late dining option. If they arrive later than 30 minutes after their designated time they will be turned away and will be asked to go to the buffet style restaurant instead. They are now testing this only on Carnival Glory and Carnival Conquest. This is because when passengers are late for their dinner it impacts the rest of the table and delay the meal serving which can also impact the following sitting if it is the early one for example.The dining room servers like to keep everyone on the same course and that becomes hard to do when guests arrive 45 minutes to an hour after their scheduled time.This will not affect passengers who have selected Your Time Dining, only those who have set dining times.Personally I agree with that rule as it can be frustrating for passengers who arrive on time to their table and have to wait to be served because their fellow passengers on the same table are late or in some cases they just don’t turn up at all, when they go to the speciality restaurant instead without advising. However, I still don’t know how they can apply this rule as in some cases passengers can kick off angrily and demand to speak to the manager and that can create tension. They can upset people, but then again, there is no excuse, good enough for being late usually and I can see the logic behind this decision. There is another way for me to solve that situation, by just starting to serve the people who arrived on time and if you are late, then you start to eat late and it doesn’t matter that you eat your starter and the others their main course. What do you think?

Dining hall in a cruise ship