Who's Next With Flexible Dining?

First, Princess offered guests a choice between traditional, assigned-seating dining and more flexible, "anytime" dining. Then Holland America jumped on the bandwagon, and began rolling out its "As You Wish" dining last year. With NCL already firmly entrenched in its Freestyle Dining program, we've been wondering: Who's next with flexible dining?

Word on the street, er, seas is that it's Celebrity. A spokesperson for the line told says "we haven't announced anything about how we plan to handle seating in The Grand Epernay, Celebrity Solstice's main dining room."

Even though Celebrity won't confirm whether these rumors are true or not, we do know for sure that Royal Caribbean, Celebrity's sister line, is testing a Princess-like dining program on three of its ships right now. Adam Goldstein, company president, says that a cruiser's relationship with waiters is the single most positive theme of complimentary letters the line receives. Because of that, Goldstein tells us the line is working on "superior" ways to communicate customer preferences and tastes no matter where they sit and which waiter they have.