Royal Caribbean cruise ships offer a variety of specialty restaurant choices, and guests have the option of making a reservation in advance before embarkation day. Regardless of when your cruise is, it is always a good idea to book ahead to secure a day and time for your meal.
If you wait until you board, you will find that you have less options when it comes to day and time, especially if you are booking or a large group!
Here is an overview of how to book a specialty restaurant meal for your upcoming Royal Caribbean cruise.
How to make a reservation online
Guests can make specialty restaurant reservations prior to their cruise up until two days before your sailing date.
Keep in mind that Royal Caribbean does not allow specialty dining reservations to be made until you reach amount of days that are left until your cruise. If you do not see the option to reserve specialty restaurants, check back later.
In order to make specialty restaurant reservations online, you will need to pay any cover charges that may exist at the time of booking, meaning that if the cover charge is $50 per person, this will have to be paid in full in order to confirm the booking. If you decide to cancel before embarkation, you will receive a refund.
Booking specialty restaurants in advance offers you the opportunity to lock in exact day and times for meals as well as being able to space out the total cost of the cruise.
Log in to your online account
The first step in booking a Royal Caribbean specialty restaurant is to go to RoyalCaribbean.com and click sign in from the top right navigation.
Log in with your Royal Caribbean username and password
You will need to have an account with Royal Caribbean (they are free to create) and have linked your upcoming cruise with your account. We will not cover how to do this in this article, but I will assume you have done this earlier.
Once logged in, click on "plan my cruise" for the cruise you want book a specialty restaurant during
This will open up the Cruise Planner, which is where you will be able to browse the specialty restaurants and other cruise add-ons for your sailing.
From the top navigation, click on "dining"
When you select the "dining" tab, you then see all of the specialty restaurants onboard your ship. After selecting the restaurant of your choice, you will be able to read more about the restaurant, see a sample menu, and get pricing details. This is also where you can book specialty dining packages if you want to bundle meals together for less than paying for each individually.
We keep an archive of Royal Caribbean specialty restaurant menus for your reference.
Read the description of the restaurant, menu and more and when you are ready, click the "reserve" button
Once you have added the reservation to the cart, you will select which guests in your booking will be joining you. Just click on each guest's name to add them to the reservation.
Optionally, you can add other guests from another reservation. For this feature, you just need their last name and reservation number.
This is also where you will select the date and time you want your reservation to be. To help you keep track of what is going on each day, each day will say either "cruising" or the port of call that you will be docked in.
When you are satisfied with the date you picked, click "add to cart."
Check out or continue shopping
At this point, you have successfully added your reservation to your shopping cart and can either continue shopping and add other items to your shopping cart, or click "continue checkout" and enter your payment information to finish your purchase.
How to make a reservation onboard your Royal Caribbean cruise
If you are on your cruise or have less than two days until you go on your Royal Caribbean cruise, then you will need to make a reservation for the specialty restaurants onboard your cruise. Before getting excited about everything else, this should be one of the first things that you do once onboard, if you have yet to do so.
You can book any specialty restaurant from the following locations:
- Any specialty restaurant
- Guest Services
- From your stateroom television
- Royal Caribbean mobile application
Specialty dining packages
If you are booking a specialty dining package, you will not be able to make your reservations online. Instead, you will need to do make them on embarkation day.
Essentially, Royal Caribbean uses the dining packages to fill up unsold reservations at their restaurants. You will save money with a package; however, you lose some of the convenience of being able to select exactly what day and time you want to eat at in advance.
Reservations for specialty dining go pretty quickly, so try to get onboard the ship as early as possible to take advantage of the greatest flexibility. As mentioned earlier, you can make reservations at any specialty restaurant onboard, so you will not have to visit each individually.
Related: 11 reasons to get as early a check-in time as possible for your cruise
Helpful Tips
- Any dining reservations you make online via the Cruise Planner are fully refundable. If you change your mind or want to change restaurants or even dates, it is easy enough to cancel and rebook.
- Do not make specialty reservations for children. Children between the ages of 0-5 are complimentary and ages 6-12 are half the adult price.
- Royal Caribbean recommends making a reservation for all guests who wish to dine. Adult price will be applied for all guests regardless of age; the difference between the adult price and child price will be refunded in the form of a refundable onboard credit (unless booked with non-refundable credit, in which case OBC will be non-refundable).
- If your cruise is too far out, you may not see dining reservations available. Keep checking back closer to your sail date. There is no set amount of days prior to a cruise when specialty restaurants appear, so check periodically.
For more Royal Caribbean dining information, such as what food is included with your cruise, drink package options, dining packages, and more, visit our Royal Caribbean food overview page.
