Royal Caribbean is well-known for its variety when it comes to specialty dining, especially on its newest and largest ships. Some of the ships in its fleet have over a dozen dining venues in addition to the included options like the main dining room and Windjammer. Guests who want to enjoy elevated dining experiences for their entire cruise can purchase a dining package in advance.

Royal Caribbean's Unlimited Dining Package, as the name suggests, allows cruisers to enjoy as many specialty restaurants as they want during their cruise, and pay one set price to do it. This isn't an exhaustive list, but the Ultimate Dining Package includes:

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· Dinner in a specialty restaurant every night of the cruise.Lunch in specialty restaurants on sea days.Food credits to use in certain a-la-carte venues, such as Playmakers sports bar.Discounts on bottles of wine, up to 40% off.

To be clear, the package isn't truly unlimited in the sense that there are some restaurants that aren't included without an upcharge. For example, my family and I are booked on a 7-night cruise on Wonder of the Seas in December, and we'll have to pay a $15 upcharge to enjoy the Izumi Teppanyaki restaurant, as well as a $25 upcharge to dine at Wonderland. However, premium dining venues such as Chops Grill, 150 Central Park, and several others are included.

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Royal Caribbean fixes a major pain point

Since the inception of the Unlimited Dining Package, there has been one major pain point for cruisers. Although you had the ability to book the package itself well in advance, and often save significant money in the process, you couldn't make any dining reservations until you boarded the ship. As the description on Royal Caribbean's website says,

"A courtesy reservation will be made for Day 1 or 2 of your sailing. All additional reservations or changes to your courtesy reservation must be made once onboard at any specialty restaurant."

This led to a scramble to make the desired dining reservations once you got on board.

There are typically lines that form at all of the places where you can make them. As a result, it also results in crowds forming on the Promenade at a time when crowds really add to an already congested area of the ship while boarding is taking place.

Forcing people to spend the early part of their vacation standing in line is also something Royal Caribbean has been working on eliminating.

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Royal Caribbean lets you reserve in advance

Royal Caribbean shared plans in late 2023 to enable cruisers to make dining reservations ahead of time if you purchase a dining package. A few months ago, this feature was rolled out on UDP bookings on Allure of the Seas as a test.

Now, the ability to pre-book restaurants with the Ultimate Dining Package has rolled out to all ships, according to Royal Caribbean Blog.

To be sure, the system isn't perfect. At least, not yet. The way it works is to log into the Royal Caribbean website and choose the Ultimate Dining Package for your sailing. When you select the people you want to buy the package for and add it to your cart, you'll be able to select times for each restaurant.

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One big caveat is that you cannot (yet) pre-book restaurants if you've already purchased the Ultimate Dining Package. In this case, the only way to do it would be to cancel it and re-book at the current prices. On my Wonder of the Seas sailing, the current price for the package is about $80 per person more than I initially paid for it, so unless I can catch a sale, I may still be using the old system of booking after I board

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.Having said that, this is certainly a big step in the right direction. It's been a big focus of Royal Caribbean's leadership to eliminate time-consuming pain points on embarkation day, and this certainly helps to achieve that goal.

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