Hokie Dining Reviews

by CubeRoot26

I used HokieDining almost every day to check the hours and specials for the dining locations on campus, and it was really useful. However, since I started using it, a lot has changed for the worse.

1. All of the dining hall hours used to be organized in one place on the main menu, but now they have been stored away into the pages for each location, so you need to tap on the dining hall then scroll down to the hours section. This is just a little more inconvenient, and it wouldn't be too big of a deal if it wasn't for a loss of functionality as I mention in the second point below.
2. Several dining halls have multiple smaller food places inside which often have their own hours separate from the building they are housed in. The old version of HokieDining addressed this excellently and listed specific hours for every food place (i.e. differentiating hours for Origami Grill at Turner Place from the hours for Qdoba at Turner Place, etc.) but now this newer version of HokieDining only lists the general, unspecific hours for each dining hall (i.e. only listing the general time Turner Place has its doors open). This functionality still exists online, so until it's added back into HokieDining I'm most definitely going to just check hours online, which is a shame for how much more cumbersome it is to do compared to the old version of HokieDining.
3. The side menu does not work for me, only displaying a blank white panel with nothing on it whenever I tap on it. I don't know what is supposed to be there, but I see nothing and I'm almost sure that's not normal!
4. It's still not optimized for iPhone X (so there's big black boxes on the top and bottom of the screen) which really isn't a huge deal, just something to point out.

There are some things that HokieDining really does get right though, as it is still simple and quick to check daily menu items, daily specials, and nutrition information for each dining location. I still believe HokieDining is the fastest and most convenient way to check those things, so I will probably continue to use it for this purpose alone.

Overall it used to be a fantastic app, but I'm really disappointed that hours information, the one thing I used HokieDining for the most, has moved away from the home screen and lost important functionality of displaying specifics. The two stars that I gave it are for its ability to view menu items and specials, and the three stars that I took off are for the four issues I listed above. I really hope HokieDining regains hours functionality again!