Will we like Azamara if we enjoy traditional dining

[pitchersmom02]

My husband and I are planning on taking a Med Cruise May 11 for our 10th anniversary.

We were married on a cruise ship.

We are in our early 50's and have cruised often.

We have been on Carnival when we took the kids and on Celebrity and HAL.

One thing we really enjoy is traditional dining, and am concerned we will be disappointed with anything else.

I like the idea of a smaller ship and the being able to have overnights in some ports is really exciting.

I have been only to Ireland and Greece on land trips but DH has traveled more England,China, Australia, New Zealand.

Neither of us have been to Italy and are looking at the

Best of Italy trip.

Any thoughts would be welcomed !

Thanks

[uktog]

We had exactly these concerns on our first Azamara trip, we have done one other and have one more booked. In fact I am more nervous about returning to the more traditional ways

The ship is small enough for you to make friends and set up regular table mates if that is what you want

You can ask to be looked after by the same waiter every night and the Maitre D at the door who "seats you" will do his best to do this - If you come at the same time every night he will try and keep it for you any way and worst case you might have a short wait

The dining experience is great and for $5 each and pre reservations you can be spoilt in one of the Speciality restuarants - I have heard some guests try and book every night there we did 6 on our 14 night trip. They are not as upscale as on Celebrity Specialities but are very very good and a little less fussy

Wherever you eat the food and service is great

Azamara is a wonderful brand

Enjoy!

[LHT28]

If you want traditional dining you could go with Princess on the same R ships.

[Fredr]

Hello,

 

On Azamar you have the best of traditional dining with the best of anytime dining. As you meet people on the ship you can arrange to have breakfast, lunchor dinner together. On those nights when you want tohave dinner alone, the tables for two are situated so that you are close enough to talk with the tables next to you but not so close that it interferes with your space. Azamara is a very nice cruise line that I highly recommend.

[world~citizen]

If you want traditional dining you will be fine.

 

Think about this though:

 

If you go to Breeza at the back of the ship you can get your dinner from the buffet (never disappointing) and take it outside and dine while you watch the sunset to the sights and sounds of the ship sailing through the water. It is a very yacht-like experience, and alone is worth the price of admission.

 

Still if you want to go with the tried and true there is still traditional dining on Azamara.

 

I believe Azamara is the best value in cruising today, and if you don't like it - I'll eat a bug.:eek:;):)

 

Smooth sailing to you...

[lisiamc]

I love Azamara, but I have to admit that I'm still not completely sold on the open seating dining. Our cruise companions like to see the show most nights, and sometimes this is hard to manage unless you go to dinner way too early, especially if there is only one show that night. If there were two shows every night, this would be less of a problem, but that was not the case on our last cruise last year. (Maybe things have changed since then?)

 

For me, this is the only less-than-wonderful aspect of Azamara, so I really don't have very much to complain about!

 

Lisa

[Susan-M]

We found that Azamara's dining options worked very well on a port-intensive itinerary and that the flexibility with dining times and venues made it much more relaxed than having to be at dinner at the same time each evening.

 

We really enjoyed having four very nice dining venues to choose from and although we aren't normally big fans of buffets at dinner time, we did have a couple of enjoyable 'dinners under the stars' at Windows ... really appreciated this after a couple of busy and late days in port.

 

Also, having the opportunity to dine on our own, or with others who we met during the cruise, or being seated at a larger table in Discoveries with people we hadn't yet met, made for an interesting and pleasant variety.

[suec12]

We had always enjoyed the "traditional dining" on Celebrity - had no desire to try anytime dining on some of the other lines but we ended up loving the open seating dining on Oceania and I think Azamara (for two upcoming crusies) will be the same. And we really liked not having to have formal clothes, just "country club casual" - that meant black slacks, several nice tops and skirts. But the service was just great in the main dining room and if you had wanted the same servers or tablemates every night, that probably could have been worked out. But we liked dining with different people very night - the only problem was some nights they would seat us at a table for 6 or 8 and it would take awhile to fill up the table - maybe another 15 minutes or so but there was bread to nibble on and we could order drinks. But the pace of the meal, portions and cuisine was just like being at a very nice restaurant. Many people do like the evening option of out on deck in the evening, but I don't want to load up dinner from a buffet.