Club class impact

[pablo222]

End the butter famine NOW !!!!

 

If butter is outlawed, only outlaws will have butter.

 

(logic 101)

[PattyBY]

We just returned from 8 days on Ruby Princess, with Club Class and we loved it. A very small section of the dining room was used, there was one head waiter who cooked eggs, sauces, simple things, a waiter, and about 4 servers/wait staff. We could sit at the same table, very private. Because I have Celiac Disease, this service was unbelievably comforting to me, because my waiter knew what I could have to eat. For the extra money, it was well worth it, and it is the only way I will travel with Princess/large ship.

[mafig]

Did you get the promised two 1/2 bottles of wine in your mini?

[PattyBY]

Priority check in and disembarkation, including tender. 1/2 red, 1/2 white Mondavi wine (it was okay), champagne on arrival. Very comfortable bed, robes. Excellent steward, room always clean, never saw him. No complaints.

[oskidunker]

was it upgraded? Better prepared?

 

Am on the Pacific next October. Have booked a rear facing balcony. Am considering changing but hate to give up that location

[mafig]

Priority check in and disembarkation, including tender. 1/2 red, 1/2 white Mondavi wine (it was okay), champagne on arrival. Very comfortable bed, robes. Excellent steward, room always clean, never saw him. No complaints.

Edited January 1, 2017 by mafig

[PattyBY]

I think just the beds and robes are upgraded. We were told that the dining staff and stewards were hand picked for their competency. The mid ship cabins are very convenient, previous cruises we've been mid aft. I chose our cabin to be the farthest away from the elevators...we're hermits.

[PattyBY]

Glass. We always eat early...don't know about later.

[elliair]

This all reminds me of the Faster To the Fun that Carnival had minus the wine and champagne perk for $50. It may have gone up, I haven't checked. As an elite, we get the mini bar set up, priority debarkation and embarkation, free internet minutes and other perks. The two I like most are the internet minutes and embarkation/debarkation. I'm not interested enough to pay extra for a robe and linens. We don't have a bath tub in our house so that does not matter to me. We usually eat in buffet for lunch and just a light snack in the evening so the seating in the MDR doesn't matter to us. So, I can't justify in spending the extra on the so-called perks. So maybe for a newbie to get sucked in it may be worth it to them. I think that's who Princess is really targeting - naive newbies. JMHO.

[geocruiser]

Just off the Ruby Princess 22-30 December 2016.

For Christmas, we splurged into the new Club-Suite concept.

 

Used the Club Class "Enhanced Dining"

 

The locale is the Port side of the Da Vinci dining room, about 1/8 of the dining room by my estimation - or one station used by two/three server pairs.

 

We visited the Da Vinci Dining room every evening for dinner -- between 5:30-7:30

Each of those evenings, we saw that there were many empty tables in the other 7/8 of the dining area ... this was during the Standard Dining period first sitting at 5:30 .. .the DaVinci then opened to anytime dining and based on the empty tables at the early seating, I have no doubt the crowded experience described in prior replies are factual as the ship was at 100% capacity and the set-aside area may have impacted table availability.

 

Realizing that expectations and experiences vary from cruiser to cruiser. This Club Class concept exceeded our expectations, and had a very positive impact on our cruise overall. Such was the experience, that our visiting the speciality restaurants simply did not happen.

 

Enjoy the day and Happy New Year to you all .

 

Happy that you enjoyed the Club Class. I would like to know what was different with the food?

[PattyBY]

We're not naive newbies. We prefer smaller ships (Oceania) because we don't like crowds. I do not like buffets anywhere, and when norovirus/children/etc...let's just say to each their own. Club Class dining makes sailing on a large ship palatable for me. I think they are targeting passengers who do not want to be in crowds, and who want a more personalized service. JMHO

[mafig]

We're not naive newbies either. We've stayed away from Princess because of the way they handled Anytime Dining and the fact that we always had to fight for a table for two.

 

We were in the Yacht Club on MSC Divina, and after having our own smaller dining room, a table for two and being able to dine whenever we wanted, that's how we want our future cruises to be.

Edited January 1, 2017 by mafig

[greenie082756]

So far it seems that the best servers and a better menu for dinner is what is offered in CC.

 

Our last cruise, on many nights, for ATD was like eating @ Denny's as far as the service goes. The food...some was great and some was "just okay" as my husband would say. Nothing really terrible. But it was the poor service that we had that I did not understand. Wait time to be seated was not really an issue as we would sit anywhere.

 

I have worked in a restaurant in my younger years..hostess, server, cocktail waitress, head cashier. I was disappointed in the service and now for them to take some of the more experienced servers to CC will just make the MDR experience worse. Might as well get my own food from the buffet.

 

I really hope that CC does work without interfering with the flow of the traditional and anytime diners. Someone (management) needs to fix it now.:)

[shredie]

I guess I'm lucky. I almost always have good dining staff. Only once can I remember one that was a dud. I think there might be enough good staff to go around so that CC and MDR will have some. I'm just happy we always do TD, and I hear far fewer complaints about it. CC sort of sounds like TD without the fixed dining time.

[clearwaters]

Just do the math to appreciate the impetus behind Club Class (numbers below for example purposes):

 

$400 per 7-day cruise per pax upcharge

x 30 CC cabins per ship

x 2 px per cabin

x 52 weeks

= $1.25 million per ship annual incremental revenue potential

 

And for items that bear limited incremental cost that yields a strong profit contribution opportunity.

 

Given the above I would predict Club Class is here to stay and any operational/pax experience hiccups will be worked on and worked out.

 

Those figures make the cruise line's motivation crystal clear. I usually spend thousands on the ship's excursions for the 6 people in my group on 7 day cruises. We have never cruised Princess, just Carnival and RC in the past. Rather than get angry, we will simply avoid the excursions. We will get off the ship in the ports we like and just walk around. Their ship, their rules. Okay. (One reason I have so much money to spend on extras is I'm very frugal on everyday items. Well, thanks Princess. I will just save that excursion money. Easy for us). We could have sailed on Carnival (which my adult daughter loves) and cruised for less and had more fun. We switched to Princess for un upscale experience. But the finish line moved up. Pretty much we pay more, get less, are frustrated and treated much worse than if we sailed Carnival or RC. Our mistake. We shall see. :confused:

Edited January 1, 2017 by clearwaters

[bl413]

Thanks everone for the positive reviews about CC. Can you tell us what some of the off menu choices were?

[joeyancho]

How long before Princess institutes FTTF? Faster to the food. For a slight upcharge you too can enjoy the perks that others have paid thousands to earn. The Carnival crowd loves this system. Some will not cruise without it. You can choose to pay a few bucks to be immediately be seated in a reserved area or you can wait forever with your little pager for the too few ATD seats. The choice is yours.

Edited January 2, 2017 by joeyancho

[shepp]

My wife and I have do not eat in the dining rooms because, frankly, the experience is more like attending a banquet than dining. The "maelstrom" metaphor is spot on. CritterChick has given me a reason to consider Club Class.

 

OK, I'm puzzled.

 

Sure, eating in the dining room of a cruise ship is an exercise in mass feeding and I think Princess manages it rather well. But unless the Club Class section is curtained off, you'll be eating in the same dining room with the same X hundred pax, ordering off more or less the same menu. You get the same waitstaff every night...same as with TD. (I've even managed it with ATD.) You get a table on the edge of the dining room, but you can request that with TD, too. You get tableside preparation, but - at least here in San Francisco - there are few hot dining establishments that feature that; sounds more like a Classy Italian Restaurant from the 1950s. Even that loud drunk woman at the next table who bothered you three cruises ago might well be there in Club Class. Essentially, it's a whole lot like Traditional Dining, but you get to choose your seating time and don't have to enter with the hoi polloi. But once you're seated, you're "dining" pretty much like the rabble in the rest of the Da Vinci, though maybe with a bit more bowing and scraping. You're still at a banquet, only at the Big Spenders' table down front.

 

So what salient differences, really, are you talking about?

Edited January 2, 2017 by shepp

[KruzeKrazy!]

How long before Princess institutes FTTF? Faster to the food. For a slight upcharge you too can enjoy the perks that others have paid thousands to earn. The Carnival crowd loves this system. Some will not cruise without it. You can choose to pay a few bucks to be immediately be seated in a reserved area or you can wait forever with your little pager for the too few ATD seats. The choice is yours.

Maybe we're heading toward the day when those who don't pay dining upcharges will be relegated to a "walk-through window" where they'll be asked, "You want fries with that?" or perhaps "You want a tiny dessert with that?" [emoji6]

[Colo Cruiser]

Maybe we're heading toward the day when those who don't pay dining upcharges will be relegated to a "walk-through window" where they'll be asked, "You want fries with that?" or perhaps "You want a tiny dessert with that?" [emoji6]

 

 

Yeah but we will still be on the same ship right?

[elliair]

How long before Princess institutes FTTF? Faster to the food. For a slight upcharge you too can enjoy the perks that others have paid thousands to earn. The Carnival crowd loves this system. Some will not cruise without it. You can choose to pay a few bucks to be immediately be seated in a reserved area or you can wait forever with your little pager for the too few ATD seats. The choice is yours.

 

Actually I've coined it FTYW (Faster to Your Wallet). BTW, we're Platinum level on Carnival and Platinum goes before FTTF folks. Follow the money...

[elliair]

OK, I'm puzzled.

 

Sure, eating in the dining room of a cruise ship is an exercise in mass feeding and I think Princess manages it rather well. But unless the Club Class section is curtained off, you'll be eating in the same dining room with the same X hundred pax, ordering off more or less the same menu. You get the same waitstaff every night...same as with TD. (I've even managed it with ATD.) You get a table on the edge of the dining room, but you can request that with TD, too. You get tableside preparation, but - at least here in San Francisco - there are few hot dining establishments that feature that; sounds more like a Classy Italian Restaurant from the 1950s. Even that loud drunk woman at the next table who bothered you three cruises ago might well be there in Club Class. Essentially, it's a whole lot like Traditional Dining, but you get to choose your seating time and don't have to enter with the hoi polloi. But once you're seated, you're "dining" pretty much like the rabble in the rest of the Da Vinci, though maybe with a bit more bowing and scraping. You're still at a banquet, only at the Big Spenders' table down front.

 

So what salient differences, really, are you talking about?

 

LMAO! Very well said...are you a writer? :D

[KruzeKrazy!]

Yeah but we will still be on the same ship right?

Nope - on a dinghy being pulled behind the ship which is now only for those who paid the appropriate upcharges... [emoji6]

[shepp]

LMAO! Very well said...are you a writer? :D

 

Thanks. Actually, I was a professional writer before I retired (or the changes in the publishing industry retired me).

[Colo Cruiser]

Nope - on a dinghy being pulled behind the ship which is now only for those who paid the appropriate upcharges... [emoji6]

 

Better talk to Capt. Tony about that.