Really slooooow dining!

[DennisNV]

Recently spent a week on Discovery Princess for our annual Mexico trip. For the most part we had a great cruise. It was our 10th Princess cruise in about 5 years.  MDR and specialty dining venues were really slow service. After a 3 hour meal at Crown Grill we finally left out of frustration without desert. I just couldn't sit there anymore! Had a similar experience at Sabatini's, and then canceled our reservation at Rudy's because I just wasn't interested in another wasted evening. Finally on the last night we ate in the MDR. When we were first seated we sat through the silly baked alaska thing and then ordered dinner. By the time our mains had been served they were starting another baked alaska parade. We just left without desert and coffee out of frustration. 

 

We still had a wonderful vacation, but were disappointed that the dining venues we love were so frustratingly slow!! All the food we had on the cruise in all venues was very good otherwise. 

 

Anyone else experience this sort of thing?

[Gwendy]

Seems lots of new staff who have not received full training, probably the same in the galley.  We got to the stage on Caribbean where we would leave after main course and have coffee and dessert in buffet.

Staff were lovely just disorganised and didn’t seem to be sure of what they were doing.

[richstowe]

Did you ask for faster service? I've found that if you tell the wait staff your desires up front , they will do their best to accommodate you . I've rarely been disappointed.

[Gwendy]

6 minutes ago, richstowe said:

Did you ask for faster service? I've found that if you tell the wait staff your desires up front , they will do their best to accommodate you . I've rarely been disappointed.

If we wanted to go to a show we would let them know, but just a general comment about the service in MDR in general.

[startedwithamouse]

What time did you dine?

 

We've been on Discovery a few times in the past year, and other than embarkation day we're in and out of the MDR in just over an hour. 

 

We choose the fast dining option, and make our choices prior to entering the restaurant, and let our wait staff know we're ready to order. 

 

We also bring our drinks with us from a bar. 

[charliedalrymple]

I've seen multiple comments here saying the same thing, but we never experienced it on our recent two-week cruise on Majestic.  (We did have to sit through the Baked Alaska parade once, and I agree that "silly" is an appropriate description.). 

 

We often waited a long time for our drinks to come, but that didn't interfere with the speed of the food service.  The result was that our wine sometimes came as we were finishing the main course.

[Sailin Gal]

MDR service was slow and chaotic on the Royal last August, too. First night, someone seated next to us said they had been there 2 hours and hoped ours went better. I think they gave up and left before dessert.  One evening we had been seated for 20 minutes without any waitstaff coming to our table for anything. I finally got up and found someone to ask if we could get menus and order. Hoping things are better on the Regal this spring.

[Tonsoffun44]

Baked Alaska parade - Is that when people wave the napkins around? 

[AZjohn]

10 minutes ago, Tonsoffun44 said:

Baked Alaska parade - Is that when people wave the napkins around? 

Yep.

And I would describe as stupid rather than silly.

Maybe one day the “traditional” fake acting while some passengers wave their used napkins around will end forever.🤣

 

Cheers

[c-boy]

19 minutes ago, AZjohn said:

Yep.

And I would describe as stupid rather than silly.

Maybe one day the “traditional” fake acting while some passengers wave their used napkins around will end forever.🤣

 

Cheers

what is their reason for this "traditional" baked Alaska parade ?

[SCX22]

12 minutes ago, c-boy said:

what is their reason for this "traditional" baked Alaska parade ?

 

Back in the day, prior to auto crew appreciation, I thought the baked Alaska parade was done for pity.  Princess did it in hopes that passengers would take pity on the waitstaff that were forced to participate and would in return give them larger tips in the envelopes.

[karatemom2]

We have been on the Discovery twice in the past year. In fairness, both were high volume trips - one last year for Super Bowl weekend and just a few weeks ago for New Year's. The ship was obviously filled to capacity both trips, so we proactively knew that we would need to be patient. However, Discovery seems understaffed. Bar service in particular was really slow and dining times were quite long. We also left before dessert on a couple of occasions. We had the exact opposite experience on the Sky Princess this past September however. Service was stellar and prompt across the board. So I have to believe this may be an issue with Discovery. Perhaps they need more crew and more training.

[Gwendy]

1 hour ago, AZjohn said:

Yep.

And I would describe as stupid rather than silly.

Maybe one day the “traditional” fake acting while some passengers wave their used napkins around will end forever.🤣

 

Cheers

Share the germs

[Steelers36]

4 hours ago, DennisNV said:

Anyone else experience this sort of thing?

Never.  If it seems necessary, we ask the waiter to step up our service as we do not want to linger.

[wineforhealth]

Now that standard dining of early and late have gone away so has the speed if service. The need of rotating tables is not that important 

 

and Baked Alaska was a show and enjoyed by the whole restaurant venue

[Steelers36]

The BA parade's time has passed by but, like several other things, PCL refuses to let go.  With people entering and leaving the DR's at more random times than days of yore, dimming lights are marching the waiters around doesn't make a lot of sense.  Call us bumps in our seats, but we don't wave the napkins about anymore.  Perhaps next cruise, I will raise a white flag in surrender.

[CU64]

4 hours ago, startedwithamouse said:

What time did you dine?

 

We've been on Discovery a few times in the past year, and other than embarkation day we're in and out of the MDR in just over an hour. 

 

We choose the fast dining option, and make our choices prior to entering the restaurant, and let our wait staff know we're ready to order. 

 

We also bring our drinks with us from a bar. 

 

14 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

The BA parade's time has passed by but, like several other things, PCL refuses to let go.  With people entering and leaving the DR's at more random times than days of yore, dimming lights are marching the waiters around doesn't make a lot of sense.  Call us bumps in our seats, but we don't wave the napkins about anymore.  Perhaps next cruise, I will raise a white flag in surrender.

Always get drinks from bar. Better pour. No ice melt. No wait ordering in MDR.

[OzKiwiJJ]

4 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

The BA parade's time has passed by but, like several other things, PCL refuses to let go.  With people entering and leaving the DR's at more random times than days of yore, dimming lights are marching the waiters around doesn't make a lot of sense.  Call us bumps in our seats, but we don't wave the napkins about anymore.  Perhaps next cruise, I will raise a white flag in surrender.

On Diamond Princess around Japan late last year they didn't have the stupid parade, they had an event in the Atrium, about 10pm, where the galley and wait staff were acknowledged. Much better in my opinion.

[Lady Arwen]

We don’t really care one way or another about the BA parade.  We just ignore it for the most part.  Some people enjoy it so why not.  We rarely eat in the MDR, maybe once or twice per cruise.  We prefer the speciality restaurants.  Much quieter and peaceful.  The service is certainly a step up from the MDR as is the food.

 

We do enjoy a longer dining time.  We love to sit with our wine and savour each course and we still love to talk to each other.  We always tell our waitstaff that there’s no rush to get us out at a certain time.  We have a fast paced lifestyle at home so when on vacation we love to take our time and enjoy every minute.  Contrary to what many people think, old fashioned romance is still alive and well.

 

 

[Cruise Raider]

We were just on the Discovery last month.  You should have gone to Rudi’s, the service and food were spectacular!  The maitre’d there runs a tight ship, meaning he is awesome!  We were 5 minutes late for our reservation and he had the hostess come find us.  We were already getting up to go.  We are rarely late but realized he really keeps things moving along.  
We never went to dine in the MDR on that trip so can’t speak to text but the only place we found that was kind of slow was at the GastroPub.  We’ve had that same wait team before so, I knew it wasn’t them.   They apologized for our food taking so long but explained they had recently gotten a new cook there and he didn’t have his rhythm down yet, as it was so crowded that day.  Turns out, it was worth the wait.  
The sushi bar, Alfredo’s were also crowded but never had to wait long once we were seated.  We never tried the Crown Grill or Sabatini’s on that trip.  

[MissP22]

12 hours ago, DennisNV said:

We still had a wonderful vacation, but were disappointed that the dining venues we love were so frustratingly slow!! All the food we had on the cruise in all venues was very good otherwise. 

 

Anyone else experience this sort of thing?

You obviously chose a later dining time which is always much slower, that is unless you arrive just before closing time at 9 PM.

Next time try to arrive a little earlier and you'll notice a big difference. 

[lahlah57]

10 hours ago, AZjohn said:

Yep.

And I would describe as stupid rather than silly.

Maybe one day the “traditional” fake acting while some passengers wave their used napkins around will end forever.🤣

 

Cheers

I remember a waving napkin baked alaska parade and a little old man picked up his napkin only to forget his partial was in it and it went flying!!! 😅😅 Best part of the whole parade! 🤣

[DrivesLikeMario]

We learned an important lesson after a 4 hr. Sabatini's dinner.  What we do now when ordering at the specialty restaurants is tell the waiter that there's a show we want to get to at a certain time and then they know to get the lead out.  Our last Crown Grill dinner took a total of 45-50 mins.!  It was almost a little too fast, but so nice to get out of there in a timely manner.

[pompeii]

41 minutes ago, MissP22 said:

You obviously chose a later dining time which is always much slower, that is unless you arrive just before closing time at 9 PM.

Next time try to arrive a little earlier and you'll notice a big difference. 

Not in our experience on the Sapphire recently. We dined at 5:30 every night and it was very slow several evenings. We barely made it to the 7:30 shows.  Some dinners moved along and we were done by 6:45 or so. But others dragged between courses and it took almost two hours. We had a table for two, not sharing. And we generally order the same number of courses every night, so it wasn’t that either. 

Edited January 28 by pompeii

[voljeep]

our table for 2 turned into a 10 top when the server brought 5 tables of food / drinks at the same time

2 hours and 15 minutes ...