Everything old is new Again on Princess

[Porky55]

Princess is bringing in new Dining Options fleetwide, what do we think about this??

 

Following the recent implementation aboard Sun Princess, Princess Cruises has announced that passengers will have three table service options for main dining available fleetwide.

The three options -- Traditional, Reservable or Walk-in Anytime -- will be available in separate dining rooms. Traditional consists of an early and a late seating every evening; Reservable allows passengers to reserve preferred dining times; and the Walk-in option offers open seating at any time. 

The trio of dining formats debuted aboard the new Sun Princess, which offers a three-story dining room with one floor dedicated to traditional dining, another one devoted to flexible reservations and a third for anytime walk-ins.

[icat2000]

I bet there will be a limit on numbers that can choose reservable. That option would be problematic at times to try and staff if people have weird variances. 

 

We tend to be late dinners and not in any rush (like some people to run down to dinner at 6 pm on the dot).

 

That where having Premier package is good if you like going to the theatre that way you dont have to woof your dinner down and do the mad dash to the theatre to get a seat.

Edited May 13 by icat2000

[Porky55]

2 minutes ago, icat2000 said:

I bet there will be a limit on numbers that can choose reservable. That option would be problematic at times to try and staff if people have weird variances. 

 

We tend to be late dinners and not in any rush (like some people to run down to dinner at 6 pm on the dot).

Agreed, as it was rolled out on a large ship, will be interesting to see how it is handled on say; Coral. 
 

It's more the reappearance of "Traditional" that I found amusing.

[MicCanberra]

22 minutes ago, icat2000 said:

I bet there will be a limit on numbers that can choose reservable. That option would be problematic at times to try and staff if people have weird variances. 

 

We tend to be late dinners and not in any rush (like some people to run down to dinner at 6 pm on the dot).

 

That where having Premier package is good if you like going to the theatre that way you dont have to woof your dinner down and do the mad dash to the theatre to get a seat.

More likely  a limit on the times able to be booked

[Jean C]

We're going on Royal Princess later this year. They seem to have one dining room you can book for traditional dining and the other for anytime dining, although weirdly you still need (or it is advisable) to book a timeslot for anytime!

[arxcards]

At least they listened to passenger feedback (for a change). There are still some that like the traditional way. Coral & Island would be a challenge compared to all the other ships with more dining rooms. On the Grand class, they used to keep a fixed traditional dining room, while all the others were mixed between pre-booked and walk-up anytime diners. Worked OK then. I am OK with it. More choice can't be a bad thing, except when traditional tables aren't being filled and they drop in the overflow of walk-up dinners into that level.

 

Now if they listen about the pillow chocs - taking them away for covid is no longer a valid reason.

 

[Ozwoody]

Yes Princess notified us of the change for our cruise on the Crown in Oct.

We rather like the traditional dining style, we have never had bad table mates.

 

Only on one cruise did a couple not turn up for any nights.

What was annoying was when they were asked to give their seating up, they said no we might decide to use it. So their seats remained empty the whole cruise. 

 

On longer cruises traditional dining is a great way to make cruise friend, we have people we still catch up with years later.

 

[Astro Flyer]

In their press release this was stated:

 

Reservable and Walk-in Anytime Dining will be combined into a single Main Dining Room location aboard Coral Princess and Island Princess.

 

https://www.carnivalcorp.com/news-releases/news-release-details/princess-cruises-rolls-out-fleetwide-dining-revolution
 

[arxcards]

20 hours ago, Jean C said:

We're going on Royal Princess later this year. They seem to have one dining room you can book for traditional dining and the other for anytime dining, although weirdly you still need (or it is advisable) to book a timeslot for anytime!

There are two types of anytime. You can pre-book for anytime on any day. You can book them today, or the same day as you are dining. If you don't want to use the app and prebook, just walk up (maybe join a line) at the designated walk-up dining room.

[Jean C]

3 hours ago, arxcards said:

There are two types of anytime. You can pre-book for anytime on any day. You can book them today, or the same day as you are dining. If you don't want to use the app and prebook, just walk up (maybe join a line) at the designated walk-up dining room.

There's a downside to not pre-booking, especially at peak times when my wormies are starting to complain, hehehe 🪱 

[reeves35]

I haven't done this on Princess but, on other lines, if you are doing Anytime dining they may move you downstairs to an empty "traditional" table which makes sense for both convenience and spreading the effort across the waitstaff.  On Carnival, we ended up downstairs 5 nights out of 8 and on RCI 3 nights out of 6.  They always asked if we minded but, since we weren't getting the same staff every night anyway, we were fine.

[arxcards]

24 minutes ago, reeves35 said:

I haven't done this on Princess but, on other lines, if you are doing Anytime dining they may move you downstairs to an empty "traditional" table which makes sense for both convenience and spreading the effort across the waitstaff.  On Carnival, we ended up downstairs 5 nights out of 8 and on RCI 3 nights out of 6.  They always asked if we minded but, since we weren't getting the same staff every night anyway, we were fine.

It isn't always seamless. 20 minutes after being seated and all you have is menus, bread and a drink, they seat a group at an empty table nearby. You can then get caught waiting another 20 minutes while the waiters line up their orders with yours.

 

Convenient for those moving into the empty space, but not  always for the traditional diners that arrived for set service. That is why they try to keep both areas separate.

Edited May 14 by arxcards

[MicCanberra]

HAL have this type of arrangement, as do a few other lines. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. One issue we had on the last cruise was just a general lack of staff leading to longer dining times.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Actually that is what they promised when they first announced Dine My Way but never delivered on it. It will be interesting to see whether they can get it to work this time.

 

We did walk-up dining for the first couple of weeks of this cruise so we could try out different locations and waiter teams. We never had to wait more than a couple of minutes for a table however we usually dine around 7pm or later. The other day we finally decided where we'd like to be in the Bordeaux MDR so have booked a specific table for the rest of the cruise. 

[MicCanberra]

Glad it is working well.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Just now, MicCanberra said:

Glad it is working well.

We'll see how it goes. We're working on getting the good wine glasses at dinner since we're having wines by the bottle.

[bazzaw]

In Life, there is only one thing worse than having no choices - and that is having too many choices!!

[MicCanberra]

10 hours ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

We'll see how it goes. We're working on getting the good wine glasses at dinner since we're having wines by the bottle.

Good luck.

[OzKiwiJJ]

3 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

Good luck.

We got the good wine glasses last night! 😊

[MicCanberra]

16 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

We got the good wine glasses last night! 😊

Excellent, all you need now is a good wine in them.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Just now, MicCanberra said:

Excellent, all you need now is a good wine in them.

Since we're paying extra for wine by the bottle that isn't an issue. 😊

 

Staying within budget is though. 🫢😒

[arxcards]

1 hour ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

We got the good wine glasses last night! 😊

Do you get to take the cask back to your cabin after dinner? 😉

[MicCanberra]

I like box wine, especially if it has 12 bottles in it.

[OzKiwiJJ]

Just now, arxcards said:

Do you get to take the cask back to your cabin after dinner? 😉

🙄🙄🙄

 

Actually some of the wines by the bottle are quite decent. Over-priced, of course, but the 25% Plus discount helps.