Trouble In The Horizon Court?

[Sandytoes]

If the "buffet" was that bad,why is it always "crowded"???

Just another thing that makes you say,Hmmm.......

"Because everyone is starving!"????

 

Starve?...........On a cruise ship?...............

Princess has such a variety of dining options that it's almost impossible to starve wihile on their ship....

 

A buffet (cafeteria food) is a less elegant form of dining...and you have to take it as such.....If you do not care to dine in this establishment. find another place....Main dining room, International Cafe, Cafe Caribe, Burgers, Pizza, the list goes on....

[OuiOnboard]

.... Well, I'll be eating in the Horizon Court in just a few weeks now....

Always good when you know you have HC in your near future..eh? :D

[OuiOnboard]

Starve?...........On a cruise ship?..............

Am I to understand that you have never witnessed the stampeding masses descend on HC in an effort to ward off imminent starvation? :D Have you never heard of "hungry eyes"? Hey Sandy...just joking...:)

[Clutterlady]

Last year on the Golden, I had to laugh watching some people come out of the court with two plates filled to the brim..........but, the food was bad!!! What gives??:rolleyes:

[Merion_Mom]

I don't even want to discuss the issue of quality, because it's so subjective. As I have stated before, I'm a salad fiend, so I'm not looking for cooked food anyway. ONE of the four areas of Horizon Court on the Crown had an excellent salad bar. The others had nothing or piddly little shadows of a salad bar.

 

NOW, if I didn't FIND OUT that the areas were all the same, after ONE LOOK at the poor piddly thing, I would have been INSANELY put out by Princess' failure to feed me properly. Fortunately, I discovered this on my own.

 

During that discovery period, I came into contact with all the different quadrants of HC. THEY ARE A MESS. The area is crowded, congested, overflowing with people, lacking in open space for movement...........get the picture? It's VERY hard to move around in there. And when you do, you get the SEARING EVIL EYE from people who are SO afraid that you are going to get there before they do. SOME areas there IS a long, slow-moving serpentine from plate to food. OTHER areas, not so.

 

The place "doesn't work" as far as I'm concerned.

 

And for the poster who didn't like Enchantment of the Seas' buffet.............HUH? I have always found ALL of the Windjammers on RC ships to be well-laid out with excellent flow and spacious design. You may have any opinion you like about what you found there, but the place itself "works". And I thought that the food was a LARGE step above Princess' buffet. Being a salad fiend, I am also a fresh vegetable fiend and a fruit fiend. I have always found a plethora of options, and never left disappointed or (god forbid!) hungry.

 

JMO YMMV

[Clutterlady]

Merion_Mom, did the Enchatment have stations like Princess? I really believe the problem is people do not know how to use stations. If Enchatment has stations, is it in a much larger area? That's the big problem with the Horizon, not enough room. Maybe they should have a phamplet in the cabins on how to use the Horizon Court :D !

[iancal]

On our Sun Princess cruise they had an omlette station open EVERY morning in the buffet area. Princess buffet...just OK on our trip, we had better on RCI, Celebrity, and NCL. We don't need help, but we saw others being helped by Princess with their trays. One thing we missed on Princess, no one came around to offer you a refill on coffee. We either had fruit for breakfast or an omlette, or ate in the dining room. Problem with Horizon is our food was always cold by the time we found a seat...and it was not that great to start with. We stuck to the dining room.

[thechandlers99]

I was on the Caribbean Princess last week and I thought the food in the HC was marginal at best. We ate breakfast in there 2 mornings and that was all. The eggs were cold and the bacon was very soggy. I also saw bugs crawling on the bagels....GROSS!!! Lucky for me, there were other wonderful food choices so I can't really complain. I did not see an omlette station though.

[OuiOnboard]

... Maybe they should have a phamplet in the cabins on how to use the Horizon Court :D !

Might be a great idea!!

Near my office there is a rotary intersection or "roundabout" as the British call them. In any case, they are so rare in these parts that drivers were having a terrible time navigating and determining who had the right-of-way and when...resulting in confusion, inefficient traffic flow and frequent minor fender-benders. The traffic planners finally put flow diagrams in the local papers and public/govt. offices....presto..problem solved.

[Clutterlady]

Oui, you're elected to work on a phamplet to be subimitted to Princess on how to navigate the Horizon Court!!

 

Iancal, there is no way you're going to convince me you had better foor in the buffet on NCL, SORRY no way!!:eek:

[TexasMom2]

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=5741540&highlight=serenade#post5741540

 

This is a link to a thread from earlier this year. Scroll down halfway for pics of the buffet area of the Serenade and Golden. There just isn't enough space allocated for the stations on Grand class. Is the area on the Crown bigger?

[iancal]

Clutterlady: We were on the NCL Sun in Feb, our first NCL trip. We did find the food better. Especially liked the cooked to order pasta station and the next day it was cooked to order Thai. Did not like the fact that we did not get trays, but overall found it better than Princess.

[Clutterlady]

Just goes to show you that everyone has a different opionion on food!

[mdmomof7]

I was on CB last Aug. and I did panic (quietly, this cruise was my idea!)when I went to the HC after embarkation. I feared the entire cruise might be masses of hungry cruisers! It was difficult to find a seat. It was warm w/ all the people going in and out and in and out to the pool deck.

 

The worst of it was over after embarkation. The next AM breakfast traffic was also heavy, but not on following mornings. A thought I have since had is that one could handle the crowded time, 8-10, by ordering room service croissants, pastries, coffee, etc., and then going to breakfast later for your hot meal.

 

For breakfast CB does have an omelet station. They had plenty of fresh fruit, including figs, which were yummy, but they weren't there every day. They usually had melons, oranges, strawberries, bananas, apples.

 

HC staff was working hard and smiling. Attendants were encouraging all to use the hand sanitizer dispensers.

 

We only ate in the DR one AM as we found the HC fine, even though buffets are not my favorite.

 

I'm wondering if the hamburger place is open at embarkation? Probably not, but that might help.

 

I never saw bugs on anything! I never saw angry people. In fact, when it was so crowded, you couldn't help but introduce yourself to the table next to you or even share a table. We met some passengers in the embarkation line and buffet that first day and we'd chat and compare notes when we ran into them again, which wasn't very often. It's a big ship!

[travellady]

We've sailed the Diamond, Sapphire, and Caribbean Princess and have found most of the HC food to be OK to very good, whether it be breakfast, lunch or dinner. I didn't like everything they had to offer, but always found something I liked. And tastes can be very different. I loved the bacon, my husband didn't like it at all. Same bin, same bacon, just 2 opposing opinions.

 

Sapphire and Diamond pretty much had the same food at all stations. I quickly learned Caribe Cafe, not available on the other two ships but on the Caribbean Princess, usually had very different offerings so circled through both areas first before deciding where to eat.

 

To compare to other ships, I must say the Carnival Inspiration buffet was the worst. Long slow lines, not great food. Their dining room food is on par if not a tad bit better than RCCL, but the buffet tipped the scales in the opposite direction.

 

Last but not least, I have never left a cruise ship hungry!!!

[Tatka]

mdmomof7 ... I thought I wrote your post! But after first lunch we never seen lines in the HC at all. NEVER.

[NZYU]

We love the Horizon Court.

Be more selective about when you go and perhaps you'll avoid the crowds... is the only thing I can think of... because crowds weren't a problem on the Coral last spring.

There were all sorts of eggs and a great variety of breakfast items including cereals, fruit, ....

 

We loved the variety. Horizon Court is one key reason we love Princess.

[prarie cruiser]

Wait a minute!!!! I have not sailed Princess for a year, but on previous cruises there were always trays available to put all your goodies on. Is that not the case anymore? How can I juggle my two glasses of juice, silverware, and a couple of plates of food and do it all in one trip? That is ridiculous!!!

[OuiOnboard]

...How can I juggle my two glasses of juice, silverware, and a couple of plates of food and do it all in one trip?

To avoid peak times, go early or go later and make two trips...or...bring an assistant along.:)

[mdmomof7]

Tatka - :)

 

You've been on several cruise lines. Have you posted the similarities and differences on the board? If so, I'll do a search to see. We almost went on HAL Zuiderdam for our first cruise last year. I met some cruisers from that ship in the airport on the way home. They loved their cruise too!

 

And this is totally OT, forgive me, but my dd is right now in the Ukraine and yesterday did a river cruise on the Dneiper River. Don't know where on the Black Sea you cruised, but she also just finished a camp near Balaklava and Sevastopol on the Black Sea. Small world. :)

[JLC@SD]

If the "buffet" was that bad,why is it always "crowded"???

 

Just another thing that makes you say,Hmmm........

LOL

 

Well Yogi said it.......it is so crowded that nobody goes there anymore...:)

[Merion_Mom]

I've never been on the Serenade of the Seas, but looking at that picture, I can say that that kind of layout and spacing is typical of RC's Windjammers. You can get food on either side of each display, and can move easily from island to island.

 

That's what's lacking in the Horizon Court, in my opinion.

 

I tend NOT to eat at peak times, and it was ALWAYS crowded and ALWAYS semi-torture to navigate.

 

And if you have read my posts, you know that I am NOT a complainer.

[rebeccalouise]

I was on the Sapphire Princess last year and thought the Horizon Court was poorly designed. I am a big fan of buffet dining. I thought some of the food choices were excellent but the layout extremely awkward. I noticed that the Crown (113 Tons) is smaller than the Sapphire (116 Tons) and yet the Crown has 3110 passenger and the Sapphire 2670 passengers. So I would think that the Horizon on the Crown must be very crowded.

If buffets aren't important to you- then it doesn't matter.

[spongerob]

There really isn't anything wrong with the island layout in HC, the problem is one of space and traffic flow. I think things would work a little better if one side was the entrance and the other the exit. Allowing people in at both ends just creates confusion. A more logical layout might improve the flow, given that creating more space isn't really an option.

[dean8844]

I don't like all this bickering i'm going on my 1st Princess cruise in dec and i'm going to enjoy the HC no matter how it's laid out or what kind of food they have, i'm sure i'll fine something to eat and i'll just be happy to be on a cruise, i also don't care how the coffee is as long as it will wake me up in the morning lol :D :D :D

 

Dean