Help for the veteren trying Anytime Dining!

[JH1002]

Hello -

 

I am an experienced cruiser. I have cruised Princess many times. This year, January 20th, we are taking a group with us aboard the Crown Princess. There will be 14 total. We have choosen Anytime dining, as we have found early to be too early and late to be too late for us. We are thinking we will try to dine around 7 - 7:30pm. We would very much like to sit together (probably two tables) and we would like to establish a relationship with a wait staff.

So those of you who know HOW to make this happen, please advise!

 

1) Do you have any suggestions for a wait staff team to request?

2) Can we ask for a permanent reservation in that time frame?

If so how and when?

3) Is one of the anytime dining rooms a better choice than another?

 

Please Help, I would be most grateful for any advice, hints or tips! ;)

[drpack]

Hello -

 

I am an experienced cruiser. I have cruised Princess many times. This year, January 20th, we are taking a group with us aboard the Crown Princess. There will be 14 total. We have choosen Anytime dining, as we have found early to be too early and late to be too late for us. We are thinking we will try to dine around 7 - 7:30pm. We would very much like to sit together (probably two tables) and we would like to establish a relationship with a wait staff.

So those of you who know HOW to make this happen, please advise!

 

1) Do you have any suggestions for a wait staff team to request?

2) Can we ask for a permanent reservation in that time frame?

If so how and when?

3) Is one of the anytime dining rooms a better choice than another?

 

Please Help, I would be most grateful for any advice, hints or tips! ;)

 

Yes you can make a reservation from your cabin phone for the entire cruise at the same time or for different times each day. Since you want two tables together it might be easier if you went to the Dinning Room you want to use and talk to the Maitre’d so you can see were the tables you want are and to make sure they share the same wait staff.

[MercedMike]

We are also long time traditional dining users, and have recently used Anytime Dining on Sapphire Princess to Alaska and Grand Princess to the Med. In both cases we found we really liked it (sort of to our surprise!)

 

We did encounter some servers we liked and return to their tables a couple of times, but really we found that just hanging loose, deciding to go when we felt like it, and taking the luck of the draw on the servers worked really well. We did, a bit, miss the getting to know the servers from traditional. But the Anytime did have some benefits to compensate. In particular, on shore extensive cruises it is very nice to be able to work your dinner into your shore excursion times. But on balance we pretty much liked Anytime over Traditional.

 

We did find that it was a bit hard to make the shows with Anytime dining. On Grand Princess the show room was usually completely filled 20 minutes before show time.

 

Have a GREAT cruise!

 

Mike

 

Cruising with the Halls:

http://www.bully4.us/cruising.html

 

Cruise Countdowns:

http://members.aol.com/cruznphulmike/countdown.html

[ssbeagle]

We have done the anytime dining on the Star. The first night we were at a different table than we had at lunch. We liked the waiters at lunch so much that after dinner we requested a reservation for the rest of the cruise for the same time every night. We were a party of 9. On all our cruises we usually do traditional dining. We agree with the previous poster that anytime dining could be more difficult to make the shows. But we didn't miss them that much because we were having a great time in the dining room. We had seen most of them before anyway. It doesn't really matter which one you go to. I think they are open staggered times and the Maitre D' can help with reservations too.

[cherylandtk]

JH--Well, in my experience you are 3 for 3 in the attributes that can make Anytime Dining hard to use: You want to eat at the most popular time, you have a large group and you want to make standing reservations for the same time and team every night.

 

Check once onboard with the Maitre'd, but it will be easier for him to accomodate your group if you could eliminate one or more of those parameters; be willing to split the group, eat earlier or later or be willing to forego the reservations. On many ships, they do not allow reservations (at all) between the hours of 6:30-8:00 and on others they do not allow you to make reservations during these hours more than one or two days in advance. But it all depends on the maitre' d, how full the ship is and how many larger family groups are asking for the same type accomodations as you are. We did manage a group of 11 at the same time each night, same table, BUT we had to eat at 5. 2/11 liked that time, but it was the best we could do.