new cruiser - dining plans?

[richnorto]

We just booked a cruise for 10 days over Christmas for our family. We have been told to make a decision about traditional dining or "personal choice". Our children are 11, 13 and 15 and love the traditional choice food - if not the formal attire (they can deal with it). We have only cruised traditional and would like to know what the choices for "personal choice" are and if they are any good! We are booked on the Sun Princess Dec. 20-30.

Thanks! :)

[WCAB]

If you want to be able to choose what time you eat, then go for personal choice, which is the advantage. You will receive the same menu and the dress code remains the same. You may or may not get the same waiter each night. We are a family of five. We liked our waiters so much that we were able to requst the same table every night. By the third night, I no longer had to ask, they knew to seat us at the same table. We had no problems or wait but then we eat dinner early, before six.

 

Carol

[LonghornKJK]

Your choice is between traditional (early or late seating) and anytime dining. Both have the same menus and dress code. The only difference is that you choose what time you want to eat and you can eat by yourselves or join others. You can also make reservations either daily or a standing reservation for the week.

 

Whatever you choose, you can also pay extra to eat in one of the specialty dining rooms, eat in the buffet, or order room service. If you choose not to eat in the traditional dining room, you should inform the maitre d' or let your tablemates know so that they don't wait for you. All of these are what Princess calls, "Personal Choice."

 

Discussions about these options, including the pros and cons, pop up here regularly. If you do a search, you can find pages of them!

 

Enjoy!

[richnorto]

I'm just uninformed. We've been on several cruises, but this is the first with Princess. Our travel agent has confused me. I looked on the web site and saw pizza, burger etc. places and would like to know if these type places are our "personal choice" places to eat or if there are real restaraunts beyond the two with extra charges? Thanks!:)

[richnorto]

Thank you everybody for you help!

God Bless!

Laurie

[LonghornKJK]

I'm just uninformed. We've been on several cruises, but this is the first with Princess. Our travel agent has confused me. I looked on the web site and saw pizza, burger etc. places and would like to know if these type places are our "personal choice" places to eat or if there are real restaraunts beyond the two with extra charges? Thanks!:)

 

I was on the Dawn in August and it's a sister ship to the Sun. The Dawn has a pizza parlor in the atrium area and a hamburger/hotdog/grilled chicken with French fries stand near the main pool on the Lido deck. These are also choices for everyone, at no extra charge, though I don't know how late they're open. I think there was just one extra-charge restaurant on the Dawn.

 

So to summarize, you're assigned to either traditional or anytime for dinner. If you'd rather, you can choose one of the other options on a given night, or even every night. We ate in port a couple of nights.

[JLC@SD]

We like the late traditional sitting......that way we know when we will dine, where we will dine and with whom we will dine.

 

Lunch and Breakfast provide plenty of opportunities to eat at different times and to meet and eat with others.

[FloridaLaura]

To put in my 2 cents...we are excited about trying anytime dining because on our previous cruises we had early dinner and felt rushed after a day in port to get showered and dressed for traditional dining especially if it were formal night and if we choose late dining I was afraid after a large meal and being later in the evening i would want to go to sleep;) . we think this may solve our problem. we are on vacation after all i certainly do not want to feel rushed :)

[Kerry&LuAnn]

First of all, you will never go hungry!

 

In addition to the pizza and hamburger places, there is round-the-clock food for you in the buffet.

 

There is open seating in the dining rooms for breakfast and lunch (during the times the dining rooms are open).

 

For dinner, if you choose Traditional Dining, you will have an assigned time (either early or late seating) in the Traditional Dining Room. You will eat dinner at this same time, with the same table mates, served by the same waiters every night.

 

If you choose Anytime Dining, you will eat dinner in the Anytime Dining Room. The menu and the service are the same as in the Traditional Dining Room. The difference is that you dine when you want to. We found this to be the perfect choice for us. Sometime we wanted to eat dinner early because we were hungry or had plans for the evening. Other times we returned later from a port stop and wanted to eat later in the evening. The flexibility was great.

[willysgrandma]

I looked on the web site and saw pizza, burger etc. places and would like to know if these type places are our "personal choice" places to eat or if there are real restaraunts beyond the two with extra charges? Thanks!:)

 

No, the pizza, burgers, etc. are made at stations around the pool areas and are free to all.

 

The Anytime Dining has the same menus and dress code as traditional. All you do is go to a different dining room at whatever time you want to go.

 

If you are off the ship and come back late one day, you don't have to rush to shower and get dressed to make a traditional seating time. You can take your time and get to the dining room whenever you want.

 

We experienced this on an NCL cruise first and we never want to go back to traiditonal dining!

[Pam in CA]

As others have said, the main difference between the "Anytime" and "Traditional" dining rooms is the time you eat. The dress code and menus are exactly the same.

 

While theoretically you can show up any time at the Anytime dining room and be seated, in actuality it doesn't always work that way. Try it and see if you like it but be aware that you could have waits for a table, even if you have a reservation for the night (which you can do, i.e., make a reservation for a specific time before 6PM and after 8PM.) I've done Anytime dining twice and both times, had waits as long as 45 minutes. Others have had the experience of just walking in and being seated.

 

The one thing I found with Anytime dining is that the pace of our meal was dictated more by the tables nearby being seated and the waiter(s) doing set-ups than any desire to have a leisurely meal. We'd wait 15 - 20 minutes between our salad and main course because our waiters were getting the table next to us seated and taking their orders. Then, I felt rushed so they could finish us up and get the next group in. I didn't see anyone linger over dessert and coffee, which we enjoy doing.