Oh no! Not more dining questions?

[Perthie]

My wife and I are cruising on the Star Princess on 25 Sept from Rome to Venice and (after a pre and post cruise look at some of Europe) flying to Miami to do an Eastern Caribbean cruise on Caribbean Princess embarking 16 October. As the cruises are incorporated in an around the world flight with time in Europe and the US we have a huge amount of organising to do in a short period of time and have decided to post some questions. The planning has not been helped by the search facility on CC only working intermediately.

We have booked traditional dining on both ships so we can have the option of dining in the optional restaurants. If we are disappointed with that choice on Star we may be able to swap for CP before disembarking in Venice. Any opinions on this?

We would love more info on the other dining rooms and how they work with PC dining. What menus do they use? That is, do you receive dishes the sames as the main dining room or is it a different menu?
It appears that Cafe Caribbe is buffet with table service for drinks. Is this correct? How much is the surcharge in the various PC restaurants?

There seems to be a lot of discontent with PC dining at the moment.
I note a lot of passengers who opt for PC seem to still stick to set reservations for dining, as you receive in the dining room, instead of using the PC restaurants as that...restaurants. Do you think this is causing some of the troubles we read about on the boards with not being able to obtain a table within a reasonable time? Maybe if the restaurants only accepted reservations 24 hours in advance there would be more rotation?
It seems crazy to us to decide to go for PC dining and then having the same table in the same restaurant every night. Sort of the traditional dining you have when you don't have traditional dining. Each to their on though.

Can anyone recently returned from Star Princess in Europe tell me trad dining times for this year in Europe?

River Nile - Oberoi
Alaska - Vision of the Seas
Europe - Brilliance of the seas
Europe - Star Princess 2004
Eastern Caribbean - Caribbean Princess 2004

[caryh]

We just did the med (Apr-May) and had late Traditional. It worked out great as one could take a nap each afternoon as the days were busy and we usually ended up walking several miles while in Port, (we were in port everyday except one on a 12 day cruise). You shouldn't have trouble switching to PC Dining if necessary. We ate in the PC Dining room early on our last night (in Venice) as we wanted to return to St Marks for the evening. It seemed that very few people ate on board that night. After dinner we went over to our dining room to say goodbye and tip our waiters. The menus are identical. The surcharge for Sabatinis is $20 PP, Sterling is $15. On PC dining they fill a table, then everyone on that table's courses are served at the same time. (same for lunch and breakfast). I did notice waiters at the Buffet pushing the sale of drinks more on this cruise. I'm not sure if it is called the Caribe Cafe (we have always called it the Horizon Court). Next to the pools there is place where you can get Hamburgers, Hot Dogs, and Pizza. (That could be calle the Caribe Cafe, I'm not sure I just know it was another place to eat). Hope this answers a few of your questions.

[Perthie]

Thank you caryh for responding. I was wondering if I was too philosophical to get a reply. Was the late sitting at 8:30pm? We did a similar cruise last year on Brilliance of the Seas and the dining times were changed for Europe.

River Nile - Oberoi
Alaska - Vision of the Seas
Europe - Brilliance of the seas
Europe - Star Princess 2004
Eastern Caribbean - Caribbean Princess 2004