_rusty_shackleford

If I see any at any bars I'll let you know but I don't recall seeing any thus far.

MDR Plus and Premier. No guarantees they have all of these. They told me no for a Premier chardonnay but I'm still not sure if that's because the new staff didn't understand what I was looking for or not.

Probably. I seem to recall a rose being available but honestly the bar service is so slow in the MDR you'd be much better off stopping at Vines or any other friendly neighborhood bar to get a glass (or two) to take to dinner.

That's probably your best bet unless you place a lot of value in the other differences between Plus and Premier.

Good Spirits menu

Definitely. I don't drink much wine so there isn't really a huge benefit I see to upgrading to Premier for spirits. If you're a wine drinker though yeah I'd say absolutely upgrade.

Good Spirits menu. We ate at Bistro Sur La Mer tonight. Well, well worth it. Best piece of fish I've ever had (seabass). My wife also liked her duck breast. My tuna tartare was good but we both preferred my wife's smoked salmon appetizer. Service was excellent as well. At the risk of starting a war: if you desire to leave a tip bring cash. There is no way to do so using your medallion.

I don't have one handy but when we went this morning it was definitely pared down from what the app listed. Plenty of great options (traditional American breakfasts like pancakes and bacon/sausage/hash browns, fresh fruit, omlettes, a mushroom and Italia sausage frittata, etc. I think better options than the buffet but not life changing either. Service was decent but coffee refills were a little on the slow side. No major complaints and would still recommend.

Buffalo Trace is plentiful, as is Woodford (both standard and Princess select). I have also seen Jim Beam White, Bulleit, and Old Forester (I think 1870). Also JD Black and Rye but neither of those are bourbons.

Here's Bellini's. This one is kind of pointless since they have far more than is shown here. Doesn't seem to be lacking for much of anything aside from the standard out of stocks I mentioned previously.

That's a beautiful chalice you have yourself there. Please don't hesitate to poke me if I forget. They open in about 90 min today so if you haven't heard back by tomorrow a nudge/gentle tap/aggressive shove is perfectly fine.

I'm onboard right now. I've got a live thread going and I'll either post it there or edit this comment with a picture. Maybe both if my CRS disease takes the day off. I will say anecdotally there are plenty of options under $15 to the point I haven't even really thought of looking closer at what isn't included but I haven't spent much time at GS yet. The standout unavailable/discontinued spirits so far are Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, and Crown Royal.

Bonus picture of MDR breakfast this morning. I had fruit and asked for sides of bacon, hash browns, and sausage. Here's my plate of "sides". You may notice the surplus of bacon which I have named Swine Mountain. To think just 5 months ago bacon was rationed and the tongs were behind the buffet. For the record I was expecting and would have been perfectly happy with 2-3 pieces of bacon.

Here's the officer staff board in case anyone is interested. Didn't end up in the dining room last night. Combination of going scuba diving and the late lunch that comes with the territory. Last night was tacos and fajitas made to order in the buffet. Chicken fajitas were ok, skip the steak in my opinion. Didn't have any of the tacos but they looked pretty appealing. Pretty uneventful day in Roatan today. We're the only ship in Mahogany Bay but we decided not to dive today and neither of us are terribly interested in the tourist compound here. If anyone has recommendations of restaurants outside of the trap we'd be happy to explore those next time. Diving in Cozumel was nice yesterday as always. We went with Maple Leaf Scuba this time due to arrival time and they were a good outfit. Before this we had exclusively used Dive With Martin and I'd strongly recommend them to any divers out there if you can make their early departure times work or have enough divers to do a private charter. Great DMs, safe, and extremely observant underwater for wildlife. Maple Leaf was good too and kind enough to let us hitch a ride back to their shop in their group's cab so we could hit Cerveceria Punta Sur a couple of blocks away. Great guac and ceviche. Beers weren't bad either. We don't have any excursions planned today or tomorrow in Belize so if anyone has any info requests let me know and I'll do my best to fulfill them.

I'm not as sure about Winemaker's but I believe Chef's Table is. If I find out I'll edit this post.

7 would be pushing it based on my experience with this cruise. I'd feel much more comfortable at 6:30pm if you're wanting to make the show without having to hurry. I think the shows are like at 8 and 10 but I will edit this post when I get back onboard today and can look at the schedule.

When we went to be seated in the Estrella dining room the first night they were sending people without reservations down one level to the Soleil DR because allegedly there wasn't a wait. This was at 6:20pm. We switched our reservation to Soleil for last night and it was much more reasonable (1:30 seated to dessert) but still seemed very disorganized. It's becoming clear that staffing levels are low. Dirty tables just sat until someone freed up vs being cleaned almost immediately when we left in the past. You can certainly ask for a shared table later and you may have some luck since it seems anything after 7 is past peak demand but to it's hard to say. They're having a hard enough time with whatever system they're using right now that I'm not sure how a deviation would be handled. We are having a great time overall and these are fairly minor issues in the grand scheme of things. Certainly wouldn't discourage you from going or having a great time!

There is the standard podium there for Medallion check-in and such but they don't seem to be using it to make seating decisions. It's strange. If nothing else I would think whoever is checking people in could show them to their table but she stands there and waits for staff that looks available to seat people.

I think I'm piecing together why that is. They don't seem to have the electronic seating system a lot of restaurants have, so they have no way of tracking tables. There isn't a dedicated person seating anyone either. I'm guessing they wait for 'blocks' of tables to open up, and then start seating people. No clue why. I swear they had a seating system on the Royal.

It's kind of strange. We actually prefer the 'traditional' dining set up where you have the same time, table, and staff all cruise because we enjoy getting to know them in ways you really can't with just one night. This was almost like that pacing except we won't be seated with the same staff and enjoy that part of it. They were able to accommodate our request on the Royal at 66-ish% capacity in the fall but I don't think that's a reasonable request to make with a full ship and 15-20 min waits past your requested time just to be seated at random. We'll see what tonight's dinner brings before I rush to judge but I'd prefer not to have that pace again if given the choice. Enjoy your cruise!

Royal. We were exclusively Carnival cruisers before that one, mainly because that's what my family started out doing back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth so that's what we had stuck with. We love the Princess experience but I really miss the Spirit class ships with Carnival. Perfect size, perfect passenger:crew ratio, and very well laid out. One huge plus with going out of Tampa is those are about the biggest ships that fit under the Skyway Bridge so we almost always got one of them. Sky and Royal are nice, don't get me wrong, but we are not really fans of big ships. I'm afraid they're only going to get bigger and move further to the 'ship-within-a-ship' profit model. Maybe the Grand-class are more up our alley.

I think we're going to do that tonight as an insurance policy. This is also our first full capacity cruise in 3 years or so, and I'll admit I had been spoiled by/forgotten what the full capacity experience is like when there haven't been lines in a while. This is also our second cruise with Princess, the first being a 14 day Alaska in September, so the experiences were never going to translate 1:1. All in all still a great time and I appreciate the tip. My goodness do we miss Alaska though. I'm pale and tragic so the Caribbean sun and I do not work well together.

Plus/Premier wine menus. Not sure if they have all of them or not but I have definitely seen most of these options at one bar or another. Most liquor seems to be in stock as well. I have not seen a bottle of Maker's or Knob Creek but they do seem to have plenty of Buffalo Trace unlike my last cruise. No glaring absences for scotch or tequila either.

I actually don't think this is a big availability problem on this cruise. I have seen a few of the wines at every bar I was told were "unavailable" in the MDR. Didn't have that issue on the Royal this past fall so I'm chalking it up to either understaffing or an inexperienced staff member. Not the end of the world either way- can ways bring a glass in with us.

It's all subjective right? That's just a personal observation when I look at how long we were idle and how often we saw the staff. I'm used to 90 minutes or so, dessert included, which I think is about right. If nothing else I assumed they'd want to try to turn the tables in a reasonable amount of time as the ship seems at capacity. This was us sitting for 30 min between courses when we were clearly finished. Again, I think they were either understaffed or suffering from a lack of dining room leadership but this is definitely the longest meal (and most time between courses) I've had during my cruise history. Certainly not enough to merit throwing a tantrum at guest services or getting snippy with staff like some do, but just one experience one night. EDIT: and by some, I do not mean you so I hope you don't take it as an affront and apologize if it sounds that way. Every cruise I'm on there are always people that treat the most minor inconvenience as a personal attack. C'est la vie I suppose but it always embarrasses me to see people treat others the way some do. We were a table of 2 but they seemed to be waiting for the other two tables of 2 next to us to be brought/finish their courses even though we clearly were not together nor were seated at the same time. I think that's what made it feel like it was dragging. We'll see what tonight brings. Not nearly enough to convince us not to go back and I'd never base an entire cruise off of one night.